The Communitarian Network

Amitai Etzioni and the Communitarian Network were first brought to my attention by Dr. Jason West at the Garrigou-Lagrange group at Yahoo. Apparently Dr. Etzioni has a blog (which is no longer regularly updated). His biography and publications.

In an interview Dr. West also recommends the work of Louis Groarke at St. Francis Xavier University, especially The Good Rebel: Understanding Morality and Freedom.

I have not read any of these books--but I am interested in reading them, if only to see if I share anything in common with these writers, and if they have any practical recommendations. (How do they compare with the paleoconservatism/communitarianism of Dr. Thomas Fleming?) The problem with political philosophers is that they can be a bit too idealistic (in the popular sense of the word), and fail to appreciate the necessity of coercion because of man's fallen state. [Shades of the debate between the Confucians and the Legalists!] Dr. Etzioni also appears to be an internationalist, like many others (John Finnis, Robert George, Pope John Paul 2). What I mean by "internationalism" is this: the endorsement of international/transnational structures of authority, if not specifically some sort of world government.

Is the division between liberalism/liberal individualism and communitarianism overplayed? I was reading a recent article by Brian Tierney in Ave Maria Law Review which emphasizes the continuity between pre-modern (i.e. medieval) and modern political thought. I am now tending towards the position that the division of philosophy into two such periods, for the sake of classifying positions and arguments, is not very helpful and leads to certain mental handicaps or blindness when presenting the thinking of individuals--too much generalization and easy writing of intellectual history, which is perhaps more difficult to write than one thinks, when there are not explicit references being made to the texts of earlier authors. Many have made tried to establish connections based on affinity or superificial similarities. While similarities can be explained by historical influences, I think the whole endeavor to write intellectual history distracts from pure intellectual inquiry, and takes time and attention away from more pressing questions in the realm of natural science and from defending the possibility of knowledge against skeptics.

We will see if Chronicles has any reflections on Fourth of July; if it doesn't I may try to type something quick up on the American Revolution/Rebellion.