Liberalism believes that individuals are endowed a priori with reason or at least agency and it is up to that reason and agency to make choices, commitments and so on. Communitarianism criticizes liberalism’s explicit and deliberate neglect of the self and insists that we attain a self and identity only through the effective recognition of significant others. However, personal autonomy does not seem to be a default position, neither reason nor community is going to provide it inevitably. Therefore, it is so important to go beyond the liberal–communitarian divide. This article is analysing various proposals in this direction, asks about the place of communities and the individual in times of populism and the pandemic and provides a global perspective on the liberal–communitarian debate.

自由主义认为，个人被赋予了先验的理性或至少是代理权，而选择和承诺等则取决于该理性和代理。社群主义批评自由主义对自我的明确和故意的忽视，并坚持认为，只有通过有效地认识到重要的他人，我们才能获得自我和身份。但是，个人自主权似乎并不是默认的情况，原因和社区都不会不可避免地提供这种自主权。因此，超越自由主义与社群主义的鸿沟非常重要。本文正在分析朝着这个方向提出的各种建议，询问在民粹主义和大流行时期社区和个人的位置，并为自由主义者和社区主义者的辩论提供了一种全球视角。