On the Place of Virtues in
a Pluralistic Democracy
AMlTAI ETZIONI
GeorgeWashingtonUniversity
THE VIRTUE OFVIRTU~
If a community recognizes a set of moral values and commitments as
compelling, as virtues, these become the foundations of moral discourse in
that community. Other statements, new moral claims, and so on-as long as
they are not absorbedinto the set of sharedvirtues-have no or little standing.
And, while there are frequently differences in interpreting the exact meanings
and implications of prevailing virtues-for instance, how much is due to
charity?-virtues do provide sound and shared foundations for consensus
formation, community endeavors, public policies and moral standing. For
example, in the traditional European Jewish shtetl, studying the scriptures
was accorded high virtue. It left little doubt as to which activities were to be
extolled and merited the seat nearest the preferred Eastern (oriented to
Jerusalem) wall of the synagogue. It was not a question of the rights of one
subgroup versus those of others but a communitywide recognition of the
virtue of commitments to the scriptures.
Also, in canmunities thatsub~ribe tosharedvirtues (orcommunitarianvalues),
contentiousnessand litigiousness are curbed as relatively clear and shared
criteria are available to resolve differences. Finally, the cynicism of "anythinggoes
as long as it satisfiesa deal among the interpretedparties" is avoided.
THE FEAR OF CONSENSUAL
MORAliTY
Despite all these apparent meri~, the concept of virtues troubles manywho
are committed to democratic values. While some of their misgi vings are
Author's Note: The author is indebtedto Brad Wilcox and SharonPressllerfor research
assistance.
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SaENnST, Vol. 35No. 415.Mareh/IW1C
1992 530-540
e 1992SagePublications.Inc.
530
Et7iooi
I VIR~
IN PLURAUSllC DEMOCRACY
531
misplaced or overstated. they point to considerations and measuresthat those
who wish to embrace the language of virtue best attend to.
One frequently raised objection to the notion of virtues (as well as to
communitarian values), is that they are "majoritarian" ("communitarian
really means majoritarian," Glasser 1990, cited in Business Week,3 September, 56). That is, that once a community comes to share a set of values, these
will be used to suppressdissent and minorities, to violate individual and civil
rights. (The lack of a secure place for individual and minority rights is a
criticism leveled against Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the champions of the
language of virtues [Thigpen and Downing 1987,643; seeMacIntyre 1984].)
While historically, this fear grows out of the roots of the American existence,
a society fashioned by dissenters escaping dogma, it is a legitimate concern
for all democracies.
Actually there are two versions of the concern that are often intertwined
and mutually reinforcing but should be kept apart for both analytical and
policy purposes. One concerns the polity, the other the community. Within
the polity, it is feared that a government will follow a simplistic notion of
democracy: It will impose public policies and rules that the majority favor
without regard to other rights (e.g., imposing prayers in schools).10 the words
of John Rawls, "A public and workable agreement on a single and general
comprehensive conception [of the good] could be maintained only by the
oppressive use of state power" (Rawls cited in Hollenbach 1989, 79).
Although this is not a problem necessarily or exclusively caused by the
concept of virtues, it can be exacerbated by the elevation of sharedconsensus
to the status of virtues. Historically, this happened in the United Stateswhen
abortion and divorce were morally condemned and difficult to obtain legally.
Even when the government is not involved, and when there are no votes
and hence no "majoritarian" positions or threat, a parallel concern is raised
and not without reason: It is argued that when a community sharesone set of
virtues that are strongly endorsedand urged upon the members, even without
the power of law, only through the community mechanisms of social pressure
and ostracism, these can exert great pressures on those who deviate, whether
these are gay or conscientious objectors or individuals who refuse to join a
strike or boycott and so on. Salem during the witch trials, Geneva during the
heyday of Calvinism provide historical cases in point More recently, the
press has referred to the dangers of Neo-Puritanism , which they characterize
as excessive public concern over personal behavior (The London Economist,
20 July 1991; Time, 12 August 1991).
Libertarians and laissez faire conservatives hence tend to favor a community without a set of overarching values, and build instead on the social (not
532 AMERICAN HERAVIORAL SClENllST
merely economic!) merits of a world in which individuals are the only judges
of their own conduct, each choosing what is best and hence personally right
for them, from how much to work, to whether or not to have a family, to
riding a motorbike without a helmet, and even to using addictive substances.
