Too Much Empathy?: The Dilemma of Toleration in a Plural Society

Canadian Review of American Studies Volume 24, Number 2, Spring 1994, pp. 135-143 Too Much Empathy? The Dilemma of Toleration in a PluralSociety Fred Matthews 135 Quentin Anderson. Making Americans: An Essay on Individualism and Money. New York: Harcourt, 1992. Pp. 264. John C. Burnham. Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History. New York: University Press, 1993. Pp. xviii + 385. George Kateb. The Inner Ocean: Individualism, and Democratic Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Pp. x + 275. These three stimulating books elucidate many of the issues which cluster together in the disputes between 'liberals' and 'communitarians both Right and Left' -though this last distinction may no longer apply very clearly in the contemporary conflicts over the permissible variety of lifestyles in a culturally plural but not pluralistic society. There are many questions involved: What constitutes a culture? Are some cultures (or lifestyles) intrinsically destructive, and, therefore, legitimately stigmatized? The example of the Thuggee forces an affirmative response, leaving many more questions about where and on what grounds to draw what kinds of lines. In the 1990s, the central question seems to be whether there are universally necessary social structures, which must be supported by stigmatizing, perhaps legally sanctioning , alternative structures. There are now widespread calls for the restigmatization of illegitimacy and single-parent families, for the restoration of older sanctions, like zoning laws, which maintained the moral and legal primacy of intact nuclear families as the necessary social norm and base. 136 Canadian Review of American Studies Such recoils from tolerance of social variety disturb many liberals in the tradition of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1947), with its call for "experiments in living" which increased human happiness and might enrich the society. Two of these authors, Anderson and Burnham, offer implicit critiques of Mill's permissiveness from different perspectives. George Kateb, running against strong currents, mounts a detailed defense of MiWs libertarianism by building a political theory on the poetry and polemics of Walt Whitman, seen as the champion of a universal empathy which generates the sympathy required for consensus among disparate kinds of people. John Burnham's Bad Habits is especially valuable in that it presents a secular and non-laissez faire version of an argument usually associated with the Christian Right. It is also richly documented, as befits a distinguished senior historian of medicine. The main focus is on the loose coalition, or perhaps convergence, of self-interested groups which from about 1910 have worked to undermine the strict morality proclaimed by spokesmen for Victorian middle-class gentility. This subversion has been tragic, Burnham believes, since the morality of Anthony Comstock-clean language, sobriety, monogamy, hard work at socially defined tasks-were essential for a stable society and fulfilling, mature lives. (His model is less sweeping than that of some Christian groups, which see the fostering of imagination in children as another subversive liberal tactic to create dissatisfaction with the status quo.) A central, and obviously arguable, assumption of Bad Habits is the slipperyslope theory of causation: those who try marijuana will usually go on to heroin, then to crime. Victorian morality did constitute a culture, with all elements interrelated and mutually supportive. This provocative argument should generate extensive empirical debate; its interest here is in presenting a richly illustrated empirical version of Herbert Marcuse's theory of repressive sublimation (though Burnham ignores the similarity)-the process in which power centres allegedly relaxed moral standards to give the masses outlets for energy that didn't challenge existing inequalities of wealth and status. Another important theoretical point emerges from Bad Habits. The whole dense account makes sense only within a 'nurturist,' environmentalist model of human nature. Strict control of children's cultural environment is important just because they are plastic, suggestible. Insofar as there are inborn Fred Matthews I 137 tendencies, they tend to foster acting-out and expression, not self-control and self-realization. It is therefore the more important that educated elites encourage the necessary sublimations. In other words, Burnham's morally conservative vision is theoretically not far from the 'social construction of personality' theories usually thought to be associated with the liberal or radical politics. It...