David Brooks

Review: The Road to Character

/ rtrube54 / 7 Comments

The Road to CharacterThe Road to Character, David Brooks. New York, Random House, 2015.

Summary: David Brooks explores the issue of character development through the hard-won pursuit of moral virtue, exemplified in the moral quests of people as diverse as Augustine and Bayard Rustin, Frances Perkins and Dorothy Day.

I’ve long followed The New York Times op-ed pieces of David Brooks. Brooks often has seemed to me to be a quiet, reasoned voice speaking against the prevailing cultural winds. I wrote recently about the qualities of charity and cogency in public conversation and have long considered Brooks an exemplar of such qualities.

In The Road to Character, David Brooks seeks to initiate a conversation about moral ecology, particularly that of the United States. Brooks contends that there are two moral ecologies, one that emphasizes “resume” virtues, the other that emphasizes “eulogy” virtues, and that the resume virtue (or Adam I) moral ecology is prevalent in our moral landscape. It is a moral ecology that emphasizes “the Big Me” and focuses on skill and human potential. The other ecology (Adam II) understands human beings as “crooked timber” (a phrase drawn from Kant), and recognizes that we often fail to live up to our own ideals, and are not always fully aware of the drives and impulses that shape our moral actions, for good and for harm. This tradition emphasizes a moral awareness that results in humility, a striving toward moral excellence while acknowledge the reality that we fall short of the mark.

Brooks explores the “road to character” through brief sketches of a variety of individuals who he believe exemplify this “Adam II” quest. He explores the lives of a diverse cast of people from Frances Perkins, Roosevelt’s Labor Secretary, to the contrasting figures of A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin (the former one of iron moral discipline, the latter who struggled toward a moral life and commitment for much of his life). There are both the religious, such as Augustine, who recognized that our incorrigible fallenness could only be overcome by grace, and those who turned from religion, like George Eliot, and who strove in their own character for moral coherence. We have the outwardly sunny Dwight Eisenhower, who struggled with a volcanic temper, and the self-controlled George Marshall, whose sense of calling and greatness of vision meant often working in supporting roles and yet gave Europe the Marshall Plan, which he always spoke of as the European Recovery Plan.

The concluding chapter is a kind of summing up, contrasting the “Big Me” of our current moral ecology, with the “code of humility” of the crooked timber tradition. His statements in this section were for me worth the price of admission. One example:

“We are all ultimately saved by grace. The struggle against weakness often has a U shape. You are living your life and then you get knocked off course–either by an overwhelming love, or by failure, illness, loss of employment, or twist of fate. The shape is advance-retreat-advance. In retreat, you admit your need and surrender your crown. You open up space that others might fill. And grace floods in. It may come in the form of love from friends and family, in the assistance of an unexpected stranger, or from God. But the message is the same. You are accepted….” (p. 265).

It seems this is an especially important conversation in this age of “Trumpery” where glitz and appearance seem to count for more than character. What I appreciate in what Brooks does is he engages us in a public conversation that includes both people of faith and those who would not identify with any faith but care about the moral character of our lives and public life. His exemplars are drawn from all of these backgrounds, and all are those who have had moral struggles and some reached moral conclusions that not all would embrace (for example George Eliot, who co-habited in a relationship with a married man).

It seems to me that Brooks is serious about this conversation. Not only has he appeared in various public and online media as well as his regular op-eds, but also he has created a companion website (The Road to Character) to the book. For my readerly friends, it includes a library of resources. He speaks in his book, borrowing a phrase from Eugene Peterson, of “the long obedience in the same direction.” It is my hope that Brooks will persist in this work, and find many companions on the journey.

Other People’s Stories

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

The Road to CharacterIt just occurred to me this morning that three of the books I am currently reading consist largely in telling other people’s stories. David Brooks’ The Road to Character focuses chapter by chapter on individuals as different as Frances Perkins, Dwight Eisenhower, Dorothy Day, Bayard Rustin, and Augustine. None are perfect by any means but Brooks teases out the growth of their characters as they struggled with the conflict between noble aspirations and fallen nature that besets each of us.

The Religion of Democracy by Amy Kittelstrom focuses on seven classically liberal figures in American religious history and the beliefs and dispositions that shaped their lives. She covers figures as diverse as John Adams and William Ellery Channing (a key figure in the development of the Unitarian movement), to William James and Jane Addams, showing the development of an American liberal creed that was less doctrinal than focused around personal judgment and moral effort that included the benefit of one’s fellow human beings, encouraged within intellectual communities of the like-minded.

The Religion of DemocracyThe last is Miriam Adeney’s Kingdom without Borders which narrates the stories of Christians on every continent past and present who have developed Christian movements through compassionate character, personal sacrifice, and in some cases, martyrdom. For example, she narrates the life of Sadhu Sundar Singh, one of the most profound of India’s Christians.

You can look for full reviews of these books in weeks ahead, but I’m struck by the choice of each of these writers to develop the central themes of their books around telling other people’s stories. In each of these, the writers put flesh and blood on abstract ideas like compassion, moral restraint, or liberal notions of moral improvement. Often abstractions leave us cold, but when we see the stories of people who attempt to embody these commitments and shape their lives around them, it helps makes sense of these both as we relate to our own experiences past, and the life choices before us.

Kingdom without BordersWhat also strikes me as I read these three books is that they present differently grounded moral visions, sometimes within the pages as in Brooks’s book, although it centers around classic Judeo-Christian ideas. Kittelstrom’s and Adeney’s book give a sharper contrast, between the American Transcendalist tradition, and a global evangelical Christian one. One begins to see how different moral groundings sometimes lead to similar, and sometimes divergent ends. And since all of us in some way, either explicitly or implicitly, live toward some vision of a life well-lived, these narratives all help us assess both the beliefs and moral ends toward which we are living.

Is this not why we also read great fiction (if we do)? Whether it is Jane Austen, or Anthony Doerr, or even an Elizabeth Peters mystery, are we not immersing ourselves in a world where convictions, circumstances, and moral choices, and human impulse all come together, for better or worse? Yes, we can read just to be amused, and yet the truth is that the most profound works also hold a mirror up to us quietly posing the question, “how then will you live?”