ABSTRACT
The development of communitarian ideas has over centuries focussed on finding ways to work out how we should live without succumbing to relativism or authoritarianism. This chapter looks at four aspects of this development. First, it outlines how a non-Kantian pragmatic strand of the Enlightenment gave rise to the communitarianism of Owenite cooperators, and thinkers such as Durkheim, Hobhouse, and Dewey, which set out how communities could formulate answers for themselves. Secondly, it considers the communitarian critiques of Rawls’ quasi-Kantian rationalism by MacIntyre, Sandel, Walzer, and Taylor, and whether such critiques open them up to the charge of relativism. Thirdly, it examines the approaches put forward by a range of communitarian theorists – Miller, Boswell, Selznick, Etzioni, Tam – which were designed to enable people to develop participatory institutions, cultivate cooperative interactions, and engage in inclusive cross-checking, so as to find common ground in society. Lastly, it argues that relativist challenges should ultimately be met by the actual consensus-building and conflict resolution impact achieved by a range of deliberative and restorative techniques, and that further research in these areas holds the key to keeping relativism from undermining communitarian discourse.
