ABSTRACT
The work of Michael Walzer, a much celebrated communitarian, is most often juxtaposed with that of cosmopolitans like Charles Beitz whom we explored in the previous chapter. In International Relations this is usually presented in the form of a debate between cosmopolitans and communitarians (Brown 1992; Cochran 1999; Hutchings 1999; Morrice 2000). The issue between the two positions is often characterised as a disagreement over the one and the many: one universal ethic versus many particular ethics. In short, it’s portrayed as a debate over whether universality is possible. As I pointed out in the Introduction, this book is already blatantly ‘wrong’ in this regard as I’m reading Walzer as a universalist. As this chapter will show, universality isn’t the issue between them at all, at least not in the case of the communitarianism of Walzer. Both Beitz and Walzer agree that universality is possible and both agree that its foundations are to be found in fundamental characteristics of the subject.1
