A Comparative Study of Communitarians and John Stuart Mill’s Approaches on Identity and the Right to Gender Difference

Thinking about individual identity and the position of individuals and groups in political systems has long been of interest to different thinkers. Therefore, a right called "the right to difference" has been proposed, which is included in the scope of social justice and accordingly is included in the political arena. Communitarians and John Stuart Mill have a consensus on the "right to difference". This article, with an emphasis on gender, aims to analyze and compare these two thoughts. The question is, what is the difference between communitarians and Mill regarding identity and the right to difference? The answer is, the communitarians, under the influence of Aristotle's concept of practical wisdom, provide an understanding of the concept in the social context which guaranties a happy life. But John Stuart Mill, who defends the equality and rights of individuals in the context of differences, including women, is influenced by another understanding of the right to difference, which is derived from the "romanticism" of Rousseau and Herder. In addition, although it seems that Mill's view has some similarities with the communitarians, his attitude is not close to the communitarians’ thoughts, because these two attitudes organize their normative and meta-ethical concepts in different ways.