The Common Good
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The Common Good

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The Common Good

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About This Book

In this book, Amitai Etzioni, public intellectual and leading proponent of communitarian values, defends the view that no society can flourish without a shared obligation to "the common good." Rejecting claims made by some liberal thinkers that it is not possible to balance individual rights with uncoerced civic responsibility, Etzioni explores a number of key issues which pose important questions for those concerned with promoting the common good in contemporary society. Are we morally obliged to do more for our communities beyond treating everyone as endowed with basic rights? Should privacy be regarded not merely as a right but also as an obligation? And should the right to free speech take priority over the need to protect children from harmful material in the media and on the internet?


Etzioni asks how we can strike a healthy balance between individual rights and public safety in an age of global terrorism. He evaluates various new government devices, from wiretaps to viruses, which open our lives to public scrutiny. Particular attention is given to the issues surrounding government-issued DNA tests. The book concludes by questioning whether we can still talk of a relationship between the common good and the nation-state, or whether the "online" society in which we live will make it increasingly difficult to maintain those communities which are the very homeland of the common good.


This new book, by one of the world's leading social and political thinkers, will be important reading for students and scholars of political science, social philosophy, sociology, and public policy, as well as for the interested general reader.

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Publisher
Polity
Year
2014
ISBN
9780745686479
1
Are Particularistic Obligations Justified?
If three children go hungry in a community, the members of many such communities are more distressed than if thousands starve in some faraway country.1 Moreover, people not only care more about members of their own communities, but maintain that they are justified in doing so, that one has a higher level of obligation to one’s “own kind” than to all others. Are such particularistic obligations2 justified, and on what grounds?
This question has been the subject of an immense amount of deliberation, which is not reviewed here. This exploration is limited to an examination of communitarian justifications for particularistic obligations, and only to those in a societal rather than in a political context. That is, it concerns the obligations of members of communities, not those of citizens of states.
Introduction
Special import to communitarians
Addressing this question is of particular importance to communitarians. Those who center their social philosophy around the concept of individual rights need not recognize that collectivities (social groups, communities) have any rights or can elicit any special obligations. Indeed, Bentham argues that the very notion of the existence of a society, as distinct from an aggregate of individuals, is a fiction.3
In contrast, because communitarians consider shared formulations of the good essential, these formulations ipso facto entail particularistic moral obligations to and for the members of the communities involved. For instance, to hold that one ought to cherish one’s ethnic heritage entails “do’s” and “don’ts” for and to members, but not for others.
The argument could be made that given that liberals are concerned with universal rights, which the state is obligated to honor, and that communitarians deal with particularistic obligations within communities (and the society, as a community of communities),4 there is not necessarily a conflict between these two philosophies. Indeed, one might suggest that there is no reason for liberals to object if members of communities abide by some particularistic commitments in the private realm. Such a liberal, however, may still be concerned that private commitments, if widely endorsed, will lead to state enforcement.5 For instance, if most members of a community agree that abortion is immoral, they might well seek to use the state to ban it. The particularistic position of a community thus would become a law that might well violate one or more universal rights. Hence a liberal may well prefer not to open the door to particularistic obligations, not necessarily because they are objectionable in themselves, but in terms of what they may lead to.
Also, many liberals hold that social pressure by communities on their members to abide by particularistic obligations amounts to coercion.6 For instance, they not only oppose laws that mandate HIV testing and disclosure of the results to one’s sexual partners, but also social pressure to do so on the ground that it is coercive. Given that communities are the source of coercive social pressure, some deride them as “Salems,”7 as places they would rather do without – one more reason they do not brook particularistic obligations.
Indeed, the basic vocabulary and paradigm of those political theories that are centered around rights, as well as those moral philosophies that are centered around universal principles and individual autonomy, do not include the concept of particularistic obligations. (“Basic” is used to remind us that there are numerous different liberal positions and that the preceding point may not fully apply to some liberals.) Even when liberals do not explicitly object to particularistic obligations, they as a rule do not examine the grounds on which these obligations may be justified. In contrast, communitarians, whose paradigm is centered around the common good as conceived by particular social entities such as communities and societies, must deal with the question of whether special commitments to these entities by their members are morally appropriate.
