ABSTRACT
This chapter contains a defense of Rawlsian, political communitarianism, which is seen as a moderate stance between the weak communitarianism found in Hobbes and related thinkers, and the strong communitarianism found in Aristotle and the many thinkers influenced by Aristotle. This moderate view emphasizes the facts that individuation in Rawls occurs through community and that a just society requires complementarity among individuals. Communal virtues are also emphasized along with the communitarian implications of the Rawlsian difference principle. Several critics of Rawls are treated who tend to deemphasize or ignore altogether Rawls’s moderate (political) communitarianism, which is odd when it is considered that justice as fairness requires certain public goods. The complicated relationship between community in Rawls and love/benevolence is also examined.
