COMMUNITARIAN CRITICS OF LIBERALISM*

We are witnessing a revival of communitarian criticisms of liberal political theory. Like the critics of the 1960s, those of the 1980s fault liberalism for being mistakenly and irreparably individualistic. But the new wave of criticism is not a mere repetition of the old. Whereas the earlier critics were inspired by Marx, the recent critics are inspired by Aristotle and Hegel. The Aristotelian idea that justice is rooted in “a community whose primary bond is a shared understanding both of the good for man and the good of that community” explicitly informs Alasdair MacIntyre in his criticism of John Rawls and Robert Nozick for their neglect of desert;1 and Charles Taylor in his attack on “atomistic” liberals who “try to defend . . . the priority of the individual and his rights over society.”2 The Hegelian conception of man as a historically conditioned being implicitly informs both Roberto Unger’s and Michael Sandel’s rejection of the liberal view of man as a free and rational being.3