Michael Novak maintains that democracy has value in much the same
way that capitalism does: Both work on the principles of aggregating individual choices. Arguing that the common good is too complex for the
government or any other large social institution to grasp, Novak believes that
government should not attempt to legislate morality, or what is "good for
society." David Hollenbach (1989) summarizes Novak's view of the polity
in this way:
Thus the best path toward the commongood is not one that proceedsby
intending the good societyas a whole. Rather,the free marketinstitutionsof
democraticcapitalismcreatethe conditionsin which an invisible hand will
coordinatethe pursuit of individual self-interest...in a way that maximizes
the social good.(p. 72)
And just as there are a series of personal values that sustain a capitalist
system-individual virtues such as hard work, thrift, ingenuity, discipline
and mutual respect-there are also individual virtues that sustain a democracy, such as toleration of one another and commitment to liberty. These
democratic virtues are justified on the grounds of enlightened self-interest,
as are the capitalist virtues. In sum, for classical liberals such as Novak and
modem liberals like Hook, democracy and the virtues that give life to it have
value in a systemic fashion: They promote the private pursuit of fulfIllment
for the ultimate repository of "virtue" -the individual. For that reason, a
democratic polity may foster democratic virtues even as it avoids social or
communitywide virtues.
As I see it, we should not scrap the quest for shared virtues and communitarian values, and the social mechanisms to affirm them, because nothing
makes for more government and ultimate coercion (that is, the demon
libertarian and laissez faire conservatives properly fear) than the absenceof
shared morals, backed by strong commitments. Once virtues are eroded,
social and civic order must, by default, rest more and more on governmentregulation,
controls, and police force. Thus if a community ceasesto define
drug abuse and alcohol abuse, violence, or greed as unacceptable behavior,
it is left solely to the state to protect citizens from these abusesand from one
another, an often untenable task. Communities require moral foundations to
minimize the role of the government and make those roles it must playpossible
and properly circumscribed.
Etziooi I VIRTUESIN PLURAUSllC DEMOCRACY
533
Moreover, a community without value commitments is a jungle of warring
or selfish parties, indeed no community at all. Banfield (1958) depicted such
a village in his The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. In this village, the
poverty and backwardness, he concluded, is largely explained by the
villagers' inability to act together for their common good, or for any end
transcending the immediate interest of each family (p. 10).
In short, what is clearly needed is a political and moral conception that
accommodates the protection ofminorities' and individuals' rights without
giving up the concept of communitarian virtues.
COMMUNITARIAN VIRTUES AND DEMOCRACY
Communitarians believe that the invisible hand cannot hold a nation
together by itself. Moreover, they argue that the libertarian view leads to an
insidious complacency about the moral and spiritual health of the republic.
Communitarians point out, for instance, that the libertarian faith in one
present-day democratic virtue-the right to privacy-provides no legitimate
grounds for the prohibition of racial discrimination in private housing,
businesses, and clubs. In the communitarian view, communities and the
political institutions representing them must make ethical and social issues
a common concern, especially given the continuing erosion of central values
and social institutions, such as the family, in the postmodern era.
In contrast to the individual-driven faith of libertarians, communitarians
argue that persons are social creatures. Personal fulfillment is contingent on
social ends and interaction. VIrtue, therefore, is not a private affair; virtue
signals appropriate conduct in society. And as virtue is a social affair, it also
becomes a political concern because,in the words of Aristotle, "a stateexists
for the sake of a good life, and not for life only" (Aristotle cited in Hollenbach
1989,77).
Virtue serves two important communitarian purposes. First, as a commonly held moral compass, virtue provides persons and social institutions
with direction as they grapple with the political, economic, and social issues
of the day. Second, a consensusabout virtue also legitimates the polity itself
by providing, to paraphraseCicero, public accord about the nature of justice
and the need for the public pursuit of the summumbonum, the common good.
Given virtue's central place, communitarians maintain that the polity must
make the moral health of the community its concern and take appropriate
social, political, and legal steps to support virtues and the social institutions,
such as the family, that sustainthem.
534 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIEN11ST
RIGHTS
American institutions already reflect an ingenious answer to the need to
combine consensusmaking and the moral power of virtues with a democraticpolity.
Instead of allowing unrestrained sway to policies that reflect majorities, we have the well-known "balancing" institutions, whose task is not only
to curb one another to limit the general power of each but specifically to
protect the rights of individuals and minorities. The same protection is, of
course, accorded by the courts, above all the Supreme Court, and the
Constitution itself not only as a force that directs law enforcement, regulatory, administrative, and other agencies but as a moral/social normative
factor. (William Galston, in an important paperpresented at the 1991meeting
of the American Political Science Association, provides an excellent discussion of that point, especially by pointing out the role which "supennajoritarian" requirements built into American democracy play in this country. That
is, for a number of significant political measures,simple majorities cannot
define what is of merit or virtue while, say, overriding a presidential veto
[Galston 1991].)
