Thoreau's "Democratic Individualism"

How can we characterize Thoreau's political stance — not only his vision, but his entire reflective and affective disposition towards political life? Let me discuss a few answers over several entries.

Nancy Rosenblum, in her introduction to Thoreau’s Political Writings, describes Thoreau’s stance as “democratic individualism.” As I understand her view, it is an individualism in at least two senses.

First, Thoreau wanted freedom to live his several lives as an individual, pursuing his various interests and aims, without constant and undue interference from government and without dedicating the whole of his energies to political activism or the alleviation of social ills. As I have discussed, this doesn’t mean aloofness or indifference, but balance between one’s inward and outward lives. In Rosenblum’s words, Thoreau “does not propose a permanent retreat or stoic shift of consciousness within. The point is to claim time and solitude for one’s own affairs, to refuse to permit the res-publica to work to the detriment of res-privata” (xxx).

Second, in the context of an individual life of self-examination, different people in different contexts, times, and places might feel different imperatives of conscience, different summons as to what is required of them; even the same individual different times and places might respond to different demands of their sense of justice and their genius. As Rosenblum puts it: “Self-examination does not reveal one universal imperative, then, or one consciously best way to live” (xxviii). Self-examination is an individual task – perhaps it can be done partly through dialog, like Socratic self-examination, but the individual process of deliberation, action, and reflection is ineludible.

(Two further philosophical points here are noteworthy, especially in relation to Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperatives of morality. According to Rosenblum, for Thoreau imperatives are felt, not reasoned. This, I take it, is not a dichotomy but a matter of emphasis – one feels a summons and then reflects upon it. Also, there is no universal imperative, but rather individuals may have different moral and political callings at different times). 

Since there is not “one consciously best way to live,” Rosenblum continues, Thoreau cautions that “there may be no single ideal relation to democratic government, either” (xxviii). She recalls the passages in “Resistance to Civil Government” where Thoreau argues that seen from a lower point of view, the U.S. Constitution and government are very good, mostly fair and expedient, but from a higher moral point of view they do demand doing injustice to others — e.g. permitting slavery and fighting unjust wars. And regarded from the highest point of view — the one from which an individual examines the worth of his or her life — they are contemptible and unworthy of much thought. Thus, persons will adopt different political perspectives — views on the affairs of the polis — depending on a hierarchy of practical, ethical, and vital concerns and interests. Their individual perspectives and stances shift. Thus, “individualism.”

For Rosenblum, it is a “democratic individualism,” moreover, because “representative democracy affords occasions for all of these shifting perspectives. In that sense it is the political condition for the life or lives Thoreau describes, the correspondent order” (xxx). Constitutional representative democracy allows us to pursue a variety of interests and even to respond to some of our higher summons. When it goes awry and law or government requires that we act unjustly, though, the individual ought to obey his or her conscience and resist, rather than resign their moral sense for the sake of political expediency. 

Finally, Thoreau’s stance is a democratic individualism not only in the sense that democracy enables individual vital pursuits but in the sense that conscientious, reflective individuals nourish the democratic polis: “Deliberate lives of self-examination nourish democracy by their individuality and superabundance of energy” (xxxi).

I am personally drawn to this interpretation, and to this philosophical stance, since I am not inclined to be a political activist or a member of parties or organized movements. In my own measure and way, I am more concerned with an attempt to live a good life, a philosophical one in the ancient Greek sense infused with American transcendentalist and pragmatist blood. But I do recognize that political goodness and social justice require me to respond actively when their demands summon. I also think that my most important political act is to be a responsive, attentive, deliberate, reflective and active neighbor, friend, and teacher. My day to day response to felt imperatives in those roles, where interpersonal encounters happen, are more significant, to the polis and to my life, than larger political activism such as the current times now demand. It is a matter of balance and emphasis.