American Individualism & Orthodox Asceticism

Finding Common Ground between Holy Tradition and the American Experiment

The Believer’s Heart: Locus of Communion of the Church with the World

Developmentally, trust is a function of predictability; the more consistent parents are in their treatment of the infant, the more the infant comes to trust the parents. In a similar fashion men and women “in society can successfully pursue their ends” only if “they know what to expect from their fellows. Their relations, in other words, [must] show a certain order. How such an order of the multifarious activities of millions of [individuals] is produced or can be achieved is the central problem of social theory and social policy.”¹ 

While “to the ordinary person,”  social order “is the result of the ordering activity of an ordering mind” something more complex going on. “Much of the order of society of which we speak is ... not of this kind, and the very recognition that there exists such an order requires a certain amount of reflection.” 

The chief difficulty is that the order of social events can generally not be perceived by our senses but can only be traced by our intellect. It is, as we shall say, an abstract and not a concrete order. It is also a very complex order. And it is an order which, though it is the result of human action, has not been created by men deliberately arranging the elements in a preconceived pattern.²

For our concerns “society” means civil society and the Church. Like the former, the latter is a visible, historical community. Unlike the former, the Church is willed by God. Like Jesus, the Church is not only divine but also human. It is through its members that this theandric community interacts with different human communities. All that the Church does, is done through the actions of men and women responding in relative freedom to divine grace.  

Building on this admittedly simplistic insight, we can assert that in the Church’s relationship with the surrounding society, it is in and through the faithful (both the laity and the clergy), that there is contact between the Church and other communities in terms of time and space. More importantly, there is a real, if imperfect, communion rooted in the hearts of the faithful; the Christian’s love for members of other communities is the locus of communion between the Church and the World.³ To help us see why this is so we will examine the role of tradition in human life and what the very American idea of “rugged individualism” might offer to an understanding of the Church's relationship to American society. 

American Individualism

Broadly, American individualism takes one of two forms: rugged or ontological.  The latter highlights the contradiction “at the very core of American culture”; we are a people united by our political and practical commitment to “individualism.” While a contradiction can make for an enjoyable intellectual puzzle or even serve as a spur to prayer, it is an uncertain foundation for a society, a just political order, or the life of the Church. So while “the dignity, indeed the sacredness, of the individual” is central to American identity, it is also the case that “some of our deepest problems both as individuals and as a society are also closely linked to our individualism.”⁴ 

Historically, individualism emerged within the “context of moral and religious obligations” of classical republicanism and Reformation Christianity that served both to justify and limit its autarkic tendencies. The question for Orthodox Christians in America is this: Can such “an individualism in which the self has become the main form of reality can be sustained”? The anthropological and social challenge “is not simply whether self-contained individuals might withdraw from the public sphere to pursue private ends.” It is rather to ask “whether such individuals are capable of sustaining either a public or a private life”?⁵  

As we saw earlier, individualism brings costs and benefits for society and the Church to modern individualism. At the same time, it is reasonable to wonder if the Enlightenment concern for individual freedom and the more communal orientation of the Orthodox Church are not fatally at odds with each other.  Certainly, if we understand human freedom in nakedly individualistic terms this opposition is not only real but a real threat to the Church and the wider society. The radical, ontological individualism that sees society—and the Church—as (at best) an “artificial construction”⁶ that may at any moment “overwhelm the individual and destroy any chance of autonomy unless he stands against it”⁷ serves only to foster fear and suspicion. In such a context, power replaces love, and my neighbor becomes my enemy.

Whatever the excesses of the Enlightenment pursuit of individual freedom, it was at least in part a reasonable response to cultural forms—including those that emerge in so-called, Orthodox cultures—that valued institutions and hierarchy over the person. Whatever the strengths of pre-modern society, it is also true that “monarchical and aristocratic authority” both civil and religious could—and often were—“arbitrary and oppressive.”⁸ 

