Charles Taylor68, went further than MacIntyre and instead of seeing community as being important in interpreting the individual sphere, he believed that community was a precondition for moral autonomy. Taylor68 believed that communitarians and individualist would all agree that we can only flourish as adults in relationship with friends, mates, children, and so on. But that individualists may claim that this had nothing to do with
obligations to belong to political society. Individualists may recognise involuntary obligations to parents, but these are obligations of gratitude, and parents are no longer essential parts of human development when we are ready to discharge these obligations. Similarly there are obligations to our children, to give them what we have been given. Taylor68 also saw these as involuntary obligations, even though we may chose to have children or not, as we do not choose the genes and hence physical and psychological characteristics of our children during the natural reproduction process. Finally, there may be voluntary obligations to those with whom we have relationships through marriage, friendship, association etc. But these are obligations to specific people and so not necessarily involve continuing associations, and prima facie they do not represent obligations to belong and contribute to society.
Taylor68 argued that even the extreme libertarian acquires the desire for individual autonomy by virtue of participating in a civilisation that has learned, over the course of many centuries, to put a premium upon such aspirations. Taken out of a social-historical context, the very desire for control over oneÕs autonomy would be void of meaning. Therefore, precisely those aspirations that define the autonomous individual are the expression of a debt to oneÕs society, and hence represent social obligations, that are overlooked in libertarian theories.
ÒNow, it is very dubious whether the developed capacity for this kind of autonomy can arise simply within the family. Of course, men may learn, and perhaps in part must learn, this from those close to them. But my question is whether this kind of capacity can develop within the compass of a single family. Surely it is something which only develops within an entire civilisationÓ 68(p43).
Taylor68 believed that humans are not born with the desire to be an autonomous agent. They have to acquire it, but this is not achieved in every society, nor do all members of a society (which provides the environment for nurturing such capacities) fulfil their potential. The free individual can only achieve and maintain his identity in a certain type of culture. Taylor thus pointed to an obligation to engage in society to maintain and develop the rights so valued by libertarians:
ÒWe live in a world in which there is such a thing as public debate about moral and political questions and other basic issues. We constantly forget how remarkable that is, how it did not have to be so, and may one day no longer be so. What would happen to our capacity to be free agents if this debate should die away, or if the more specialized debate among intellectuals who attempt to define and clarify the alternatives facing us should also cease, or if the attempts to bring the culture of the past to life again as well as the drives to cultural innovation were to fall off? How long would we go on understanding what autonomous choice was? Again, what would happen if our legal culture were not constantly sustained by a contact with our traditions of the rule of law and a confrontation with our contemporary moral institutions? Would we have as sure a grasp of what the rule of law and the defence of rights required?Ó 68 (p44).
Taylor argued that:
ÒThe free individual of the West is only what he is by virtue of the whole society and civilisation which brought him to be and which nourishes him; that our families can only form us to this capacity and these aspirations because they are set in this civilisation; and that a family alone outside of this context Ð the real old patriarchial family Ð was a quite
different animal which never tended these horizons. And I want to claim finally that all this creates a significant obligation to belong for whoever would affirm the value of this freedom; this includes all those who want to assert rights either to this freedom or for its sakeÓ 68(p45-46).
He rejected the argument that after becoming an adult with the capacity to be an autonomous then there were no further obligations to sustain the civilisation that helped to nurture those capacities, in the same was as obligations to parents can be time-limited. Taylor doubted whether:
ÒWe could maintain our sense of ourselves as autonomous beings or whether even only a heroic few of us would succeed in doing so, if this liberal civilization of ours were to be thoroughly destroyed É Future generations will need this civilization to reach these aspirations; and if we affirm their worth, we have an obligation to make them available to others. This obligation is only increased if we ourselves have benefited from this civilisation and have been enabled to become free agents ourselvesÓ 68(p46).
Walzer argued that it is not possible to talk about justice without considering the sorts of goods that a particular society distributes among its members.
ÒDistributive justice is a large idea. It draws the entire world of goods within the reach of philosophical reflection. Nothing can be omitted; no feature of our common life can escape scrutiny. Human society is a distributive community. ThatÕs not all it is, but it is importantly that: we come together to share, divide, and exchange. We also come together to make the things that are shared, divided, and exchanged; but that very making Ð work itself Ð is distributed among us in a division of labor. My place in the economy, my standing in the political order, my reputation among my fellows, my material holdings: all these come to me from other men and women. It can be said that I have what I have rightly or wrongly, justly or unjustly; but given the range of distributions and the number of participants, such judgements are never easyÓ67 (p3).
Walzer claimed that:
ÒÉdifferent social goods ought to be distributed for different reasons, in accordance with different procedures, by different agents; and that all these differences derive from different understandings of the social goods themselves Ð the inevitable product of historical and cultural particularismÓ 67 (p6).
This claim contains two elements. Firstly, the idea that different goods constitute different distributional spheres within which it may be appropriate to have alternative means of allocation. The distribution of good such as health care would therefore be in accordance with the particular principles appropriate for health care and should not be corrupted by other goods, such as money, that properly belong to other spheres. The second claim relates to different understanding of the social goods themselves which are socially constituted by shared experiences, communal meanings, and traditions of self-understanding that evolve through history. Therefore liberal justice cannot presume to maintain neutrality toward ends and goods, as the very individualist rights and goals that they seek to protect are made available to the self via a process of communal definition that is not at the disposal of individuals.
Rousseau believed that citizens ought to love their country and in turn, their country ought to give them some reason for doing so. Thus he asked:
ÒHow shall men love their country if it is nothing more for them than for strangers, and bestows on them only that which it can refuse to none?Ó69