Social Matters in Germany

The basic conviction of communitarianism is that the political community is the only place for binding rules. Amitai Etzioni, one of the most profound advocates of this line of thought, has been presented with the Meister Eckhart Award.

This year, the Meister Eckhart Award, with 50,000 euro in prize money, goes to Amitai Etzioni. The award has been presented every two years since 2001 by the Identity Foundation, a foundation to promote research. The prize pays tribute to individuals whose work “addresses existential questions of personal, social and intercultural identity and who through their work stimulate broad public and international discourse”. Etzioni is recognised for his untiring efforts to further develop the basic communitarian conviction of a “paradigm for a good society” as a model that brings individual autonomy into harmony with the demands of a social order.

Communitarianism

The significance of one’s own subject (of research) is sometimes highlighted against the backdrop of one’s opponents. Communitariansm’s criticism of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice is still regarded as having revived theoretical political science. Rawls attempted nothing less than to formulate universally applicable principles of justice for a liberal democratic society. Yet it was precisely this that provoked resistance from many writers, who a short time later were grouped together under the term “communitarianism”.

The basic idea of communitariansm is opposed to liberal individualism. A just social order cannot be based on the setup for a thought experiment in which individuals, taken out of their respective cultural contexts, are regarded as equal. Rather, human communities, each distinct on account of the influence of language, ethnicity, culture and religion, provide the only meaningful framework for thinking about the appropriate and thus right principles of justice.

Self-regulation from below

Amitai Etzioni has developed this basic communitarian idea further in a large number of writings. Even before the term communitariansm had become the established name of a certain line of thought, Etzioni asked in his main work Active Society, published in 1968, about the function of political and social processes. This book is both Etzioni’s appeal for social self-regulation and for societal guidance by the politically and socially active members of society. It was in this connection that he coined the term “responsiveness”. This refers to a society’s ability to react sensitively to its members’ needs. Etzioni’s interest in what makes a society what it is, strengthens it and makes it indispensable can already be seen here.

Etzioni’s concentration on society and his emphasis of individuals’ social character may be partly due to his personal experience. He was born on 4 January 1929 as Werner Falk in Cologne. He had to flee from the Nazis to Palestine with his parents in 1936 on account of his Jewish faith. He left school there in 1946 to join the fight against the British Mandate and for a State of Israel. Later, he became a professor of sociology at Columbia University in the State of New York. He was politically active, as he put it in his main work, and was vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War. He was a member of the liberal Washington think-tank the Brookings Institution and an advisor to US President Jimmy Carter. In 1980 he was appointed to a professorship at the George Washington University in Washington D.C.

Lost children

For Etzioni, too, the community is the focal point. It is marked by a setting of shared notions of values and morality and shared traditions. As such, it is also the basis of a communitarian concept of good and of general principles of justice, i.e. principles of justice that are binding within the respective society. For communitarians, the individual is dependent on society; it is society that creates meaning. This can be clearly seen in the example of those who do not feel part of any community and are in effect homeless. Think of third-generation Turkish immigrant children, who are neither regarded as Germans, nor considered full members of society in their grandparents’ home country. They are lost between two communities.

Of course, Etzioni does not regard human beings as sheep whose behaviour is determined by society. But it is membership of a community that makes an essential contribution to forming a person's identity. This is something Aristotle recognised: “Anthropos zoon politikon physei estin” - man is by nature a political, social animal. Without the community of others, human beings can neither survive nor lead a good life. Etzioni’s life and work are both a recollection and an appeal. We are influenced by our society and if we have a good life, it is society that enables us to do so. We have to do something for it, though. In a democracy, politics is not a one-way street. Here, too, if you want to have something, you have to give something …