This short paper explores the philosophical debate between liberalism and communitarianism in political philosophy, and how concepts like neutrality figure in that debate. It presents the philosophies of both liberalism and communitarianism to encourage debate among the LIS community as to the potential for a communitarian ethic to develop in LIS. In doing so it specifically considers what a communitarian ethic might look like for library and information science, and considers that ethical approach in contrast with both individual rights, and group-rights based philosophies. As the concept of neutrality is under significant challenge as an ethic in LIS in the past decade, the paper argues that in such a polarized world, we must seek to consider other ethical approaches that do not divide us but instead have the capacity to bring people together around a common good, while respecting individual group identity.