Open moral communities /

This book's presumptive topic is community planning, but Mandelbaum is a planner-gone-philosopher, a thinker with a pragmatic bent. He uses the concept of community as a term of ethical discourse and ponders the social arrangements facilitating the construction of a collective moral order from the diversity of pluralism's conflicting claims. In part 1 Mandelbaum analyzes, through a discussion of three stylized forms of communities, the community's role in establishing a moral order. Part 2 examines terms used by laypersons and professionals to discuss the cultivation of a consensual knowledge. Part 3 presents two cases concerned with the emotional range and ethical capacities of communities, asking whether communities only repair themselves by revising their social contract or if they sometimes attempt repair through a deeper communion. The final chapter comprises Mandelbaum's reflections on the simultaneous roles of liberal republics as guardians of openness and as communities themselves. Clearly and thoughtfully written and punctuated with wry humor, this accessible essay presents a new and provocative way to perceive the problems faced by urban planners. Useful for students and scholars of urban studies, religious studies, sociology, anthropology, and political science. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers. ; University of Tennessee at Knoxville