Communitarianism

The number and importance of transnational problems have increased since World War II compared with the decades that preceded it, especially compared with earlier ages. These include terrorism, environmental degradation, illegal immigration, contagion of financial crises, and transnational mafias. As a social philosophy with a global reach, communitarianism offers an approach to such problems. It builds on the assumption that the definition of the good should be social. It is often contrasted with liberalism, which assumes that each person should individually determine what is right or wrong. Communitarianism stresses that people have responsibilities to the common good (e.g., to the environment) while liberalism stresses that individuals are endowed with rights.

Although communitarianism is a small philosophical school, it has a measure of influence on public dialogues and politics, especially as an antidote to the kind of laissez-faire conservatism championed by Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States. Barack Obama gave voice repeatedly to communitarian ideas and ideals in his book The Audacity of Hope and during the 2008 presidential election campaign. Obama called his fellow citizens to “ground our politics in the notion of a common good” (2006, p. 9) and suggested that “if we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all” (2006, p. 68). Obama, like other public leaders who have embraced similar themes, especially Tony Blair in the United Kingdom and Bill Clinton in the United States, never used the term communitarian itself; many consider it awkward and evoking misleading associations. Although communitarianism has mainly dealt with communities and national societies, more recently, it has also been applied on the international and global levels.