In the previous essay I hoped to make clear the connection between the phenomenon of cultural existentialism with that of its formal counterpart–the philosophy of Existentialism. Again, I believe the connection between them is one of similarity rather than direct causality, and that the primary difference between the two is merely the extent to which they are articulated. Still, the average person is not a philosopher–let alone Sartre–so in many ways the accusation that cultural existentialism is widely embodied but not articulated is unfair. For a more common view of cultural existentialism, I would like to turn to the excellent work of the sociologist Robert Bellah, and some of his colleagues, such as Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swindler, and Steven M. Tipton.1 Much of their research, findings, and collaboration on American culture from the early 1980s will help color the outline I have sketched thus far.
The ancestor of cultural existentialism is, of course, a certain kind of individualism.2 Nearly 150 years before Bellah, et al., began their research on its American form, Alexis de Tocqueville expressed his thoughts on the subject in his book Democracy in America. In America, Tocqueville observed, individualism is “a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself.” “Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”3 The danger here lies in the expansion of the Private sphere at the expense of the Public. “Citizens who are bound to take part in public affairs must turn from their private interests and occasionally take a look at something other than themselves.”4 Also of note in the late 18th and early 19th century are changes in child-training practices, which began to emphasize “independent self-sufficient individuals” instead of the traditional focus on “peace and order in the family.”5 Fast forward to the 1980s, and it is no surprise that “Americans tend to think of the ultimate goals of a good life as matters of personal choice.”6
Consubstantial with American individualism is the idea of freedom, upon which all notions of personal choice must be grounded. Bellah writes that freedom “is perhaps the most resonant, deeply held American value. In some ways, it defines the good in both personal and political life. Yet freedom turns out to mean being left alone by others, not having other people’s values, ideas, or styles of life forced upon one, being free of arbitrary authority in work, family, and political life.”7 The ideals of psychology take this notion a step further. He continues, “to be free is not simply to be left alone by others; it is also somehow to be your own person in the sense that you have defined who you are, decided for yourself what you want out of life, free as much as possible from the demands of conformity to family, friends, or community. From this point of view, to be free psychologically is to succeed in separating oneself from the values imposed by one’s past or by conformity to one’s social milieu, so that one can discover what one really wants.”8 What in the past (in pre-modern times) provided or structured the cosmos into which one was born–a cosmos with built-in meanings and purposes–is exactly what must now be conquered and overcome.9
“Clearly, the meaning of one’s life for most Americans is to become one’s own person, almost to give birth to oneself. Much of this process […] is negative. It involves breaking free from family, community, and inherited ideas.”10 This process of breaking free, or becoming free from the constraints of the past, is effectively what “empties the content” of the individual, allowing them to define themselves as they see fit.11 This is the idea which structures the phenomenon of cultural existentialism as I see it (self-definition; self-creation). “The American understanding of the autonomy of the self places the burden of one’s own deepest self-definitions on one’s own individual choice. For some Americans, even 150 years after Emerson wrote ‘Self-Reliance,’ tradition and tradition-bearing community still exist. But the notion that one discovers one’s deepest beliefs in, and through, tradition and community is not very congenial to Americans. Most of us imagine an autonomous self existing independently, entirely outside any tradition or community, and then perhaps choosing one.”12 On this view–which today wields a great amount of power and influence in our culture–I am not who I am because of a field of relations that I exist within (“family, community, inherited ideas”). Rather, I am who I am because of what I have chosen; I am the product of my own unencumbered choice. “Separated from family, religion, and [other] sources of authority, duty, and moral example, the self first seeks to work out its own form of action by autonomously pursuing happiness and satisfying its wants.”13 The question, of course, is what should one want? What are the standards or the criterion of happiness? All that remains is, in Bellah’s words, “radical private validation.”14 In other words, as I have written about before, the preferences of individuals.15
