The Idea of Fraternity in America at Fifty

Wilson Carey McWilliams is certainly one of the great teachers of American political thought in his generation. The Idea of Fraternity in America (1973), as well as his series on presidential elections and many essays, has captivated both his students and his colleagues. There are, of course, many prominent figures who have addressed the complexity of political thought in America in recent years but few whose influence is acknowledged so centrally on these terms. Of course, it is sometimes difficult for those influenced by a master teacher to convey thoughts once they are removed from the electricity of the seminar or conference. McWilliams is a good example of this phenomenon. At one level his understanding of American political culture is Whitmanesque. McWilliams is not primarily a jeremiadic thinker and much of his writing has the same breezy celebration of America as Whitman's. Added to this perspective is an intense appreciation of Mark Twain's comedic iconoclasm. Both foci are juxtaposed with what is his central preoccupation, a deep attachment to the Puritan vision of the human experience. McWilliams generalized the latter in The Idea of Fraternity in America as a tradition of fraternal politics that was enriched by other European immigrants. Although “Puritanism…was here first,” (113) it was superceded, though not replaced, by the powerful symbols of “Enlightenment liberalism.” McWilliams' model of cultural dualism offered the first systematic critique of Hartz's liberal society thesis and has since been replicated and expanded by many others including Robert Bellah and Rogers M. Smith. In fact, there is some irony in his alternative to Hartz's single-factor explanation of American culture, since it returned the study of American political thought to the traditional dualist perspectives developed by Progressive scholars, who are villains in McWilliams' own reading of American political thought. Moreover, McWilliams' focus on Puritan conceptions of community has led him to an attachment to premodern conceptions of politics as well as to a decided antipathy toward the political world of the American founders.

The Idea of Fraternity in America

“In comparison with liberty and equality, the idea of fraternity has had a lesser place in democratic theory. It is thought to be less specifically a political concept, not in itself defining any of the democratic rights ... “(Rawls, 1971, p. 105). This observation, formulated by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice, will occur to anyone who examines the Republican triad: political philosophy is very much concerned with liberty and equality, but considerably less so with fraternity.1 Always somewhat eclipsed by the other two values, fraternity has undergone neither the formal treatment initially generated by Berlin’s distinction between “positive” and “negative” liberty, nor the analytical effort to define the term similar to Williams’, Nagel’s, or Dworkin’s approach to equality.

Political jurist, philosopher, and publicist, Christian Thomasius (1655–1728), in seeking to set apart the ordering principle of political society from that of the religious community, in effect put forth two distinct ethics of mutuality, an “intrinsic” ethic of inherent purpose and an “extrinsic” ethic of instrumentality, the former characterized by disinterested love, in need of no further justification, the latter characterized by prudential reciprocity, in demand of a rational grounding. Unity in the former is viewed as consensual and necessary, whereas it is seen as plural and contingent in the latter, thus designating politics as the domain of instrumentality, plurality, and contingency. Similarly, citizenship is sharply contrasted with the idea of fraternity. Its defining quality is identified withdecorum, which, though it entails elements of moral and legal accountability, is held to be neither strictly moral nor strictly legal. Its effective operation is, however, posited on the possibility of an unfalsified consciousness. In exploring the category ofdecorumas an ethic of mutuality, reference is made to contemporary discussions on liberal and communitarian theory and on the conditions of rational debate in politics.