The Paradox of Community

Abstract

The advanced industrial or post-industrial societies seem to have come to a paradoxical predicament. The individualist culture which has favored the modernization process so much, now constitutes one of the most formidable obstacles to the further modernization of societies. Contemporary society seems unable to move toward solving the problems of global interdependence, of environmental risk and of its own internal complexity unless it finds a way of re-creating from within itself some aspects of the life of the community. However, in reappropriating the relevant features of community - especially the concern for the common good - we can't avoid falling back on that normative standard of self-realization, fulfillment or authenticity which in a sense represents the epitome of modern individualism and is often mistaken, by the communitarian critics of liberalism, for a mere garden variety of early-modern atomistic individualism.