ABSTRACT
Just as there is probably no single way of characterising motherhood, so too is there no single way of characterising community. In the case of community, the problem can be ameliorated by deploying the characteristics deployed by communitarians. Thus, part of the aim of this conclusion is to apply the dialectical method and structure for the exercise of reason to the communitarian idea of community, that is, to show what the dialectical method of inquiry reveals about the nature of communitarian community; how the various elements are related. The dialectical method of inquiry that has been established on the basis of praxis reveals four things, which are not obvious to certain communitarians, one of which is not revealed to the analytical approach. Bringing the whole and its parts, different levels of inquiry, and theory and practice, together in a symbiotic relationship which provides a degree of intelligibility unavailable to a methodology committed to the maintenance of distinctions bereft of connections.
