The Western Critique of Liberalism: Communitarianism

Since the age of the Enlightenment, domestic and international politics have been increasingly influenced by the rise of liberalism. The legitimacy of liberal norms and institutions, nonetheless, has been constantly disputed, and in this chapter I propose a selective discussion of the criticism that has targeted liberal norms in Western political theory tradition. The discussion that will be presented refers primarily to the distinction between communitarian and liberal theories. 1 Although this dichotomy has obvious limitations and is unforgivably reductive, its analytical value will become evident in a comparative analysis undertaken in the following chapters which shows how Islamism shares theoretical assumptions analogous to communitarianism. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.