Communitarianism and Amitai Etzioni

Yelena Russakova

Sep 2005 · GRIN Verlag

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Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Economic and Social History, grade: 1,5, University of Hamburg, 23 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Communitarianism is a movement, trying to shore up the foundations of social, moral, and political elements of society. Communitarism means maintaining of democratic civil society, created with an active spirit of solidarity. Communitarism gives political tasks back their moral challenge. There are three main agenda items in this movement: the embodiment of commonly held values in society's rituals, habits, and institutions, especially in schools and neighborhoods; the adjustment of balance between rights and responsibilities; and finally, political reforms, because the communitarians believe that special interests are out of line and the public interest is suffering. The rights and responsibilities are tightly connected here with each other. The particularism2will be dissolved, because the moral standards of thecommunitiesare measured at the level of higher societies. Finaly is the communitarianism is about the development and moral concepts, which are universally acceptable. Communitarian values sho uld be imposed not in a centralized way, but rather through the Dialogue between the societies: through imitation and takeover3. Amitai Etzioni is the founding father and leading voice of contemporary communitarianism. His goal is to catalyze a national moral revitalization and preserve civil society. Etzioni barely discusses communitarianism within its philosophical traditions, however his writings are pragmatic and aimed at an audience of activists and policy-makers rather than intellectuals. Etzioni wants to do for society ‘what the environmental movement seeks to do for nature’4. By Etzioni the traditional social orientation of the communitarian thinking is replaced by the responsive communitarianism: the rights of individuals are recognized equivalently to the requirements of communities.

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