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do individuals have a reasonable chance of
becoming
these figures.
Vasco da Gama, born into an isolated Neolithic tribe, might have
dreamed of going to see what lay behind the mountain that marked
the tribal boundary, but probably no one would have known about
the dream and, most important,
he would not have gone.
The en–
trepreneur in a society that proscribes enterprise becomes, say, a
crafty priest or a manipulative bureaucrat; the revolutionary in a
situation that does not allow any openings to political change
becomes, say, an inventive interior decorator or a sex maniac; and
so on. This general insight must now be specified in terms of
economic, political, and cultural institutions. That is, there is an in–
stitutional matrix of individual autonomy, comprising at least in–
stitutions in these three areas of human society. As we have indi–
cated already (and as has recently been spelled out in some detail by
Daniel Bell and Michael Novak), crucial components of this matrix
are capitalism, democracy, and what has often been called bourgeois
culture. As the relation of these institutions to individual autonomy
is more clearly delineated, a sort of social map emerges.
Still within the framework of the social sciences, the question
can be turned around. The way we just asked the question, we
assumed that the human actor is determined by his social location.
There are good grounds for this assumption. However, in ways that
cannot possibly be elaborated here, human beings are not simple
puppets. They are indeed determined by their social location, but
they
act back upon
society. One way of formulating this is to say that
the relation between human beings and society is a dialectical one.
Now, the figures enumerated here also were not just passive reflec–
tions of their milieu; rather, they became deliberate,
willful!
actors
upon wherever they found themselves. They were actors individually,
but they also formed larger or smaller social groups - classes, par–
ties, and the like. We can now ask the question, as Max Weber did:
Which social groups have been the "carriers"
(Traeger)
of individual
autonomy? Here we come on the bourgeois class, on Protestant
clergy, on missionary pedagogues, and on many other collective en–
tities. The word "carrier" suggests (rather felicitously) an epidemio–
logical process. Think, if you will, of individual autonomy as an
illness (this, of course, is just how its critics, non-Western and
Western, see it): who "carries" this illness from one place to another,
and what are the mechanisms of infection? As with illness, most
"carriers" do not even realize what they are doing. Thus early Protes–
tant Reformers, preaching their particular version of the Christian
