Review article of Derek Edyvane's 'Community and Conflict: The Sources of Liberal Solidarity' for Imprints: Egalitarian Theory and Practice

This is an interesting and thought-provoking book with a disarmingly simple but profound thesis at its heart concerning the type of 'journey' that a morally divided community might take which also seeks to be genuinely liberal. That is, a liberal journey which Derek Edyvane calls a 'quest model' of liberal political community (101-121). This community, although has an agreed set of political rules and procedures, is not derived from a proceduralist conception of liberal justice, as this would 'by itself, seem too thin to motivate a genuine sense of solidarity among its participants' (123). But neither is it a model of community based on moral agreements (argued for by other liberal protagonists) regarding, for example, the primary value of freedom in pursuing different conceptions of the good, or the dis-value of cruelty as a greater evil to be resisted by liberals. Rather, Edyvane argues that a 'quest' community is founded on notions of 'companionship' or 'friendship' but in having no agreed single goal or purpose, comprises individuals with substantially different and conflicting conceptions of the good (123-168).