Herr takes stock of the tensions between individualist and community impulses in the West since the eighteenth century. His study focuses on the United States, France, Spain, Great Britain, and Germany; Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and other European countries receive less attention. Though he sees the struggle to reconcile individuals and communities as characterizing his entire period, Herr divides his work into three distinct sections, each dominated by a particular feature of that struggle and the political contradictions, alignments, and possibilities that it generates.
In the first section, which culminates in the French Revolution, secularizing European societies developed principles of social organization to succeed religious ones. Herr points to Montesquieu’s concepts of honor and virtue—the former describing the pursuit of individual gain and the latter civic responsibility—as two paths leading from Enlightenment thought. Although Adam Smith took the position that individual striving could generate community benefits, Rousseau emphasized the importance...