At the same time, we need not and should not romanticize traditional societies. They were often politically repressive and more materially poor than we can imagine. Such a social context might be a crucible for the holiness of a few, but is not one likely to foster the flourishing—much less holiness—of the many. The canonical of the Orthodox Church, which emerges in this long period of near universal material depravation, is based on the sober realization that “there are those in her fold whose degenerate will scorns” the life of mutual charity and respect in pursuit of their “own selfish” desires.⁹ And, yes, especially in recent years, contemporary forms of individualism “seem to be producing a way of life that is neither individually or socially viable.” A “return to traditional forms” is unwise since it has the potential to bring about a situation of social marginalization and abject poverty for most of humanity. To even raise the possibility of such a return also requires we ignore history so utterly as to represent an even more radical form of individualism than that which it would seek to correct! “The question, then, is whether the older civic and biblical traditions have the capacity to reformulate themselves while simultaneously remaining faithful to their own deepest insights.”¹⁰

While we cannot even hope to address the whole of this question, let me suggest how we can be faithful to Holy Tradition as we go about the business of not only evangelism but also fulfilling our civic obligations to participate in the American Experiment of self-government. 

The Civic Promise of the Orthodox Ascetical Tradition

The Church’s ascetical tradition is an anthropological sound starting point for any theoretical and practical “reformulation” of America’s civic traditions.  Especially as articulated within the tradition of the Orthodox Church, asceticism takes a holistic view of the human person rather than the more differential view common in the social sciences and legal positivism. The anthropology of the latter assumes a “moral logic [that] undercuts”¹¹ the possibility of community and so being-in-communion since it does the person in terms of ever smaller “parts.”  

But we can, I suggest, keep the insights of social sciences without sacrificing the Church’s catholic anthropology. Parents do this all the time when caring for a sick child. They acknowledge and accept with gratitude the physician’s insight and the findings of medical science without sacrificing their love for the child; in fact, their acceptance is an expression of their deep, sacrificial love for the child.  

To say the same thing more systematically, our everyday experience testifies that we see that “differentiation takes place when” we concentrate our “attention on particular phenomena.” Ideally, this “differentiated knowledge leads us back to a deeper, more structured knowledge of the whole.” In principle at least “there is no essential opposition between” a holistic, “comprehensive” view of the person and “the various differential theories” our “knowledge of the whole is primary.”¹²

The reason for this is clear enough.

Even the most “detailed descriptions … are bound to fit more than one person.” We only come to know each other in our uniqueness “only within the framework of direct personal relationships and communion. … Love is the supreme road to knowledge of the person because it is an acceptance of the other person as a whole.” Unlike the more theoretical approaches we alluded to above (to say nothing of my sinfulness), love does not “project on the other person” our own “preferences, demands or desires.” Love accepts the other as he or she “is, in the fullness of [their] uniqueness.” This is also why our highly, individualistic culture struggles with a broad range of problems related to sexuality. It is “in the self-transcendence and offering of self that is sexual love” where husband and wife learn to live in mutual acceptance of each other’s uniqueness.¹³ 

For the theological anthropology of the Orthodox Church, “’person’ and ‘individual’ are opposite in meaning.” This opposition, however, is existential since the “individual” as such does not exist; only the person exists even if we fail to grasp this in ourselves or others. We see someone as an “individual,” only because of our “denial or neglect of the distinctiveness of the person.”¹⁴ Christian asceticism has as its goal the liberation of the truly personal from the merely individualistic. In the full and proper sense, moreover, the liberty that ascetical struggle offers is not simply an absence of constraints (a “freedom from” if you will) but a “[p]erfection and sanctification” that makes possible the person’s “restoration to the fullness of [his or her] existential possibilities” and so to be what he or she “is called to be—the image and glory of God.”¹⁵ 

George F Will in a December 2012 speech delivered at Washington University in St. Louis reminds us that while the “ancients had asked what is the highest of which mankind is capable and how can we pursue this? Hobbes and subsequent modernists asked: What is the worst that can happen and how can we avoid it?”¹⁶ Christian asceticism, rooted as it is in a holistic understanding of the human person and the human condition, answers both these questions simultaneously. Asceticism reminds us in practical ways (e.g., fasting, sexual restraint, the importance of prayer, manual labor, and care for the poor) that we cannot be our best self unless we are first able to prevent being our worst. Here, in our ascetical tradition, we find the point of convergence between the life of the Church and the demands of a life of civic involvement and political self-government. 

