Abstract

This is a study of communitarian alternatives to liberalism: Marxism, contemporary civic republicanism and an alternative suggested by feminist theory. Each rejects liberalism's abstract individualism in favor of a normative, contextual and developmental account of human nature that explicates action as praxis and reason as self-consciousness to show the relationship of self-realization and political community. Marxism's concept of praxis is derived from its analysis of labor, while the civic republican concept of praxis is based on its analysis of self-interpretive language use. Both offer an account of political community consistent with its theory of human nature. ;I evaluate these theories in relationship to liberalism. While the communitarian critigue of liberalism is compelling, the liberal values of equality and freedom are deeply embedded in American political culture, thus any practical alternative to liberalism must include some version of these values. ;Neither Marxism nor civic republicanism is a successful alternative to liberalism. Marxism explicates the significance of human embodiment and material needs for understanding action as praxis, but inadequately analyzes the relationship of self-consciousness and social interaction to their material conditions. Civic republicanism provides a better account of self-consciousness and social interaction, but fails to analyze language used in terms of its material conditions. Marxism provides a problematic concept of freedom, while civic republicanism problematizes equality. ;The feminist alternative begins with an analysis of care-giving--meeting the needs of others in a way that enhances their survival, growth and development, and fosters their ability to realize their own purposes and engage in care-giving themselves--based on Ruddick's work on mothering and Noddings' work on moral education. This suggests a theory of human nature, based on an ontology of self-in-relationship, that is a better foundation for communitarianism. ;The feminist alternative includes a reconceptualization of freedom and equality as states that persons can achieve in the course of their development. Care-giving is a practice that provides the conditions for the achievement of equality and freedom, thus it indicates how communitarianism might explicate these conditions and suggests criteria for social and political arrangements consistent with them. Thus this feminist communitarianism can better explicate the creation and continuation of political community as a condition for human self-realization