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PARTISAN REVIEW
in space or in the mind,
conquistador
of unknown lands, Vasco da
Gama or Descartes, always embodying the twin Quixotic motifs of
freedom and aloneness; and, somewhat later, a much more prosaic
figure, but no less potent in its historical consequences and ex–
hibiting yet another facet of the same motifs - the entrepreneur,
con–
quistador
of the marketplace. Closely associated with the entrepre–
neur there appears the citizen, embodiment above all of the motif of
freedom - bearer of rights
(les droits de l'homme et du citoyen),
maker of
revolution. Entrepreneur and citizen, sometimes together and
sometimes separately, are agents of the two most powerful transfor–
mations of the modern era - the "creative destruction" of capitalism
and the French Revolution that has never ended. Then a figure that
represents, as it were, a civilizing modification of both entrepreneur
and citizen, the
bourgeois gentilhomme,
appears, the new ideal of
familial and civic virtue, expressed most clearly within the bourgeois
family with its nuanced balances of freedom and responsibility, in–
dividuation and community. Another figure follows, beginning with
the nineteenth century - the "artist-hero" who defies bourgeois society,
but in doing so seeks to realize a wilder and supposedly fuller
freedom. Perhaps one should add to this list the existential hero,
whose rebellion is even more complete than the bohemian's and is
graphically described in some of the formulas of existential philos–
ophy:
der Einzelne,
the one who "leaps" into faith, the totally solitary
individual who experiences himself as "thrown" into the world and
"condemned to freedom." At least on the level of ideas, one may say
that existentialism represents the most radical formulation of the
twin themes of liberation and loneliness.
We look at these figures, and three questions about them in–
evitably arise. The first is about historical origins and development:
where do they come from, and why did they develop as they did? As
we have pointed out above, this question cannot be tackled in terms
of the history of ideas only; it must also be approached in terms of
the general history within which ideas arise, become plausible and
are institutionalized. This leads naturally (and to some extent
overlappingly) to the second question: what are the social contexts in
which such figures can plausibly exist? Or, more sharply defined:
what is the institutional matrix of individual autonomy?
This, of course, is
the question that will most preoccupy social scientists. And thirdly,
there is the question of truth: do these figures represent important
and valid insights into the human condition, or are they pathological
aberrations? Any attempt to answer this last question will have to