In shoTt, the American political system is far from a simple democratic
government if one means by that, as it is all too often put, the rule of the
majority, or of the people by the people for the people. Constitutional
democracy is, of course, characterized in part by defining areas over which
"the people" or the majority may not set policies, whatever its size.
COMMUNITARIAN PLURALISM?
The fall of Rome is usually dle metaphor of choice for harbingers of
imminent cultural, social, and political collapse. Communitarians maintain
(along with Cicero and Augustine) that the fall of Rome was precipitated by
a decline in the sense of public virtue. Modernity, dley add, is destined to go
Rome's way if dle libertarian insistence on individual free choice and state
"neutrality" when it comes to matters of virtue, like protecting dle family,
continues. Theologian David Hollenbach sharesmany ofdle communitarian
fears and draws on one of the greatest "Fall of Rome" dleoris~Augustine
-to outline his vision of dle role that virtue should play in a democratic
polity. But Hollenbach is also concerned by dle tradition of oppression and
discrimination in premodern republics; he thus seesa dlird way between the
shoals of libertarianism and audloritarianism.
Augustine's City of God, according to Hollenbach, is the perfect republic.
There, citizens are united by a common conception of faith, virtue and the
PROTECTING
Et7iooi I VIRruES IN PLURAUSnC DEMOCRACY
535
public end. This, however, is just the kind of polity-a community of
faith-that makes liberals apoplectic. Augustine, however, disarms this
criticism by suggestingthatcitizensin a republicshouldnot confusethe City
of God with the City of Man. Man's highesthopesfor fulfillment mustlie
with heaven:To makean earthlyrepublicthe repositoryof man'sfmal hopes
for the summumbonum would be idolatrous.Therefore, the civil realm
should(and can)only bethe realm of the proximateand the possiblegood.
An earthly approximationof the good, for Hollenbach,may be found
whena communitydefinesa plurality of "commongoods."This plurality of
commonendsand virtues, supportedby social moresand the force of law,
will provide the community with an integmi senseof unity without giving
undueemphasisto anyone virtue. He cites Jeffrey Stout to makethe case
that "no sphere[of historical existence]can rightly occupythe position of
be-all-end-all in our lives without throwing the rest out of properproportion-neither vocation, nor family, nor voluntary association,nor privateprojects,
nor politics" (Stout cited in Hollenbach1989,84). Rather,every
spherethat contributesin a meaningfulway to virtue that the community
holds high is entitled to social andpolitical support.By rejectinga unitary
relationshipbetweenreligion and politics while encouraginga plurality of
commonends,Hollenbachhopesto meetcommunitarianhopeswhile allaying libertarianfears.
THE LIMITS OFPLURALISM
Many, like Hollenbach, argue that plunllism sustainsthe delicate balance
between the will of the majority and consensualvirtues and the constitutional
safeguards. On the community level, it is argued, if there is no one onhodoxy
but severalcompeting truths, the fervor of each will be reswained,and people
of different moral persuasions and commitments will each find their own set
of virtues (various religions or sets of secular moral values). And, regarding
the polity, it is often suggestedthat if various politically active groups advance
different sets of values, no one majoritarian position will arise. Policies then
would reflect compromises among the various positions advanced.
However, as I seeit, pluralism and virtues do not accommodate each other
readily because plunllism mitigates commitments and provides no moral
foundations for communitywide consensusper se,no overarching values and
criteria for worldng up differences other than such mechanical and uncommitting notions as splitting the differences and nose count. On the
contrary, when there are a number of value commitments, all of which are
considered legitimate, all commitments become relative and weak, and there
536
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIEN11ST
remain only practical, not principled, grounds for community building,
shared values, and policies. In effect, this "de-ideologizing" is precisely what
the opponents of virtues and proponents of pluralism seek.
It might be argued that in a society in which little is done on a sharedbasis,
as in a frontier society in which everyone who seekschange can go and find
their ways in unsettled territories, there is 00 need for community values,
consensus, and virtues. There can be, though, little doubt that for a society
like contemporary America that has a long list of matters to which it must
attend collectively, such as defense, public safety (crime), the environment,
and global competitiveness, a society that has lost the basic moral/social
foundations of a shared social and civic order, pluralism per se will not
suffice.
