The Nature of Western Society A number of sociological theorists

Our identity, our rationality, our norms and values, and our social institutions are no longer underwritten by our intellectual vision of humankind and the world.

Robert N. Bellah and his co-authors of Habits of the Heart refer to society as beset by fragmentation, and they see modernity as "the culture of separation." These authors note:

A sense of fragmentariness is as characteristic of high intellectual culture as of popular culture. Starting with science, the most respected and influential part of our high culture, we can see at once that it is not a whole, offering a general interpretation of reality, as theology and philosophy once did, but a collection of disciplines each having little to do with the others.

Adams calls for a reexamination by philosophers of the foundations of our culture to find the basic faults in that foundation and to find a way to achieve coherence in a way that would preserve the culture's life-supporting fun

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fused and bewildered. It would be difficult to find in history an epoch as lacking in solid and assured objects of belief and approved ends of action as is the present. CHANGES IN COMMUNITY Bellah in Habits of the Heart notes how American society has changed since the time of Tocqueville. For instance, Bellah discusses the New England township as described by Tocqueville. The town father, says Bellah, can be thought of as the contemporary incarnation of the character ideal of the independent citizen, the person who orients himself toward the same vision of public life represented by the independent citizen. However, he must be distinguished from the independent citizen because he is not truly independent. The town father advocates ideals that are in the end unable to guide him through the maze of economic interdependence and political conflict that defines his social world. The independent citizen lived in a community in which the demands of work, family, and neighborliness intersected, while the contemporary town father lives in a community in which these demands converge enough to provide a surface plausibility for the vision of public responsibility once brought to life by the independent citizen. In the community t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Habits Heart, Bellah American, De Tocqueville, America Tocqueville, Bellah Americans, Margaret Wayne, William Sullivan, Bellah Adams, Adams Bellah, Liberalism Neocapitalism, public life, american society, town father, independent citizen, william sullivan, private public, richard madsen william, swidler steven tipton, american life, american culture, habits heart, sullivan ann, ann swidler steven, madsen william sullivan, sullivan ann swidler,
Approximate Word count = 4253
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)