Abstract
The sociopolitical theories of communitarianism are criticised in that their linkage to community and common morality is apt to become conservatism or traditionalism. Yet, since the need for re-examining community and tradition is oftenly pointed in the debates on modernism, communitarianism could not be blamed in its community-oriented character so easily. As some communitarians suggest, the rights of individuals are not opposed to the social life of community.
But communitarianism seems not to reject this opposition. Then in comparison with the notion of social self of G.H. Mead, this paper examines communitarianism on the distinction between emphasizing the importance of community and subordinating individuals to community. First, the communitarians' proposition that individuals are to be considered within the community life looks just like to impose common good on every independent person. So, it can hardly refer to the influence of individuals on social change whereas active participation in social life is emphasized. Second, since it seems to give common goods the precedence, it restricts the range of social reform within the given traditions or moralities.
In these respects, Mead's social self takes the attitude of others and emploies that outer social world taken within herself/himself in order to carry on thought, however, on the other hand, self is constantly reacting to the social attitudes and changing in the co-operating process the community to which she/he belongs. Thus Mead argued on social reform that appeared as a problem how to use individuals' experiences to make society more universal. I propose these Mead's arguments are useful to rethink the relation of community and individual.
