Particularism

Communitarianism is considered as one of the most pivotal schools of thought in contemporary normative political theories. In fact, it is a label for a group of people who share common characteristics such as critiques on liberalism, and some concepts like “community”, “tradition” and “self”. Since most communitarians belong to the analytical philosophy, which focus on language and logic, they could not be regarded as contextualists. On the other hand, their analysis is related to “tradition”, “here and now”, and “particularism” which denotes the importance of historical, political and sociological situation. It seems that not only the enrichment of morality and human rights in communitarianism is possible, but also it implies somehow relationship with context, cultural diversity and relativism. It seems that communitarianism needs a “third way” between text and context.

Since the la.st two decades of the last centery, the American cosiaty has witnessed that emergence of a social movement could "multiculturalism". It has challenged the dominated moniestic view which prescient for a long time the American culture as more or less homogeneus with little (if any at all) respect for different concerning divers cultural identities of the citizens. The first section of the present paper will deal with exploring the main features of the debate over the challenges to sight in details. The second section will attempt to explore the philosophical assumptions behind each view. The third section is design to offer a better understanding of the issue at bands in the debate which shall mainly rely on Alasdair MacIntyre’s conception of traditional of moral enqurity and will be follow by some concluding points to the arguments of this paper.