This concept contrasts two competing accounts of political obligation and the self within political philosophy: the Kantian/liberal (and Rawlsian) conception of persons as free, autonomous, self-authoring choosers whose only binding obligations arise from universal natural duties or voluntary consent, versus the communitarian ("narrative" or "encumbered") conception, most associated with Alasdair MacIntyre, in which persons are constituted by inherited social roles, histories, and memberships that generate non-consensual obligations of solidarity, loyalty, and membership. The debate turns on whether a third category of moral obligation exists beyond natural duty and voluntary agreement, and it has direct implications for the justification of patriotism and for whether principles of justice can be independent of, or must instead be relative to, the shared understandings of a particular community (as in Michael Walzer's account of justice as social meaning). This belongs to political philosophy/ethics, specifically the liberal–communitarian debate over the relationship between selfhood, membership, and moral/political obligation, situated within the broader theory of justice tradition following Kant and Rawls.
This concept contrasts two competing accounts of political obligation and the self within political philosophy: the Kantian/liberal (and Rawlsian) conception of persons as free, autonomous, self-auth…