Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Neely, Erica. “Two Concepts of Community,” Social Philosophy Today 28, 147-158. doi: 10.5840/socphiltoday20122810 (2012).
Abstract
Communities play an important role in many areas of philosophy, ranging from epistemology through social and political philosophy. However, two notions of community are often conflated. The descriptive concept of community takes a community to be a collection of individuals satisfying a particular description. The relational concept of community takes a community to consist of more than a set of members satisfying a particular trait; there must also be a relation of recognition among the members or between the members and the community as a whole. The descriptive concept is simpler, however, it does not provide a sufficiently robust concept of community. I argue instead that the relational notion is philosophically richer and more accurately captures the true nature of a community.
Publication Date
2012
DOI
10.5840/socphiltoday20122810
Included in
Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Epistemology Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons
Notes
This article is a pre-print. The final published version can be found using this link.