Constructing Community

In developing a new theory of political and moral community, J. Donald Moon takes questions of cultural pluralism and confronts the problem of how community can be created among those who have very different views about the proper ends of human life. Experiencing such profound disagreement, can we live together in a society under norms we all accept? In recent years, traditional ways of examining this query have come under attack by post-modernists, feminists and thinkers concerned with pluralism. Engaging their critiques, Moon proposes a reformulated liberalism that is intended to overcome the problems they have identified. The solution he proposes, "political liberalism", seeks to accommodate pluralism by basing the norms governing public life on widely shared values that, just because they are widely shared, will necessarily be "thin". At the same time, it seeks to provide space within which individuals and groups can live rich lives, pursuing their own distinctive ends and expressing their own particular identities. This ideal of political community, however, may sometimes encounter tragic conflicts which cannot be resolved without repressing some differences, without excluding some perspectives. Because there is no final solution to the problem of political community, political liberalism seeks to remain open to the way in which any particular set of practices and institutions may silence certain voices.