Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary
particular moral tradition (Sandel 1984:5–6; Maclntyre 1981). The self is not
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The-Radical-Democratic-Imaginary-oleh-Laclau-and-Mouffe
particular moral tradition (Sandel 1984:5–6; Maclntyre 1981). The self is not atomistic but a situated communal self whose ends are always shaped by communal allegiances, obligations, traditions and values. Where Kantian liberals construct philosophical worlds of universal maxims, in which the individual is stripped of her socially-acquired moral compass, the communitarians dismiss those worlds as ideal spaces that do not help us to understand actual historical conditions. Rawls’ stripped self in the original position becomes, for the communitarians, a non-self. The communitarians insist that there would be no contradiction between individual liberty and the obligations of the citizen in an ideal state. The individual only realizes her self-determination insofar as she participates fully in deliberation about the public good. This implies, in turn, that the best regime cannot be neutral with respect to values. Given that good deliberation requires an individual who has developed civic virtues, such as recognition of the importance of public service and respect for the rights of others, then the best polity would be one in which individuals were encouraged to cultivate these virtues. The neutral regime favored by the Kantian liberals cannot safeguard individuals’ genuine freedom precisely because “it cannot sustain the kind of political community and civic engagement that liberty requires” (Sandel 1996:24). For the communitarians, each member of a community is always morally oriented with respect to communal traditions. As a member of a household, a movement, a community or a nation at a specific historical moment, one is always more or less positioned within their respective narratives. Every individual is in this sense a bearer of a tradition: she inherits a set of communally-and historically- determined debts, obligations, rights and privileges. If, for example, the individual is placed in the role of the citizen, then her good must consist, at least in part, in the good that is proper to a citizen. If, furthermore, citizenship in her nation-state has been historically won through the violation of the rights of others, then she inherits not only a set of citizenship rights, but also an obligation to the peoples who have suffered that violation (Maclntyre 1981; Sandel 1982:150; 1984:6). An individual may owe special responsibilities to “members of those communities with which [her] own community has some morally relevant history, such as the morally burdened relations of Germans to Jews, of American whites to American blacks, or of England and France to their former colonies” (Sandel 1996:15). When the Kantian liberals describe social duties as obstacles to individual liberty, their communitarian critics respond by invoking the principle of republican citizenship, namely the idea that individual liberty can be maximized through public service and the prioritization of the common good over the pursuit of individualistic interests (Skinner 1992:217). Download 0.72 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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