Research Catalog

A communitarian defense of liberalism : Emile Durkheim and contemporary social theory

Title: A communitarian defense of liberalism : Emile Durkheim and contemporary social theory / Mark S. Cladis.
Author: Cladis, Mark Sydney.
Publication: Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, ©1992.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	HM22.F8 D774 1992	Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 339 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

"Community," "tradition," "the individual," terms that convey different meanings under different circumstances, stand out prominently in much of today's intellectual landscape. In social and political theory, and in religious studies, they figure conspicuously in the ongoing debates between liberals (champions of the individual) and communitarians (champions of the common good). With these debates in mind, and despite the potential conflict, the author has constructed a timely reading of Emile Durkheim that captures the benefits associated with both liberalism and communitarianism. The book explores fundamental issues concerning freedom, rights, authority, public moral education, the relation between the public and the private, and the role of social criticism in democracies. Isolating the merits and liabilities of both liberal and communitarian theories, the author demonstrates that we need not be in the position of having to choose between them. In the process of forging his via media, he engages with and sometimes challenges such contemporary theorists as Richard Rorty, Robert N. Bellah, Amy Gutmann, John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jeffrey Stout, Michael Walzer, and Charles Taylor. The author's chief argument is that Durkheim develops a communitarian defense of liberalism. That defense addresses a host of issues: What is the normative relation between the private and the public, the individual and society? Are autonomy and authority irreconcilable? What is the social nature of knowledge, especially moral knowledge? Are moral discourse and the common good threatened by pluralism? Is public moral education coercive? What are the practices of social criticism? These issues are seen as joined by a single thread: the construction of a sophisticated sociohistorical account of modern democratic society that seeks to further the moral aims of liberalism and communitarianism. The author's normative model of liberalism describes individual rights and liberties as a salient feature of a socially entrenched common good. Liberalism, in this view, is construed as social traditions that morally unite individuals in common pursuits, including the preservation and extension of rights.

Series Statement

Stanford series in philosophy

Uniform Title

Stanford series in philosophy.

Subject

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

1. Durkheim's Communitarian Defense of Liberalism -- 2. Tradition and Autonomy: The Path to Moral Individualism -- 3. Liberalism as a Common Faith -- 4. Durkheim, Goodman, Rorty, and Mild-Mannered Pragmatism -- 5. The Individual in Society: A Sacred Marriage? -- 6. Provinces of Ethics: Moral Pluralism and a Plurality of Morals -- 7. Education, Virtue, and Democracy -- 8. Wittgenstein and the Activity of a Durkheimian Social Critic -- 9. Durkheim Among a Company of Critics: Rawls, Walzer, MacIntyre, and Rorty -- Note on the Life of Durkheim: The Moral Imagination of the Social Scientist.

ISBN

0804720428
9780804720427
0804723656
9780804723657

LCCN

92010125

OCLC

ocm25632673
25632673
SCSB-8784121

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library