Communities, not state or families
The following exploration of the issue concerns only the particularistic obligations members of communities have to one another and to the common good of their communities – not obligations to the state or members of one’s family. The concepts of state and society are often conflated, but the state commands special duties and can coerce compliance, raising a host of moral issues that communities do not face. These issues are explored often enough. Families, though in some sense small, intense, immediate communities, lay moral claims on their members that are readily apparent and do not apply to more extensive communities. Here, the focus is on the distinct particularistic obligations of members to their communities and to one another.
Universal AND particularistic
In many discussions that compare the liberal and communitarian positions, it is stated, or at least implied, that one has either particularistic obligations or universal ones. The two approaches seem, on the face of it, oppositional: one either respects all persons equally or holds that some individuals command higher regard than others. For instance, one holds that either all individuals are entitled to the same basic rights, say to purchase a house put up for sale, or one discriminates between members and non-members of a community, according members only the right of first refusal.
The same assumption is implied in many of the discussions comparing partiality to impartiality.8 Although these concepts do not precisely parallel those of particularistic versus universal obligations, there are strong similarities. In both cases, it is often assumed that it is impossible both to approach all people as deserving equal regard and sometimes to hold particular people as commanding special privileges. Lawrence Blum articulates this assumption when he writes of the “unexamined presumption of traditional moral theories, especially of a Kantian or utilitarian stripe, that the impersonal demands of morality ought always and automatically to take precedence over personal pursuits.”9 Marcia Baron argues that the charge that impartialists do not allow room for partiality is incorrect, since many are not so extreme in their views.10 This may be true for moral philosophers, but it is not the case in political theory. Indeed, one of the “hottest” current positions is that immigrants and citizens should be treated alike; or, ideally, all people of the world should be. This claim includes not only basic rights such as healthcare and employment, but all rights, for example voting.11
As I see it, the dichotomous opposition between partiality and impartiality, or between particularistic and universal obligations, holds only if we assume that one’s position on this matter must be all-encompassing. But there is no logical requirement to assume such comprehensiveness, and in social reality people often combine the two orientations. The well-known concept of hyphenated Americans is centered around the notion that one has some particularistic obligations to one’s ethnic community, and at the same time respects the laws of the land, including of course the Bill of Rights. Similarly, one may honor one’s obligations to the nation – commonly defined as a community invested in a state, hence the reference to a member and not citizen – of which one is a member and still respect the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The observation that one can combine particularistic and universal obligations, partial and impartial considerations, is not to suggest that these orientations never come into conflict. However, this is not a reason to abandon either, and there are procedures to work out these differences and find a point of balance between the two. Here, the focus of attention is on what justifies particularistic obligations in the first place.
One may argue that such a combination may hold only as long as one limits universal rights to negative liberty rights that impose only duties of non-interference. According to this objection, if positive liberty rights are included (e.g., a right to an education), these impose a duty to provide whatever is needed to satisfy this right for all. My point, however, is that even if we owe certain obligations to provide a minimum level of well-being to all, we still may be obligated to give more to members of our own community. But this is not permissible if one’s impartial morality is not rights-based but, say, some form of maximizing utilitarianism. In this case, one must ensure that the good of all, impartially considered, is an aim.12
This may indeed be the case, but this argument merely serves to highlight my point that one can define the opposition between the two moral orientations such that they will become mutually exclusive. However, there is no necessary reason to embrace this particular form of utilitarianism when dealing with partiality and impartiality. For the sake of the discussion that follows, I assume that there is no principled reason that a person cannot fully respect some universal rights (e.g., to free speech, to a given level of education) as well as some particularistic obligations to members of his or her community (e.g., to help a particular school). The issue explored here is not whether one ought to respect particularistic obligations instead of universal ones, but whether one is on justifiable moral grounds when one assumes any obligations to members of one’s community that are not extended to everyone.