PLURALISMWITHIN UNITY: VIRTU~ WITH RIGHTS
As Seymour Martin Lipset (1959) writes, "The stability of any given
democracy depends. ..upon the effectiveness and the legitimacy of its
political system" (p. 77). Both the effectivess and legitimacy of a democratic
society depend on a measure of unity. Yet many democratic societies,
especially the United States, confront the fact of ethnic, religious, and social
pluralism. How can we then sustain an effective and legitimate republic?
An answer is to be found in the concept of pluralism within unity. It
recognizes that diversity can not be unlimited and that some ultimate values
must be shared for the diversity to be contained. These provide the foundations for shared policies and criteria for settling conflicting claims. These
virtues include, fIrSt of all, a set of ultimate values such as compassion for
the poor, concern for the viability of the family, and concern for the environment (The fact that these values are fuzzy at the edges is not necessarily
detrimental, because as long as the basic commitments stand, societies have
various ways to wOtX out the specific meanings of such values; this ceases
to be the case when the values are directly challenged or their basic meaning
is contested.)
Second, the shared values or virtues are to include a legitimation of
democracy and tolerance of diversity within the shared framewotX and of
individual standings and hencecertain basic rights (Langan 1990). This point
should be stressed: Individual rights do not rest on individuals, somehow
born or endowed with them, but on a community-shared morality that
legitimates and otherwise sustainsthem. In the polity, community values and
virtues take the form of recognizing a public interest or interests above and
Etliooi
I VIR11JESIN PLURAUSllC DEMOCRACY
537
beyond the plurality of special ones. Both of these points deserve some
elaboration.
The fIrst issue is frequently raised in discussions of bicultural education.
Pluralists sttess the merits of allowing, even encouraging, people of different
ethnic, cultural, and racial backgrounds, especially immigrants, not only to
learn in their language and tradition, say Spanish, rather than re forced to
shift right away and learn all subjects in English, but also to maintain separate
traditions and learning (e.g., Black English) and to maintain parallel tracks
of values and commiunents, without a commiunent to a shared, overarching
educational program. Thus in Miami, a Cuban American can complete 12
years of school in a Spanish program without ever mingling with other
Americans or learning about American core values, at least not without a
strong Hispanic orientation. These educational programs are compatible with
the concept of a "rainbow" society, in which a variety of equally legitimate
"colors," with different traditions and virtues are to coexist next to one
another.
I suggest that suchunbounded pluralism, one that cuts into ultimate values
and shared virtues, is not compatible with maintaining a moral, social and
civic order, with providing a community with a set of criteria to sort out
differences and form a consensus, and hence incompatible with the democratic process. Pluralism is compatible with community and virtue as long as
it is limited to maintain subtraditions, as long as they all recognize areas of
communalities that frame the community as well as mutual tolerance and
respect of the various plural traditions. Thus no sociopolitical difficulties
arise if various groups adhere to different folk dances, songs, food tastes,
religious reliefs, and social manners (say at weddings and funerals). No
melting pot is needed here. However, when these groups cease to share a
commiunent to one community, society, or nation, the unity that needs to
contain pluralism is strained.
For example, in a debate with a representative of a major Hispanic group
on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s show "Firing Line," I suggestedthat while it is
fme for various ethnic groups in the United States to maintain their languages
as a second language (from Hebrew to Japanese), they all need to learn
English. The Hispanic representative argued that we all live in a Hispanic
hemisphere and hence we should all fIrSt learn Spanish; then those that wish
may learn English on the side. This notion cuts into the bonds of unity.
(Language often has this power-it still divides Belgium and Canada, and
whereas the Swiss make do with several, they are only following a thousand
years of warfare among the various language-loyal cantons.)
538
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIEN11ST
In the same vein, later in the same debate on "Firing Line," the represen-tative
of the Hi~ic
group declared that should the United Statesengage inwar
in Latin America. say Nicaragua (this program took place before the U.S.
intervention in Panama), Hi~ic
Americans ought to refuse to fight. Similarly, some Black Americans opposed participating in the war in the Persian
Gulf because they saw it as a Black-against-Blackconfrontation. Ata Harlemrally,
the Reverend AI Sharpton proclaimed, "We will not fight our brothers
in the Middle East" (The New Yorker, 18 March 1991).
