POLI 338 Chapter Notes -Communitarianism, John Rawls, Metanarrative
Document Summary
Interest of humanity is to live the good life. This is different than living the life we currently believe to be good. That is, we must be able to deliberate and allow for the possibility that we were and are wrong. However, it must be we ourselves who do this revision, and not someone else. We therefore have two conditions for fulfilling this essential interest: to be able to live in accordance with our beliefs, and to be free to question those beliefs. Five communitarian arguments against liberalism: empty view of the self. Being free to question all limits of social situation is defeating, because total freedom is a total void. The ability to revise our projects, in and of itself, is an empty pursuit. Kymlicka agrees, and says that it"s because [our projects] are so important that we should be free to revise and reject them. Real question: whether our tasks must be set for us by society.