In one sense the contradiction—or maybe better, paradox—at the core of American culture is inherent in being a member of any community secular or religious. In a fallen world, there is always a tension between what is unique in each of us as persons and what we share as human beings. Seeking to resolve this tension in favor of the former, the ontological individualism that has taken hold of American culture reflects an anthropological heresy; but so too does the current fad of post-liberalism that would erase human uniqueness in favor of a theoretical common good. As Yannaras points out, taken in the ontological sense the “individual is the denial or neglect of the distinctiveness of the person.” We see the consequences of this confusion most clearly in how our concerns for individual rights has become identity politics which in turn serve the pursuit of “some rationalistic arrangement for the ‘rights of individuals’ or an ‘objective’ implementation of social justice makes all individual beings alike and denies them personal distinctiveness.”¹⁷

American individualism, however, is not intrinsically immoral nor is it an anthropological heresy. For all America’s real faults and sins, it is founded on, and until recently preserved an ascetical intuition that had the ability to help Americans avoid the excessive of both the radical individualism of the Enlightenment and of pre-Modern aristocratic authority. The Puritan work ethic, the US Constitution’s separation of powers, our Bourgeois virtues and our commitment to Civil Rights all reflect those aspects of American individualism that takes seriously the need to correct what is worse in us so that what is best in us can shine forth.  

Americans are not by any stretch of the imagination monastics, but we are, in our way (and when we are our best selves), an ascetical people, who understand that a healthy civic, political, and religious community life depends on self-restraint. In this, the often (and unfairly) maligned American character or ethos of rugged individualism¹⁸ finds a natural partner in the social ethos of the Orthodox Church. It does so not as a statement of “ontological individualism” but an affirmation of both human freedom and the moral requirement that social institutions (including the Church) do not simply respect and support the person but restrain themselves so as to not infringe on the person’s freedom.

Negative freedom in the social realm is a necessary but insufficient element of “cosmic transfiguration” a work that

requires great effort, a ceaseless striving against the fallen aspects of humanity and of the world; and the embrace of this labor requires an ascetic ethos, one that can reorient the human will in such a way as to restore its bond with all of creation. Such an ethos reminds Christians that creation, as a divine gift from the loving creator, exists not simply as ours to consume at whim or will, but rather as a realm of communion and delight, in whose goodness all persons and all creatures are meant to share, and whose beauty all persons are called to cherish and protect (FLOW, §74) 

This convergence between Orthodox anthropology and rugged individualism, will serve foundation for our conversation about the Church;’steaching on three, broad, overlapping themes: politics, economics, and bioethics.

Next up though, we will return briefly to Pope St. Gregory the Great to understand why explaining OST requires more than professional competency and an understanding of Church's moral tradition. As St. Gregory will tell us, we need to understand our audience which, as I’ll try and show, requires we understand the psychology of how people make moral judgments/ 

1. Fredrick Hayek, “Kinds of Order in Society,” New Individualist Review 3, no. 2 (1964): 3–112, https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/hayek-on-kinds-of-order-in-society.

2. ibid.

3. I’ve borrowed this notion of the heart as the place of communion between communities from Adrian van Kaam, Formation of the Human Heart (Crossroads Publishing Company, 1986).

4. Robert N Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1985), 142.

5. ibid., p. 143, emphasis in original.

6. ibid., 334.

7. ibid., 144.

8. ibid., 142. To be fair, we see these same tendencies in punitively liberal and egalitarian societies.

9. Lewis Patsavos, Spiritual Dimensions of the Holy Canons (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2003), 28-29.

10. Bellah, Habits of the Heart, 144.

11. ibid.

12. Adrian van Kaam, Existential Foundations of Psychology (Lanham ; London: University Press Of America, 1984), 116.

13. Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality (Crestwood, Ny: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 23.

14. ibid., 22.

15. ibid., 109.

16. George F. Will, “Religion and Politics in the First Modern Nation,” https://rap.wustl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Lecture-Text_Will_20121204.pdf.

17. Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, 22.

18. David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd, Rugged Individualism (Hoover Press, 2017).