Wall Street Journal
Races, nations and even generations are thought of as having personalities, talents—even destinies.
History is often thought of as a drama performed by collective forces consisting of millions of people. The action of a government is often conflated with the action of everyone it governs: “We invaded Iraq.” Or a business is thought of as the collective identity of its employees: “Together, we are Koch. ” Political parties, armies, tribes and generations are often thought about this way—as many people who together constitute a single person.
People speak about such collective identities all the time. Collective identities bring people together, apparently allowing them to transcend individuality. But collective identities also divide people against each other, and even divide each person against himself, forcing people to choose which facet of their identity is most important [JB emphasis]. At the moment, the right and the left seem particularly intent on forging rival collective identities.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, for example, put extreme emphasis on demographic politics. The idea was to dominate the vote among “women and minorities,” to create—and exploit—the largest possible gender and racial gaps. But a majority of American women are , and about half of American minorities are men. Were they supposed to vote their race or their sex?
Rival conceptions of history often regard one sort of collective identity as the most real or fundamental. “The history of the world,” wrote W.E.B. DuBois in 1897, “is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of all history.” Marxists regard “class consciousness” as fundamental. Feminists look to gender. Nationalists from Johann Gottfried Herder to Steve Bannon treat history as a contest between declining and rising nations.
PHOTO: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Forming a single consciousness from apparently disparate people is central to the Western conception of government. Plato based his “Republic” on the idea that a polis is like a single human individual. Aristotle argued that the polis is “prior” to the individual, or is the smallest self-sufficient human unit. Hobbes described the institution of government as creating “a real unity of them all, in one and the same person.” Rousseau imagined all individual wills forged by state power into a “general will.”
These collectivities are thought of as having personalities, styles, fundamental beliefs, talents, biographies—even destinies. DuBois, for example, described the inherent artistry and spirituality of black people as their contribution to world history. Most imagine that nations have enduring features of personality: Americans are hopeful and forward-thinking, Russians mordant and resigned, Chinese traditionalist and collectivist, Germans well-organized and authoritarian. The world wars can be thought of as national personalities confronting one another in a deadly psychodrama.
Treating groups as though they were individuals has two functions. The first is explanatory. Collective identities and agents simplify the bewildering chaos of history—or modern politics—into a comprehensible narrative. History as a story of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is a lot easier to deal with than history as millions of individual people with millions of individual motivations acting independently.
The second use is more therapeutic. People yearn to merge their identities into something bigger. The continual return to collective identity is a testament to humans’ irremediable individuality, which is experienced as a fundamental aloneness. Perhaps unconsciously, people are looking for a cure for loneliness so profound that they cease to exist, except as a bit of a larger individual.
But most such identities are articulated at least as much by what they exclude as what they encompass. If these identities divide each person against himself, they also divide us against each other. Classes and nations are defined at least as much by their conflict with one another as by their unity within.
We are condemned to be individuals. But we are also fundamentally connected to one another. We need one another and help make each other what we are. We can reach decisions together, and we can love one another. But we can’t really merge. In fact, love presupposes the integrity of each of the people who love and the distinction between them.
Mr. Sartwell, an associate professor of philosophy at Dickinson College, is author of “Entanglements: A System of Philosophy” (State University of New York, 2017).
History is often thought of as a drama performed by collective forces consisting of millions of people. The action of a government is often conflated with the action of everyone it governs: “We invaded Iraq.” Or a business is thought of as the collective identity of its employees: “Together, we are Koch. ” Political parties, armies, tribes and generations are often thought about this way—as many people who together constitute a single person.
People speak about such collective identities all the time. Collective identities bring people together, apparently allowing them to transcend individuality. But collective identities also divide people against each other, and even divide each person against himself, forcing people to choose which facet of their identity is most important [JB emphasis]. At the moment, the right and the left seem particularly intent on forging rival collective identities.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, for example, put extreme emphasis on demographic politics. The idea was to dominate the vote among “women and minorities,” to create—and exploit—the largest possible gender and racial gaps. But a majority of American women are , and about half of American minorities are men. Were they supposed to vote their race or their sex?
Rival conceptions of history often regard one sort of collective identity as the most real or fundamental. “The history of the world,” wrote W.E.B. DuBois in 1897, “is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of all history.” Marxists regard “class consciousness” as fundamental. Feminists look to gender. Nationalists from Johann Gottfried Herder to Steve Bannon treat history as a contest between declining and rising nations.
PHOTO: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Forming a single consciousness from apparently disparate people is central to the Western conception of government. Plato based his “Republic” on the idea that a polis is like a single human individual. Aristotle argued that the polis is “prior” to the individual, or is the smallest self-sufficient human unit. Hobbes described the institution of government as creating “a real unity of them all, in one and the same person.” Rousseau imagined all individual wills forged by state power into a “general will.”
These collectivities are thought of as having personalities, styles, fundamental beliefs, talents, biographies—even destinies. DuBois, for example, described the inherent artistry and spirituality of black people as their contribution to world history. Most imagine that nations have enduring features of personality: Americans are hopeful and forward-thinking, Russians mordant and resigned, Chinese traditionalist and collectivist, Germans well-organized and authoritarian. The world wars can be thought of as national personalities confronting one another in a deadly psychodrama.
Treating groups as though they were individuals has two functions. The first is explanatory. Collective identities and agents simplify the bewildering chaos of history—or modern politics—into a comprehensible narrative. History as a story of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is a lot easier to deal with than history as millions of individual people with millions of individual motivations acting independently.
The second use is more therapeutic. People yearn to merge their identities into something bigger. The continual return to collective identity is a testament to humans’ irremediable individuality, which is experienced as a fundamental aloneness. Perhaps unconsciously, people are looking for a cure for loneliness so profound that they cease to exist, except as a bit of a larger individual.
But most such identities are articulated at least as much by what they exclude as what they encompass. If these identities divide each person against himself, they also divide us against each other. Classes and nations are defined at least as much by their conflict with one another as by their unity within.
We are condemned to be individuals. But we are also fundamentally connected to one another. We need one another and help make each other what we are. We can reach decisions together, and we can love one another. But we can’t really merge. In fact, love presupposes the integrity of each of the people who love and the distinction between them.
Mr. Sartwell, an associate professor of philosophy at Dickinson College, is author of “Entanglements: A System of Philosophy” (State University of New York, 2017).
