Home: Polsc 671: Study Guide for Midterm

Study Guide for Midterm

1. What are the chief communitarian complaints against modern Lockean liberal/capitalist society? What attitudes need to be changed?

2. From an examination of the Communitarian Platform and Frohnen's discussion of this issue, can you discern what the relationship should be between the "little platoons" (such as family, neighborhood, workplace and social and religious organizations) and the body politic according to communitarians?

3. Explain the following comment: "Communitarians are not believers in majoritarianism."

4. What kinds of government action can help "restore the moral voice" of America, according to the Communitarian Platform.

5. In the online interview with communitarian Amitai Etzioni, can you tell what a communitarian's reaction would be to a libertarian who insisted on absolute privacy rights (for instance on the issue of drug testing).

6. Provide the communitarians' critique of contemporary liberalism's reaction to all things religious. How would communitarians like Michael Lerner (from in class video) change the liberal approach to religion/spirituality.

7. Draw up a list of the virtues communitarians would like to see developed in society. How would they go about inculcating these virtues? Explain why this seems like more of an "ancient solution" to the problem of human vice instead of a "modern solution."

8. Compare classical conservative ideas with liberal communitarians (see class discussion and handout).

9. How did the idea of friendship, developed by Aristotle, get changed by a medieval Christian theologian (Aelred) and then by an Enlightenment (Kant) thinker and a Christian existentialist (Kierkegaard). Discuss communitarians' notion of political friendship within the spectrum of friendship studied through these authors.

10. Why do we need a civil religion, and what should it generally consist of, according to communitarians. Why do we need founding figures/social heroes? What are some potential problems with these ideas?

11. What has been the political impact of the liberal communitarian movement in the Clinton administration and elsewhere? (See ch. 5, Frohnen, also videos of Lerner and Reed, in class)

13. What are communitarians' expectations for public education and for higher education in promoting their social and political agenda?

14. Provide essential elements of Frohnen's critique of communitarian thought, especially his critique from the point of view of authentic religion (ch. 7)