Identify the major theorists of Communitarianism and reflect on their ideas

Question 1 of the IGNOU MPS 106 assignment 2026-27 (Political Theory: Contemporary Debates, MA Political Science) asks you to identify the major theorists of communitarianism and reflect on their ideas. It carries 20 marks with a limit of about 500 words. Below is a structured assignment answer with a summary table, writing tips and FAQs.

Introduction

Communitarianism is a school of political thought that stresses the importance of community, shared values and social belonging in shaping individuals and their idea of the good life. It took shape in the 1980s mainly as a critique of liberalism, especially of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971). Liberals, communitarians argued, imagine individuals who choose their ends freely and stand apart from their society; in reality people are formed by families, traditions, nations and religious groups.

Four thinkers are usually named as its leading figures: Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer. None of them fully accepted the label, but their ideas form the core of the liberal-communitarian debate.

Michael Sandel: The Critique of the Unencumbered Self

In Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982), Sandel attacked the self assumed in Rawls’s original position. Rawls’s parties choose principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance, without knowing their own ends or attachments. Sandel called this an “unencumbered self”: a self that exists prior to and apart from its aims.

For Sandel, many of our commitments, to family, nation or faith, are not chosen but constitutive: they partly define who we are. A constitutive community is one whose membership shapes our identity. Because of this, Sandel argued, justice cannot always be “prior” to the good, and politics must engage with questions of the common good rather than staying neutral.

Alasdair MacIntyre: Virtues, Practices and Traditions

In After Virtue (1981), MacIntyre argued that modern moral debate is in disorder because the Enlightenment project tried to justify morality through reason alone, cut off from any shared idea of human purpose. The result is endless disagreement and emotivism, the view that moral claims are only expressions of preference.

Drawing on Aristotle, MacIntyre proposed an ethics of virtues understood through three ideas: practices (cooperative activities with their own standards of excellence), the narrative unity of a human life, and traditions that carry moral arguments across generations. Moral life, for him, only makes sense inside a community and its tradition.

Charles Taylor: Against Atomism

In his essay “Atomism” (1979), Taylor criticised theories that give individuals rights while treating society as a mere collection of separate units. He defended the social thesis: human capacities such as moral choice and autonomy can only develop within a society and a culture. If so, individuals have obligations to sustain the community that makes their freedom possible.

In Sources of the Self (1989), Taylor showed how identity is formed against “horizons” of meaning, and in his essay “The Politics of Recognition” (1992) he argued that people and groups need recognition of their identity, which links communitarianism to debates on multiculturalism.

Michael Walzer: Spheres of Justice and Complex Equality

In Spheres of Justice (1983), Walzer rejected a single, universal principle of justice. Different social goods, such as money, office, education, health care and political power, have different shared meanings in a community, and each should be distributed by its own principle in its own sphere.

Injustice arises when one good dominates others, for example when wealth buys political power. Walzer called his ideal complex equality: no one good should convert into advantage in every sphere. His approach is communitarian because the standards of justice come from the community’s own understandings.

Theorist	Key work	Central idea	Target of criticism
Michael Sandel	Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982)	Constitutive community; the self is embedded	Rawls’s unencumbered self
Alasdair MacIntyre	After Virtue (1981)	Virtues, practices, narrative and tradition	The Enlightenment project, emotivism
Charles Taylor	“Atomism” (1979), Sources of the Self (1989)	Social thesis; recognition	Atomistic liberalism
Michael Walzer	Spheres of Justice (1983)	Complex equality; shared meanings	Single universal theories of justice

Reflecting on the Ideas of the Major Theorists of Communitarianism

Strengths

• They give a more realistic picture of the self as shaped by social ties.
• They revive concern for the common good, civic virtue and participation, which pure rights-based liberalism can neglect.
• Their ideas fed into later movements such as Amitai Etzioni’s responsive communitarianism, which balances rights with responsibilities.

Weaknesses

• Risk of conservatism: if communal values set the standard, unjust traditions such as caste or patriarchy may be protected. Feminist critics like Susan Moller Okin made this point strongly.
• Which community? People belong to many overlapping groups, and communitarians do not always say which one should guide politics.
• Liberal replies: Rawls’s later Political Liberalism (1993) and Will Kymlicka argued that liberalism can recognise the value of community while protecting individuals’ right to question and revise their ends.

Conclusion

The major theorists of communitarianism, Sandel, MacIntyre, Taylor and Walzer, share the view that individuals are embedded in communities and that political theory must take shared values seriously. Their critique pushed liberalism to rethink its picture of the self and the role of the common good. Yet communitarianism needs liberal safeguards against the oppression that communities can also produce, which is why the debate remains central to contemporary political theory.

How to write this answer in your IGNOU assignment

• Keep to about 500 words: 60 words of introduction, about 90 words on each of the four thinkers, 60 words of reflection and a short conclusion.
• “Reflect” means evaluate: add at least two strengths and two criticisms, not just a summary.
• Read the unit on communitarianism in your MPS-106 study material on eGyanKosh and use its terms: unencumbered self, constitutive community, complex equality.
• Name the books and years: they show reading and make your answer precise.
• Write it yourself: use this answer to understand the topic, then write the assignment in your own words and handwriting.

Frequently asked questions

Also read: key concepts of libertarianism and Nozick’s entitlement theory (MPS 106 Q2). New to IGNOU assignments? Start with our IGNOU study roadmap.

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