Myśl komunitariańska w perspektywie debaty nad formułą społeczeństwa obywatelskiego

Abstract

The objective of this article is to examine how the idea of civic society has shaped in order to prove this concept is ambiguous with rich tradition of thought.Observing modern theoretical and political discussions, it can be stated that the term of civic society occurs just and only in a modern sense, which means total and unjustified rejection of republican input on the development of this idea. The elimination of the thought of Aristotle, Cicero and their Middle Ages and later followers makes a theoretical construction of civic society very complicated and reduces its implementation value. For to show how modern civic society referring to the classical political thought may look, the author presents output of communitarian philosophy, which worked out a novel approach to this problem. This approach varies from the liberal conception with the fact it speaks in favour of civic participation, raises the importance of civic virtues, and prefers ‘positive’ freedom to the ‘negative’ one. Communitarianism in philosophy, like other schools of thought in contemporary political philosophy, can be defined by its response to A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, and also – in my opinion – to the political doctrine in statu nascendi. Communitarianism emphasizes the need of balance the individual rights and interests with those ones of the community as a whole. MacIntyre, Taylor and Walzer argue that individual people are shaped by culture and values of their own communities. Some of communitarian theorists, for example Alisdair MacIntyre, condemn modern politics, especially liberalism and the institutions of a liberal state, as irredeemably fallen. In contrast, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer offer competing communitarian responses to the contemporary challenge of pluralism, tolerance and freedom. The original approach of communitarianism is not a simple mutation of republicanism, because it rejects its typical dogmas, such as: state and common wealth as natural creations. Whereas the tradition deriving from Aristotle has glorified state and focused the attention of the society on matters of republic, the philosophy of MacIntyre, Taylor and Walzer concentrates on cultivating local and neighbouring communities.