American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword; book reviews Commonweal September 13, 1996, Pg. 38
Ronald Dworkin's The Rise of the Imperial Self also interprets current American culture by means of a comparative technique. While Lipset contrasts late-twentieth-century America as a whole with other modern nations, Dworkin measures the dominant character type in America today (the "imperial self" or "expressive individualist") against ideal typical personas in various civilizations at key moments in their development: the crumbling Roman empire of Augustine, medieval European aristocratic society, Tocqueville's America, and the United States of the 1950s "organization man." The most intriguing aspect of Dworkin's project is how useful the categories of Augustinian psychology turn out to be in analyzing the ethos of diverse societies throughout history.
Dworkin is quite successful in substantiating his claim that "there is nothing new under the sun." We can use to great advantage Augustine's notions about true peace, detachment, time horizon, self-love, and faith in the transcendent to sort out the struggles of democracy and aristocracy or postmodernism and the therapeutic ethos, just as the author of the City of God did in defending orthodox Christianity against Manicheism, Donatism, Platonism, and Gnosticism. Even our current "culture wars" have been played out before, albeit in proxy form.
Intriguingly, Dworkin's argument can be interpreted as a refutation of those (such as Lipset) who contend that there is something truly new and exceptional about America. In fact, the early American character described by Tocqueville with such admiration was separated from its aristocratic forebears of the ancien regime by three psychological factors (the republican principle, the force of public opinion, and the salience of Christian faith) which, Dworkin observes, have proven fragile amidst the vicissitudes of late modernity. Once these sources of virtue and restraint are stripped away, the American character reveals its true self, hidden like a recessive gene. The imperial self which emerges is once again aristocratic and self-aggrandizing in nature. Barricaded in "lifestyle enclaves" against the imagined threats of any truly public life, this expressive individualist dissipates himself in pursuit of empty self-fulfillment, devoid of the transcendent principles which guided the lives of his ancestors. Tocquevillian virtue was a mere blip on the time-line.
Dworkin's analysis thus lends itself to a thoroughly pessimistic construal of the prospects of American life. No type of deliverance is possible because, as imperial selves, we engage in a systematic refusal to acknowledge dependence on the transcendent. We condemn ourselves to disappointment, so Dworkin hardly needs to utter an explicit word of judgment. Lipset, by contrast, carefully probes America's cultural inheritance in hope of discovering strategies to accentuate the virtuous face of the double-edged sword. His guarded optimism for America's moral future is bounded by the realization that we cannot escape the legacy of our established political culture. The communitarian approaches that appeal to many today are unlikely to take root in this liberty-loving soil. Realistic hopes for ameliorization rest with the development of a "moral individualism" consistent with dominant American values, but prescinding from the self-interested atomism which characterizes America in its worst moments. The distinctive American ethos is flexible, though not infinitely so.
ISBN-13: 978-0847682195
ISBN-10: 0847682196
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