Individualism Vs Contractarianism Essay

561 Words3 Pages

Liberal contractarianism and libertarianism are big advocates for the individual. They believe the states primary goal is to protect these individual rights and help people flourish through their individually chosen goals. “Liberalism adds the corollary that the state should remain neutral regarding values, goals, and actions that do not directly interfere with anyone’s autonomy.” What Wenz was suggesting is that liberalism strives to make the state a neutral party and not have the state take sides in individual matters. Both of these theories focuses in on individualism as the most important part of society. This is because individualism only has two obligations. First, there are obligations owed to everyone, these are called universal obligations. …show more content…

When the community is the most important part of society, people will get left behind. This happens because of tyranny of the majority. Whoever runs that community will get to dictate accepted virtues even if some find those virtues to be incorrectly applied. This creates huge tears in society. One of my main problems with communitarianism is that it does not take into account that different cultures can exist while not creating confrontation. The communitarian vision is one path that will lead to good morals and a good life. This forces people to conform to something they my not agree with. This is why communitarianism sees the state as a non-neutral party. I personally think that both have a valid point. The individual rights are extremely important, but individual obligations are not the only obligations to exist. People do have obligations to the community where they live in order to better that community. Some individual rights should not outweigh the rights of a community. I find that a good example of this is a gun range being opened in the backyard of someone in the community. It is his right to open it, but it harms the community by violating the noise level parameters. The community is put before the individual because it would be a determent to the community. I think in order to determine which obligation outweighs the other, these situations have to be taken on as a case by