Typically, communities cannot tolerate pluralism on dIese issues when
sizable groups are involved (dIey can and do tolerate a few conscientious
objectors). Ravitch (1991) put it well:
If thereis no overall community,if all we haveis a motley collectionof racial
and etlmic cultures,there will beno senseof the commongood. Eachgroup
will fight for its own particularinterests,andwe could easilydisintegrateasa
nation,becominginsteadembroiledin the kinds of etlmic conflicts that often
dominatethe foreign news eachnight. (p. 36)
There is no clear established list of what belongs in dIe shareframe versus
in which areas pluralism is welcome or essential. Indeed, dIe specific list may
differ from one community to another (e.g., many European countries include
Good Samaritan laws, we do not [Glendon 1990/91, 10]) as long as the realm
of virtues is sufficiently powerful to provide a containing capsule to dIe
centrifugal forces of dIe various plural parts. A shared set of basic moral
values, a language, some shared national symbols and values, a commitment
of mutual tolerance, a commitment to democracy as a "good" and not merely
as a procedural device, seem to be essential and found in most if not all
functioning democracies. These shared values are noticeably absent in oilier
societies as different as dIe USSR is from Nigeria. The jury is out about India,
where dIe weak set of shared virtues is reflected in massive intergroup
violence and frequent violations of individual rights.
In dIe polity, dIe same issue arises widI reference to dIe concept of the
public interest. Unbounded pluralists have argued that dIere is no need for a
concept of public interest and that none is possible (Truman 1964, SO).
Politics, dIey argue, is an extension to society from a market concept, as
special interest groups vie widI one anodIer over dIe direction of public
policies (Key 1958, 166). The state is merely a point dIat reflects dIe results
of dIe relative power of dIe various special inputs (MilbradI 1963, 345).
While it is true dIat the notion of public interest is often raised, unbounded
pluralists argue dIat dIese statements are mere ideological ones dIat each
special interest group moudIs to advance its particular cause (Horowitz 1979,
4); that public interest cannot be even defined.
Etn<XliI VIRlUES IN PLURALISllC DEMOCRACY
539
In contrast, I argue that a concept of public interest, recognizing that some
virtues rest in the commons, is needed to correct and balaoce the political
centrifugal forces, as it is necessary in the community to balance the moral/
social effects of plumlism there (Etzioni 1984). Moreover, onecan determine
when a group advancesthe needs of its members and when it serves the public
at large according to who benefits from the action. Thus the Sierra Club, a
leading environmentalist group, on the basis of its stated goals, is clearly a
public interest group. On the other hand, if it really does dedicate itself, as
Tucker (1982) argues, to gaining privileges for its u~r-middle-class members, such as untrammeled mountains to ski on, it clearly is a special interest
group.
In conclusion, communitarian virtues-virtues shared and underwritten
by a community-are not incompatible with true democracy. Rights can be
protected if communitarian virtues include tolerance for one another and,
above all, a clear demarcation of the areas that deservedly lie in the publicrealm
and those that ought to be left to individual choice and subgrouppreference
Moreover, various political mechanisms, especially the Consti-tution,
serve to sustain the creative tension between spheres of commonalityand
social virtues and spheres of individuality and personal virtues.
REFERENCES
Banfield, Edward. 1958. The moral basis ofa /klckward society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Etliooi, Arnitai. 1984. Capital corruptioll: The lIew attack 011America/! democracy. New
Bnmswick, NJ: Transactioo.
Galston, William. 1991. liberal purposes, democratic processes, and social justice. Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington
DC, AugusL
Glendon, Mary Ann. 1990/91. Does the United States need "Good Samaritan" laws? The
RespolISive COmlll/Ulity: Rights aNi RespolISibilities 1:2.
Hollenbach, David. 1989. The canmoo good revisited. Theological St~ies 50.
Horowitz, Irving Louis. 1979. Interest groups and the patriotic gore. The Humallist, September!
October.
Key, V. 0., Jr. 1958. Politics, parties, and pressure groups. 4th ed. New York: Cromwell.
Langan, John. 1990. The moral dimensioo-<X1eormany? Paper presented at the annual meeting
of the Association for Social Ecoo<Xnics,Washington, DC, December.
lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. Political mall. New York: Doubleday.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After virtue: A study ill moral theory. 2d ed. Notre Dame, IN: N«re
Dame University Press.
Milbrath, uster W. 1963. The Washillgtolliobbyists. OJicago: Rand McNally.
Ravitch, Diane. 1991. Pluralism vs. particularism in American education. The RespolISive
COmlll/Ulity: Rights aNi RespolISibilities 1:2.
540
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIEN11ST
Thigpen, Robert B. and Lyle A. Downing. 1987. Liberalism and the axnmlDlitarian critique.
American Jounlal o/Political Science 31:637-55.
Truman, David B.l964. The governmental process: Political interests andpublic opinion. New
York:AlfredA. Kn~f.
Tucker, Wtlliam. 1982. Progress and privilege: America in the age of environmentalism. New
York: Anchor.