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Title: | Rethinking Justice, Equality and Rights: Communitarian Challenges for an Atomistic-Liberalist View of the South African Constitution and Bill of Rights |
Author: | Waghid, Yusef |
Year: | 2003 |
Periodical: | Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa |
Issue: | 51 |
Pages: | 101-128 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | liberalism democracy constitutions Law, Human Rights and Violence |
External link: | https://muse.jhu.edu/article/48788 |
Abstract: | The author's concern is that despite the South African Constitution's commitment to social transformation and reconstruction, it is still possible for people to read it in a classical liberal sense which strongly supports the power of individual self-realization in the private sphere; that this in fact is a dominant reading which is occurring, and that this dominant understanding of the Constitution fundamentally influences current-day social practices. The author brings into question some of the individualistic liberalist nuances of an atomistic-liberalist understanding of the Constitution and Bill of Rights which can impede South Africa's commitment to a democratic and aspirationally egalitarian ethos. Atomistic liberalism grows out of liberalism and affirms the self-sufficient, self-attentive and personal freedom of individuals with limited external constraints. A communitarian deliberative democratic framework shapes notions such as justice, equality and political rights, so as to enhance intersubjective, rational political deliberations. Consequently, the idea of a communitarian deliberative democracy provides a conceptual framework which undermines an atomistic-liberalist explanation of constitutional principles. Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract] |