Utilitarian individualism: A form of individualism that takes as given basic human appetites and fears... and sees human life as an effort by individuals to maximize their self-interest relative to these given ends. Utilitarian individualism views society as arising from a contract that individuals enter into only in order to advance their self-interest.... Utilitarian individualism has an affinity to a basically economic understanding of existence. |
| Expressive individualism: A form of individualism that arose in opposition to utilitarian individualism (which see). Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.... Under certain conditions, the expressive individualist may find it possible through intuitive feeling to "merge" with other persons, with nature, or with the cosmos as a whole. |
| Republican tradition: The tradition... that contributed to the formation of modern Western democracies. it presupposes that the citizens of a republic are motivated by a civic virtue as well as self-interest. It views public participation as a moral education and sees its purposes as the attainment of justice and the public good... |
| Source: Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart, 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 1996), 333-5. |