29 June 2009
The Sky’s the Limit: A Defense of the Common Good
In Contemporary Political Philosophy, Will Kymlicka concludes his chapter on communitarianism by describing what he calls “the challenge of the forward-looking communitarian.” He says that “virtually all political theorists today” face this challenge: “sustaining bonds of ethical community in an era of individual choice and cultural diversity” (Kymlicka 2002: 272). As the proliferation of diversity strains the “traditional sources of social unity,” political theorists must identify “new stronger sources of commonality” to uphold the ethical bonds of citizenship. Without a shared sense of community, citizens are less likely to accept the obligations at the foundation of redistributive justice. This serves as the impetus for a ‘politics of the common good,’ and the communitarian critique of the liberal self and state.
In the rest of the chapter, Kymlicka defends a liberal interpretation of the common good (based on the endorsement constraint and state neutrality) against the communitarian alternative (based on the embedded self and state perfectionism) (220). I will examine these competing interpretations, and compare their different conceptions of self and state. I will argue for a middle-ground interpretation of the common good that avoids problems found in both the endorsement constraint and state perfectionism, and then defend this interpretation from objections based on the liberal ‘just savings’ principle.
