Some talk media present the absolute truth, 24/7; that is, the host has all the answers. For political ethicist Jean Bethke Elshtain, however, democracy is a little more complicated. One of her themes: democracy is on thin ice when we choose dramatic uncompromising ideology over civil civic discourse. In order to maintain a democratic society, she says we must not only tolerate but listen to and understand our philosophical opponents.

Elshtain, currently a professor at the University of Chicago, has never lacked opponents in spite of her gracious, humble demeanor. She became widely known as a public intellectual and stirred controversy in 1995 when the New York Times named Democracy on Trial a Notable Book. In highly accessible prose, Elshtain provides summaries and comparisons from history, methodically revealing that the monstrous face of the enemy of democracy is often our own. Her perspective posits that a cumulative effect of over-emphasis on individual rights alongside widespread rejection of public responsibilities has brought invasive, demeaning and condescending governmental policies. A major component of the problem Elshtain delineates is the American tendency to reject the classical distinction between our lives as public citizens and our lives as private persons.

Jaffe-Notier: How far back might one find this tendency to blur the distinction between the public and private aspects of our lives? Back to the Puritans?

Elshtain: It's interesting to link [the current] public poking about, making sure everyone's being virtuous in private affairs, to the Puritan scrutiny of behavior. With the Puritans it was mostly about self-control; I'm supposed to scrutinize myself. But there was also a way in which the community watched what was going on. We now have a "culture of exposure", if you can call it that. Daytime TV talk shows parade intimate secrets publicly. Those who are obsessed with personal rights have contributed to this problem by championing the idea that "the personal is political." I think in many ways that particular branch of radical feminism is as much a symptom as a cause.

Jaffe-Notier: So you reject the idea that the political realm should revolve around individual, private interests?

Elshtain: Yes. If every personal act is a political act then we lose the distinction about what is political. Then, what we can do as citizens is pretty thin.

Jaffe-Notier: Do you and other communitarians believe the values of the free market economy should be subordinate to claims of family, neighborhood, religion and other social contexts?

Elshtain: Our culture embraces a dominant image that we enter into jobs and chosen communities because they serve our self-interest in some sense. We need to get away from the idea that all our relationships are reducible to social contract. The notion of a covenant is richer, deeper. It has roots in our tradition, going back to the Mayflower Compact. It's an ideal of a moral community that flourishes as long as fellow citizens think of one another as a brotherhood and sisterhood, when some kind of civic affection binds us. We have acknowledged it along the way, but that has faded as contractualism grew. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. embodied the notion of a covenant. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural expresses the idea also. It is something that could not be invented outside of historical roots.

Jaffe-Notier: Might it grow from religious roots? How does your faith affect your ethical philosophy?

Elshtain: I always want to look out for the dignity of the human person, which for me is God-given. Dignity doesn't come because the government says, "You've got a right." And governments can't take it away. There's something that cuts deeper. Dignity is intrinsic. People with disabilities, people who aren't perfect, are members of the moral community also. Another direct effect is a sense of some humility. All human beings are flawed, tempted and sinful. That puts community and politics in its rightful place. You can't stand on a high horse and believe you've got all the answers.

Historical Heroine

The interview above, held at the University of Chicago, January 2002, is consistent with Elshtain's body of work. Her writings emphasize the theme that individual rights exist only within the context of a social self that is developing through influences of surrounding communities. As a key feminist voice within the recent political movement known as communitarianism, Elshtain has found a historical heroine in Jane Addams, one of feminism's founding mothers, who embodies many of the same social and cultural values...

Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy may be not only Elshtain's most recent book but her most provocative so far. In it, she demonstrates how the affirmation of one view does not always require the rejection or denial of another. Elshtain amplifies Addams' voice for the reader by setting extensive quotes from letters, journals and essays within vivid descriptions of public and intellectual events. Using such details to illustrate the harmony as well as the discord between ideas and deeds, Elshtain then responds to this in a kind of dialogue about how democratic culture might be maintained in America.

Addams is the perfect subject for Elshtain because the tension between what they both call "the family claim" and "the social claim" fuels their social philosophy. In their views, womanhood includes responsibilities toward family, community, local and national government and the intellectual community at large, in no fixed hierarchy. In the patriarchal climate of Addams' day, of course, to suggest that women have civic duties was revolutionary. In contemporary culture, Elshtain's support for the familial duties of women is often mocked.

One of the beautiful ironies of the text is that the largest source of literary imagery, philosophical identity and values shared by Elshtain and Addams is also the source of the greatest divergence between them. In Christianity, Addams found the Social Gospel and a clarion call to pacifism. Elshtain declares that in this, "the good news of the Incarnation and Resurrection had been siphoned off." By such verb choices, Elshtain openly proclaims her preference for Christianity with all its mysteries intact. But while Elshtain rejects pacifism as a viable political option, she relates story after story of the humiliating ostracism Addams suffered for her views. Elshtain empathetically emphasizes that the pacifist voice in civic culture is absolutely essential in times of war or peace.

For Jean Bethke Elshtain and Jane Addams, true democratic culture means listening to and understanding one's opponents. Both share the engaging stylistic tendency to illustrate abstractions through detailed human stories embedded like jewels in the prose. This biography has the tone of a monument erected to honor the visionary life and work of Addams, and asks the reader to consider the possibility of living up to such a precedent.