The dominant form of modern happiness consists of preference satisfaction, wherein one’s “own idiosyncratic preferences are their own justification, because they define the true self.”16 Freed of constraint, emptied of content, the individual is free to define him or herself. i.e., free to discover the true self.17 “Now if selves are defined by their preferences, but those preferences are arbitrary, then each self constitutes its own moral universe, and there is finally no way to reconcile conflicting claims about what is good in itself. All we can do is refer to chains of consequences and ask if our actions prove useful or consistent in light of our own ‘value-systems.'”18 “In the absence of any objectifiable criteria of right and wrong, good or evil, the self and its feelings become our only moral guide. What kind of world is inhabited by this self, perpetually in progress, yet without any fixed moral end [or good]?” Michael Sandel nods toward an answer in his book, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice: “If my fundamental values and final ends are to enable me, as surely they must, to evaluate and regulate my immediate wants and desires, these values and ends must have a sanction independent of the mere fact that I happen to hold them with a certain intensity. But if my conception of the good is simply the product of my immediate wants and desires, there is no reason to suppose that the critical standpoint it provides is any more worthy or valid than the desires it seeks to assess; as the product of those desires, it would be governed by the same contingencies.”19
What kind of world is inhabited by this self? An absurd one. In such a world, “each individual must always know what he wants and desires or intuit what he feels. He must act so as to produce the greatest satisfaction of his wants or to express the fullest range of his impulses. The objectified moral goodness of Winthrop obeying God’s will or Jefferson following nature’s law turns into the subjective goodness of getting what you want and enjoying it. Utility replaces duty; self-expression unseats authority. ‘Being good’ becomes ‘feeling good.'”20 “‘Values’ turn out to be the incomprehensible, rationally indefensible thing that the individual chooses when he or she has thrown off the last vestige of external influence and reached pure contentless freedom. […] The improvisational self chooses values to express itself; but it is not constituted by them as from a pre-existing source. This notion of an unencumbered self is derived not only from psychotherapy, but much more fundamentally from modern philosophy, from Descartes, Locke, and Hume, who affect us more than we imagine.”21 Subjectivism, indeed, is our point of departure.
Note: Up to this point I have failed to consider any concrete manifestations of cultural existentialism as it is embodied in contemporary society. This has not been overlooked and will be addressed in the future.
Notes:
1. My primary resource for this essay is their book, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life.
2. Again, I will have to postpone any investigation into the origins of cultural existentialism for the time being.
3. See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
4. Ibid.
5. Quoted from Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Bellah explicitly cites Daniel Calhoun, as well as the views of John Locke, “whose political views were becoming popular in the colonies.” See Daniel Calhoun, The Intelligence of a People, and John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
6. Or, it may be a surprise. I will attempt to explore how this happened in the future when I discuss the possible origins of this phenomenon. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid. Emphasis added.
9. “Cosmos” in the sense of the totality of one’s circumstances.
10. Ibid.
11. It should be emphasized that this is not true of everyone. Many people do wish to retain a connection or adherence with their past, the history of their family, their community, or religion. The point I am making is that for all the people who retain such ideas, there are many others that do not.
12. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. See my essays, The Good, Liberalism, and the Role of Preferences, and Happiness: A Brief Contrast.
16. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Note I am qualifying happiness here as “modern happiness”, as I am critical of the usage of the word happiness. My reasons–which I will someday make explicit–involve the absurdity of the concept as it is understood in the modern world. i.e., happiness in its modern sense is a reductio ad absurdum.
17. In some ways, it may be tempting to connect this with the contemporary phenomenon of narcissism, and that is not entirely without basis. In fact, narcissism appears to be the logical terminus of cultural existentialism. For a look at the subject of narcissism as it emerged in the 1970s, see Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism. For a more contemporary look (2009) see, Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic.
18. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. It is interesting to note that Bellah adds: “Where sympathy or already congruent values are not enough to resolve moral disagreements between ourselves and others, we have no recourse except to withdraw from them.” Enter the “unfriending” phenomenon of social media. See also my recent essay, Theoretical Frameworks and the Limits of Communication.
19. See Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.
20. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life.
21. Ibid.