"Community, Commitment, and Individuality" in Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah

Yung-Suk Kim

Bellah’s article"Community, Commitment and Individuality" has an interesting intersection with Confucius’ notion of the human communities. One typical teaching from Confucianism between individuals and communities can be well summarized in a famous Confucius’ phrase: soo-shin je-ga chi-guk pyong-chon-ha. Soo-shin means training a self (literally disciplining oneself); je-ga building home; chi-guk ruling a nation; pyong cho-ha governing the whole world. This phrase clearly shows the connection between the individuals and the subsequent communities, starting from oneself, to a family, a nation and to the whole world. Confucius based his idea about human communities on an inseparable relationship between them. In Confucius’ view, the purpose of soo-shin is building home with a virtue, ruling a nation and governing the whole world. I think that Confucius found the essence of human beings in a nexus of intrinsic living together, as shown in the above. Individuals, a home, and a nation and the whole world are interdependent and work together to benefit all people.

Similarly, Bellah’s idea about the communities and individuals stands side with Confucius in terms of Bellah’s emphasis on the role of committed individuals to the communities and on the mutually beneficial relationship between individuals and the communities. Committed individuals in Bellah’s term, corresponding to soo-shin (disciplining oneself) in Confucianism, build communities for the common good; the same is true of Confucian individuals. In both Confucian and Bellah’s view, one thing is remarkably shared: human beings are meant to live communally.

Human beings are born into a community where their identities are shaped and nurtured. We are born into a specific family, which shapes our earliest identity with memories about our parents, brothers and sisters. For example, one of the interviewees by Bellah tells us that she was greatly shaped and influenced by her father, who worked for the labor union, with many times of suffering and imprisonment. Her life with her father, in return, indirectly or indirectly, informed her of consciousness of living for the poor and the public. Experiences from our family, whether good or bad, and memories about the family behaviors and major events have a big impact on ourselves in the way that we reflect who we are in relation to a community.

In addition, growing up, we have more contacts with peers, colleagues and various people involved in business or any other arenas. Even on the deathbed, a family, a community of faith or doctors and nurses, surround us. We are meant to leave communally whether young or old.

Now one issue is that a community is not automatically good for all unless members of a community strive for the common good exhibiting a strong sense of community. In other words, personal commitment is needed to make a viable community in which our individuality grows healthy to the extent that our personal fulfillment is balanced with and matched by the public good. But unfortunately, under the milieu of the Western intellectual tradition of "autonomous self-reliance," which maximizes the idea of I can do it by myself –a kind of "self-made individuals," radical individualism, without involvement in the public, has been flagrant. However, what we need is a civic individualism in which individuals need to take responsibility for the whole community and need to engage publicly with strong commitments to the communities.

Actually, one obstacle to making a strong link between individuals and a community is found in a "sharp dichotomy between the private and the public." Under this dichotomy, people tend to think that personal fulfillment is guaranteed only with "the autonomous self-reliance, separating oneself not only from one’s parents but also from those larger communities and traditions that constitute one’s past." However, as Bellah adamantly affirms, "this quest for purely private fulfillment is illusory . . . private fulfillment and public involvement are not antithetical."

On the same token, the importance of balancing between the private and the public is also found in the so-called Reformed Tradition, well refined by the 15th century Reformer John Calvin. For Calvin, personally committed individuals, with vision of a healthy community, make difference to them and the public as well. Thus we cannot think of a community without committed individuals. The opposite is also true: we cannot imagine individuals without a community. This is a relationship between part and the whole. A part is necessary to the whole, shaping the whole and at the same time is shaped by the whole. In other words, there is no absolute individuals sealed off from the communities.

Through this reading of Bellah’s, with a parallel of Confucius’ notion of the communities, I find one sheer realization that we become true individuals -human beings, only when we form a community of public commitment.