Lonely Crowd or Anxious Mass? (In)Security Between (Anti)Enlightenment, (Ir)Responsibility, (Im)Maturity, (Un)Reason, and the Crux of (Un)Mündigkeit

Abstract

David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd (1950) is a work that continues to inspire debate. Here, it serves mostly as a reference point for examining to what extent and how sociologists often are reluctant to confront, assess, and examine the distinctiveness of their own society. Yet, without the willingness to determine in what specific ways “one’s own” society is distinctive, the likelihood is high that sociology and social theory perpetuate implicit assumptions about what is normal and natural in specific societies. The discourse about American exceptionalism, to the extent that it is analytical and focused on unique aspects of American society, is productive in this regard and an informative case in point. At the same time, sociologists and social theorists have been reluctant to move toward developing a social theory of American society. Situating the latter in a forcefield between enlightenment and anti-enlightenment factors, on the one hand, and the inverse dialectic of security and insecurity, provides an opening for accessing aspects of American society that may well separate it from all other modern societies. Ralf Dahrendorf’s concept of “applied enlightenment,” in relation to which he discussed Riesman’s work and noted that “anxious mass” may be more fitting, serves as an additional reference frame in this effort to home in on the distinctiveness of American society.