Abstract

Liberalism is a political theory or ideology or a pattern of political practice in which the notions of liberty, justice, and democracy play a central role in the realization of the human personality. Liberals value deeply each individual person's sovereign right of self-determination within his own self-regarding domain, a unifying community-building ideology, and the neutrality of the government with respect to personal morality. ;Communitarianism concentrates on identifying the limitations of liberal theory or liberal practices and institutions. Communitarians criticize liberalism on the ground that it presupposes an inadequate conception of human nature, that it gives insufficient attention to the values of tradition and community in human life, and that its neutrality or impartiality makes no sense. According to communitarianism, liberalism falls short in many ways. ;The liberal-communitarian debate has been engaged between two camps, i.e., liberalism and communitarianism and there seem genuine differences between them, there are also a lot of mutually recognizable points and also a lot of arguing at "cross-purposes" and subsequent confusion. My major goal is to clarify the debate. I, one step further, propose Constructive Communitarianism , an alternative communitarian sympathizer between polar opposites as liberalism and communitarianism for the resolution of the contemporary political predicament. In this dissertation I try to compare and contrast the communitarian and liberal scheme on the metaphysics of the self, tradition, community and the public good. By the examination of the nature of their opposing claims and by the examination of their possible mutual responses, I seek the alternative solution. The proposed resolution , in comparison with the two extremes, is less idealistic, and thus practical even if it should be ad hoc