Book Review: Opening Time for Communities

Abstract

Introduction:  This is a challenging and stimulating work, provoking reflection and analysis. Put briefly, Seymour Mandlebaum’s work concerns the nature and function of communities. There is a particular focus on the role of communities in shaping and sustaining moral order. He calls for a «communitarian sensibility» at the heart of which is the notion of membership. Currently, says Mandlebaum, expressions of communitarian sensibility offer two accounts of the origins and character of communities. First, communities originate in compacts, freely undertaken. Second, communities are based in practices. He wants to argue that there is a problem with using these two accounts as a basis for the design of communities and that a better basis may be found. It is the better basis that is the focus of the book.