KIMBERLY WHITMAN

U.S. HISTORY I

HUNTINGTON UNIVERSITY

AUGUST 20, 2010

INDIVIDUALISM: BEGINNING TO TODAY

I chose to read the best selling novel, ‘Habits of the Heart: Individualism and

Commitment in American Life’, written by sociologist, Robert Bellah (and colleagues).

This novel was written on today’s American society’s behavior and focuses on

individualism and commitment of Americans. The term ‘individualism’ is described as

‘political and social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual.’

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that

stresses "the moral worth of the individual.” In this novel, Bellah focuses on the character

of Americans and how to preserve a ‘morally coherent life’.

In the introduction of this book, Bellah relates the arguments of the book both to the

current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future.

The United States of America is the land of the free, the land of opportunity, and the

wealthiest country in the world, a country that the rest of the world tries to mimic and keep

up with. Hundreds of thousands of people come to this country every year seeking the

American Dream. The American concept of society, economics, and just about everything

revolves around one simple idea – individualism; its beginnings in Europe but I will discuss

individualism as relates to this novel and US history in the 1800’s.

Individualism has positive features and negative features. Our founding fathers, such as

Jefferson, encouraged that Americans think individually and modern society

finds it important that people think independently, decide autonomously and

take personal initiatives to get ahead in this life. ‘Those who labor in the earth

are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breast he has

made His peculiar deposit substantial and genuine virtue.’ (Major problems, Pg.

156, Jefferson) Jefferson was greatly dedicated to farmers and believed initially

that the country would grow best through agriculture. Before Hamilton’s loss to

Jefferson, he greatly differed in political dreams and he believed the country

would grow best through manufacturing and wanted more government control

(not so much individualism) and to become a world power through

manufacturing. Jefferson sought ‘individual control’ and Hamilton sought

‘government control of society’. “The spirit of enterprise, useful and prolific as it

is, must necessarily be contracted or expanded in proportion to the simplicity or

variety of the occupations and productions, which are to be found in a Society.”

(Major Problems, Pg. 158, Hamilton) Jefferson believed in ‘cooperative

individualism’, the name given to a unique socio-political philosophy as well as the

basis for citizens of any society to establish a system of law that secures and protects

individual liberty, equality of opportunity and human rights.

A lot of individualism’s roots came from French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, and

‘Habits of the Hearts’ was written with this man’s views of individualism, in mind.

Tocqueville believed that Americans had too much power, claimed too great a voice in society,

and that ‘As a critic of individualism, Tocqueville thought that through associating, the
coming together of people for mutual purpose, both in public and private, Americans are

able to overcome selfish desires, thus making both a self-conscious and active political

society and a vibrant civil society functioning independently from the state.’ (Tocqueville

Institution) Tocqueville worked to understand what he saw as the odd nature of American

political and societal life. He saw America as a society where hard work and financial gain

was the dominant ethic, ‘where the common man enjoyed a level of dignity which was

unprecedented, where commoners never deferred to elites, and where what he described as

crass individualism and market capitalism had taken root to an extraordinary degree.’

(Tocqueville Institute) Bellah took Tocqueville views into deep consideration and debated

the ways Americans could return to morals, family, and away from selfishness in achieving

what we desire; that we can achieve our own needs at the same time as bringing a

commitment to society, in which they don’t have to be separate in nature.

Individualism is linked with the tendency to withdraw from social life and turn in

towards oneself. Alexis de Tocqueville described individualism as ‘the cool and considered

attitude which drives people to withdraw into a small, enclosed world consisting of their

family and a few select friends, leaving the rest of society to its own devices.’ Bellah and

colleagues performed multiple interviews on different people and consistently found that

‘mythic, remembered, dreamed-up, hoped-for, instinctual, stereotyped talk of

individualism is our ‘first language.” Bellah, like Tocqueville, encouraged wanted more

biblical thought in Americans way of life and felt it would change the negative aspects of

individualism that has become so rampant in our society.

 I believe if you placed Bellah back in the times of the Jefferson/Hamilton era that

Bellah and his colleagues would have been 100% ‘Jeffersonian followers’. Why?

Jeffersonian philosophy is clearly one of reason, individualism, liberty, and limited

government—all of which were loathed in most ways by Hamiltonians and Federalists.

Jefferson supported limited government involvement in religion and encouraged

Americans right to exercise their moral beliefs on religion as Bellah does. In Jefferson’s

document five of Major Problems, he speaks of this; “…and that no power over the

freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the

United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers

respecting the same did of power remain, and were reserved to the States or the people:

that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging

how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening

their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use

should be tolerated, rather than the use be destroyed.” (Major Problems, Pg. 161) I believe

this meant that government was to be limited in aspects of people’s personal desires to seek

what religion or moral values they so choose, further supporting the same values as Bellah.

In everything he did, Jefferson strived for citizens having ‘say’ in their lives, in their

government, and to stand against what they felt was wrong and keep the ‘power’ in their

hands ‘cooperatively’ with government. Alexander Hamilton was quite the opposite. They

both strived for American democracy but saw in completely different ways how to go about

achieving it.

Based on what I have learned in this class, I believe that Alexander Hamilton

thought that supporting individualism and limiting government involvement was fatal to
the nation’s growth, that it restrained society’s growth, and led him to a dread of

‘Jeffersonian democracy’ in many aspects. Jefferson argued strongly in favor of a kind of

‘Gentleman Farmer’ as the embodiment of freedom, and this further supports he was an

‘individualist’. The view of agriculture as the ultimate expression of individualism

dominated this era for Jefferson. I believe Bellah would have saw Hamilton’s views of just

how to ‘grow the nation’ as repressive. Hamilton wanted federal government control in

everything and unlike Jefferson, saw that if the people and states had control, that the

nation could not become a world power as he wanted it. Confidence in the integrity, the

self-control, and the good judgment of the people, which was the content of Jefferson's

political faith, had almost no place in Hamilton's theories. "Men", said he, "are reasoning

rather than reasonable animals." (National Archives)

In summary, Habits of the Heart was a novel defining where we are failing as

members of society and the ways we can incorporate individualism positively working to

achieve personal goals at the same time as being committed to and contributing to society

while putting ‘our own personal drives and needs’ first. That we have left home and church

and seek to obtain personal goals before doing what is right as a member of society, but

that it doesn’t have to be this way. I think our early founding fathers like Jefferson and

Lincoln strongly supported ‘individualism’ and never intended for us to become the ‘self

driven’ goal oriented society that we have become.

I agree with the author of Habits of the Heart that we have left home and church in

search of our own personal needs, and that we can incorporate individualism in our lives

but need to commit to society and human rights at the same time. I am not sure how to go
about changing what we have become though when the business world and Democratic

policies have so much control over us. I believe that Hamilton would be quite pleased in the

strong hold that our government has in our lives today, and view us as if his ‘dreams’ had

prevailed in our current society.

We have become a majority ‘feel good nation’ and have placed our commitment to

society second to our own drives. I think Jefferson would be disappointed in what we have

become and see our nation as not what he intended when he fought for individualism to

prevail, and himself would support the author’s views on how to change things back to

what Jefferson initially intended for us.

 WORKS CITED

Cobbs, Hoffman, Gjerde-Major Problems in American History: Volume

One: To 1877

Bellah, Robert-Habits of the Heart

www.cooperativeindividualism.org/Jefferson

www.AlexanderHamilton.com

www.nham.org

www.religion-online.org