Homo Incurvatus in Se in the 21st-Century American Individual
When the Puritan John Winthrop set foot on American soil in 1630, he proclaimed, “we must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoys together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body.”
By 1772, the focus of the colonies had shifted to one of equal rights and the good life for all, with Ben Franklin declaring that in New England “every man” is a property owner, “has a Vote in public Affairs, lives in a tidy, warm House, has plenty of good Food and Fuel, with whole clothes from Head to Foot, the Manufacture perhaps of his own family.” By the time our forefathers drafted the Declaration of Independence, the political system bore little resemblance to Winthrop’s communal “city upon the hill.” The document’s most defining line asserted the unalienable rights of the individual and set the stage for America to become the most individualistic culture in the world. Fifty-plus years later, the term individualism was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville to express the mindset unique to the new American democracy. He described a “calm and considered feeling that 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 . . . such folk owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody. They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands.”
Although the Declaration of Independence acknowledges a Creator, there seems to be little reference to the Divine plan for the “tie of kinship” that Augustine described, or Winthrop had hoped for. There is surely no hint of the spirit Luther expressed when he said the Divine call was to love one’s neighbor more than oneself. In fact, if Tocqueville’s assessments were correct, America’s claim as a Christian nation would be most accurate in the sense that it is a nation of Christian sinners, turned in on its own individual desires and empowered by law to pursue those desires to the full. With the same certainty that St. Paul writes, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23 NRSV), Tocqueville predicted that a future built on such “radical individualism” can only lead to a nation of people “constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each one of them, withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest.”
Despite the great gifts of initiative and creativity that an individualistic culture can yield, the very real downside is a citizen trained “to think of all things in terms of himself and to prefer himself to all.” And so, with E Pluribus Unum on its seal and homo incurvatus in se in its heart, America grew up, making its choice of masters.
From RECLAIMING THE WISDOM OF HOMO INCURVATUS IN SE: “MAN TURNED IN ON HIMSELF” AS AN ENTRY POINT FOR THE DISCUSSION OF SIN IN 21ST-CENTURY AMERICA by Heather Choate Davis
Heather Choate Davis 