Amour-propre and the Uneasy Age of "Identity"

"They're all about identity." - TV commentator's remark concerning the comments on a discussion of "rights."

Defining Liberalism: "Passing" argued that "A signature difference between liberal and left is that liberal does not care about identity." I was reminded of this on seeing the Wikipedia entry:

Amour-propre (French, "self-love") is a concept in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that denotes a self-love that depends upon the opinion of others. Rousseau contrasts it with amour de soi, which also means "self-love", but which does not involve seeing oneself as others see one.

In Lila, Robert Pirsig notes that "truth stands independently of social opinion."

Mill's On Liberty describes the political effect of social opinion:

When society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.* (See extended quote at end of post.)

Since what this blog calls The Liberal Founding and its grounding in a document which begins "We the People," it has been assumed that in the context of affairs bearing on the Republic the identity which matters is "citizen," that is, member of the People. With the advent of the counterculture (what it was "counter" to was, in part, this central principle of our polity), identity-as-concern—amour-propre—became prominent, at least in media discourse. Identity-as-concern—anxiety about race, ethnicity, gender, political affiliation and all the other artifacts of faction—assumed a poisonous importance in public life.

The Founders were serene in the confidence that, endeavoring to serve what George Washington called "the public good," their labors and ambitions harmonized with secure status as part of the People. Thoreau, by contrast, seems to have felt that what confronted him was not the People but society, with its "opinion" and its "mandates" as above—and the anxiety of alienation pervades his writings. Where the Founders created a government to ensure liberty, Thoreau declared, "The government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it." (Emphasis added.)

What would it mean if, in fact, since what some call a cultural revolution, we are now in the age of the social?

It could mean an age of anxiety about identity. It could mean preference for social opinion over truth. Preference for group-think. It could mean the elevation of social standards, grounded in opinion, over ethical standards. One would be more likely to see conformism than to see moral courage, abject submission to social tyranny more likely than the courage of one's convictions.

Thoreau's remark paves the way for the abandonment of public-spiritedness—of the democratic disposition—and for the appearance of dysfunctional government.

(*Mill's complete paragraph:) Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.