ABSTRACT
The rehabilitation of ethical community, comprising the communitarian turn in ethics, has its own lessons for reconstructing theory and practice provided one rethinks its formulations with the same critical autonomy. The communitarian appeal to ethical community is grounded in an understanding of the complementary limitations of teleological and procedural ethics. The intrinsic connection between the agency of membership and the unity of the community overcomes the one sidedness of teleological ethics insofar as the particular ends that are sought in occupying one’s station are inherently universal with respect to the community. Complementing the absolutization is a commitment to the formality of the concept of ethical community. Ethical community can no longer be conceived as a formal framework, whose content is relegated to historical accident. However, any community whose roles, ends and institutions are instead allowed to be prescribed by factors given independently of freedom will at best comprise a “natural” ethical community, with a tainted validity.
