After distinguishing three kinds of pluralism, an individualist pluralism at one pole, a communalist pluralism at the other, and a third more complex concept ofpluralism, I address the meaning of commitment in America as iIIuminated by these distinctions. This continues a line opened up in Habits of the Heart. An earlierversion of this paper was presented at Marquette University in the Edward J. O’Donnell, S.J., Distinguished Lecture Series.

‘Courageous or Indifferent Individualism’ is the subject on which I have been asked to speak, and I must first attempt to interpret what the conveners of this conference had in mind in asking me to speak on this subject. First of all, individualism must be taken for granted as our fate as modern persons; but, second, there is more than one kind of individualism and we must discriminate between them. Courage is the first, though not the highest, of the classical (...) virtues. Indifference cannot be considered a virtue in any context.Thus I might reformulate my title as ‘Virtuous or Vicious Individualism.’ Put this way, my subject might seem to be concerned exclusively with ethics. Ethics will be central in my discussion, but I want to talk about more than ethics. I want to talk about the philosophical anthropology which lies behind these two forms of individualism, and I about their connection with different kinds of political and economic policy.But before I proceed further I want to be honest about why, after reading the position papers and other materials sent to me in advance, I think I was asked to participate in this conference and speak on this subject. If I am wrong, you can correct me in the discussion period. I believe it is because the American economy, American political influence, and American culture are all exercising an enormous pressure in a single direction on Europe, and indeed on the whole world, to be more like us, to be Americanized.As a strong critic of recent tendencies in my country, I think I have been asked to help you understand the nature of this pressure and even maybe to suggest some ways it might be resisted. Later this year I will go to Italy and Brazil with the same mission. Globalization is often a euphemism for this kind of Americanization and I have begun to feel that it is into the discussion of globalization that I am being pulled. (shrink)

I want to argue that in the modern world national cultures are distinctly different from one another, and although not homogeneous, are homogenizing: that is, each national society has a culture that, while allowing for difference, nonetheless presses in the direction of a single dominant profile. This is to put in more abstract terms the argument of Habits of the Heart that America has a first language, composed of two complementary aspects, utilitarian and expressive individualism, and also second languages, namely (...) biblical and civic Republican languages that have tended to get pushed to the margins.Already in the Introduction to the new paperback edition of Habits, my coauthors and I suggested that the individualism which is America's dominant cultural orientation was not solely derived from 18th century Utilitarianism and 19th century Romanticism, but had roots in both of our second languages as well. In my November, 1997, address to the American Academy of Religion, “Is There a Common American Culture?” I took the argument a step further, reaching almost to the point from which I want to start this paper. There I argued that beyond the homogenizing effect of television, education, and consumerism, and deeper even than utilitarian and expressive individualism, there was a still, small voice, a tiny seed, from which our current cultural orientation derives.Nestled in the very core of utilitarian and expressive individualism is something very deep, very genuine, very old, very American, something we did not quite see or say in Habits, and its core is religious. In Habits we quoted a famous passage in Toqueville's Democracy in America: “I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores.” Then we went on to name John Winthrop, following Tocqueville's own predilection, as the likeliest candidate for being that first Puritan. Now I am ready to admit, although regretfully, that we, and Tocqueville, were probably wrong. That first Puritan who contained our whole destiny might have been, as we also half intimated in Habits, Anne Hutchinson, but the stronger candidate, because we know so much more about him, is Roger Williams. (shrink)

In 1919 Emily James Putnam gave twelve lectures at the New School under the title of “Habit and History.” The course description is as follows:The long predominance of habitual conduct over individual initiative in primitive society and in the early empires; the biological and social limitations which tend to foster habit and develop it beyond its proper sphere; the technique of habitbreaking inaugurated by the Greeks and becoming a characteristic of western society; an effort to appraise the amount of excessive (...) and undesirable habit in thought and action generally connected with such concepts as nationalism, religion, the status of women, etc.It is an interesting challenge, eighty-two years later, to try to understand what Mrs. James meant by that description and how to think about those issues today. Mrs. James contrasts the term `habitual conduct' to the term `individual initiative,' and finds the former more characteristic of primitive society and the early empires whereas the latter, beginning with the habit-breaking Greeks, is more characteristic of Western society. She does not reject habit altogether, indicating that it has a `proper sphere,' but only `excessive and undesirable habit,' and she suggests that nationalism, religion and the status of women are spheres where such excessive and undesirable habits are to be found.Without being able to peruse her lectures in detail, I cannot be sure of all that she is implying. One might note that in her contrast between habit and individual initiative she privileges, as until recently we have been wont to do, the West as against the rest. This contrast, with its whiff of Orientalism, might serve to warn us that, although the contrast at the heart of her lecture series is still part of our common sense today, it, like the contrast between the West and the non-West, ought not be affirmed until subjected to a degree of critical suspicion. (shrink)

Modernisation, whatever else it involves, is always a moral and a religious problem. If it has sometimes been hailed as an exhilarating challenge to create new values and meanings it has also often been feared as a threat to an existing pattern of values and meanings. In either case the personal and social forces called into play have been powerful.