Michael Sandel’s Conception of Community

Abstract

Community is the basis for the reasonings of Western communitarianism, without the community, there is no communitarianism. As representative of contemporary Western communitarianism, Michael Sandel is the first to introduce his unique concept of community, and on such foundation, built a theory about political community. So, what does “community” in Sandel’s notion mean? Such concept not only undergoes constant changes, but also is virtually ambiguous. In “Democracy’s Discontent”, Sandel argues that the discontents of contemporary American people are expressed in two points: First, either individually or collectively, they are losing their control on their lives. Second, all the moral constructs of the community surrounds them like family, neighborhood or nation are virtually dissolved. Sandel summarized these two ideas as “the loss of self-government” and “the erosion of community”, and those are becoming the common concerns of our time.