Critics fear that people will get “stuck” at a particularistic stage of development and not come to acquire universal commitments as well – thus leading to tribalism.13 It is undoubtedly true that children acquire particularistic obligations first, especially with regards to their family members, though they are reported to display a sense of fairness, which is not particularistic, early in life. However, there is no indication that children are hindered by their early moral commitments when it comes to acquiring universal commitments such as justice and human rights. In fact, some argue that it is by first appreciating a particular person that children can acquire a sense of abstract obligations; loving a human being precedes loving humankind, and only the most dangerous zealots love humanity but not particular persons. As far as adults are concerned, in all but preliterate small tribes or isolated villages, there is no evidence that having particularistic obligations hinders the acquisition of universal obligations.
A rather different matter is to ask which obligations will take precedence when the particularistic and universal come into conflict. This is an issue often faced when communities are parts of larger entities, as in when ethnic communities are part of a larger pluralistic nation. First of all, the fact that there are different levels of obligation, while it does not speak to the issue of which takes precedence in a conflict, does show that having one kind of obligation does not prevent a person from developing the other kind. Second, it is morally preferable for universal to trump particularistic obligations – for rights to take precedence over communal bonds and values. Thus a good society does not tolerate honor killing, forced marriages, or racial discrimination simply because such practices are part of the moral culture of a particular community. On all matters not governed by universal rights, however, particularistic obligations hold sway. Critics may well find that the line between universal rights and communal bonds is not always clearly drawn, and they may even find some instances in which bonds should take precedence over rights. However, none of this undermines the claim that people can – and commonly do – respect both particularistic and universal obligations. They are not mutually exclusive, which is all that I seek to establish at this point.
Outline of the discussion
The discussion that follows first illustrates the issue at hand with a brief report about a case in which a ruling was made against parents who sought to provide special support for the particular public school their children were attending, above and beyond what they provided, through the tax system, to all children in the citywide school system. I then examine the reasons provided by those who favor particularistic obligations on empirical grounds. Next, the concepts of reciprocity and mutuality are examined to determine whether they can be drawn upon to justify particularistic obligations. This chapter closes by providing communitarian arguments that derive particularistic obligations from the roles communities have in constituting individuals, allowing them to function as full human beings, and in enabling human betterment. These arguments share elements of phenomenological, existentialist, and Aristotelian essentialist thought; however, because these designations imply many complex meanings to different people, the argument at hand follows a line of thought we will deem “constitutive communitarian arguments.” Membership and participation in community is at once fundamental to human functioning and essential for the development of identity and character and human flourishing, from which emanates a moral obligation to nurture and sustain community and the particularistic obligations without which it cannot exist.
Our School vs. Schools: An Illustrative Case
In 1997, Public School 41 in Greenwich Village, part of New York City, decided to let go of a teacher for budgetary reasons. The parents reported to the school that they would raise the $46,000 needed to keep the teacher. However, Rudy Crew, New York’s Schools Chancellor, ruled that such donations were unacceptable; he preferred to delve into his limited uncommitted funds to pay for the teacher rather than allow the parents to make voluntary contributions. Crew’s decision reportedly avoided “opening the door to widespread efforts by parents to raise money” for their children’s schools.14 (Indeed, there were indications that parents at other New York schools were about to follow the example of those in the Village.15) Crew reasoned that such donations would create inequities between schools in poor and in rich districts.16 Another reason was that such donations would undermine the willingness to support taxes (either at the current level or future increases) used to pay for the total school system, and that if parents wanted to make donations, they should make them to the total school system and not to “their” schools.
Note that the issue is not whether Village residents should have neglected their universal duties and been allowed merely to attend to their particular ones; the parents paid taxes dedicated to the total school system. The opposite question is raised: whether they should have been allowed to respond to moral claims made by their community to contribute additional funds to their particular school. Those objecting to the contributions were challenging the moral legitimac...

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Introduction
  7. 1 Are Particular Obligations Justified?
  8. 2 Privacy as an Obligation
  9. 3 Children and Free Speech
  10. 4 Privacy and Safety in Electronic Communications
  11. 5 DNA Testing and Individual Rights
  12. 6 What is Political?
  13. 7 On Ending Nationalism
  14. 8 Cyberspace and Democracy
  15. Notes
  16. Index