54 pages • 1 hour read
David BrooksThe Second Mountain
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Personal Commitments and Moral Joy
Brooks discusses his own issues with commitment, and this informs much of the moral project of the book. As he notes in the introduction, after a turbulent and isolating time in life during which his marriage fell apart, he became politically estranged from his party, and he re-evaluated his religious heritage, Brooks entered into the “valley” between the two mountains. His commitments in life were either void or in need of re-evaluation. This concomitance of influences seems to have sent him on a personal journey toward the discovery of the second-mountain ethos.
The importance of personal commitment in The Second Mountain, though, does not focus (usually) on Brooks’s personal story. Brooks believes that there is universal truth to the importance of personal commitment. Throughout the text, he provides myriad examples from different traditions to buttress his point. Brooks is not presenting a revolutionary moral philosophy. He is, instead, rearticulating a perennial moral viewpoint with an original “two mountain” metaphor. The need for such work arises, coincidentally enough, as a result of his personal commitment to his vocation, writing, especially with regard to contemporary culture.
Brooks believes there are four fundamental commitments that a person ought to pursue: vocation, marriage, community, and philosophy or faith. In each case, a person chooses (over and over again) to dedicate meaningful chunks of their energy and time to the advancement of the other. A committed marriage, for example, is not about maximizing your personal happiness in the marriage but rather bringing out the best in your partner, being there for them in times of need, and recognizing (and loving) their true nature. As Brooks notes in the penultimate chapter of Part 1, commitments provide lasting senses of identity and purpose. They give the committed party a meaning in life that extends beyond finite, personal achievement or adventure. According to Brooks, the value of commitments also lie in their ability to develop moral character (58). All that said, on the “second mountain” view, the value that commitments have to the person who decides to make them is secondary. Properly speaking, one commits oneself to something beyond the self. The result is “moral joy,” a byproduct far more valuable than personal happiness.
The Second Mountain Person: Relationality Over Autonomy
The central theme of the book is the development of a second-mountain moral ethos on both the personal and the social level. Outlining the details of second-mountain personhood is the central project of the book. Much of the development of this theme is outlined via its expression in the aforementioned commitments. Additionally, though, it is consistently contrasted with another moral ethos, that of the first-mountain person. Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the first- and second-mountain pioneers is that the former are seeking to actualize the ideals of the ego (self), whereas the latter are seeking to overcome the limitations of the ego. In a sense, a person with enough willpower, craft, and luck can dominate the first mountain. The second mountain, though, is an infinite task, one that will never reach completion. Brooks writes:
You don’t climb the second mountain the way you climb the first mountain. You conquer your first mountain. You identify the summit, and you claw your way toward it. You are conquered by your second mountain. You surrender to some summons, and you do everything necessary to answer the call and address the problem or injustice that is in front of you. On the first mountain you tend to be ambitious, strategic, and independent. On the second mountain you tend to be relational, intimate, and relentless (xvi).
The relentlessness of the second-mountain climber and the ambition of the first-mountain climber may seem closely related, but the sources of motivation are radically different. Ambition is oriented toward the fulfillment of an autonomously selected, ego-directed goal. The relentless second-mountain person is oriented to the other (God, a vocation, a community, etc.) and strives beyond the acquisition of any particular goal. The work never ceases. The “surrender” on the second mountain is the acknowledgment that the task is infinite and that one has a fundamental relationship to people and projects beyond one’s personal concerns. There is no “relationship” acknowledged on the first mountain. There are simply tasks to be achieved. The first mountain is self-centered. The second mountain is de-centered.
It is important to keep in mind that Brooks does not have a principled objection to the first mountain. His view is just that socio-cultural norms are deeply skewed toward first-mountain projects and ideals. This is problematic for Brooks because it masks the supervening importance and coincident ultimate truth of the second mountain, whereupon a person is confronted with ceaseless ethical dedication in response to a transcendent summons. First-mountain pursuits are not unjustifiable, but the second mountain is closer to the heart and soul of life.
The Problems of American Culture
As was noted in the “Background” section, Brooks, a lifetime cultural commentator and critic, is deeply disturbed by the trajectory of modern American life. In general, the overarching problem is a moral ethos that emphasizes individual, subjective freedom at the expense of community, family, and marriage. This leaves people feeling isolated, lonely, and purposeless. This trend is indicated, Brooks believes, by rising rates of deaths from despair. Brooks describes this as a cultural “rot” and emphasizes alienation (from ourselves, our possibilities, and especially our communities). He writes:
When a whole society is built around self-preoccupation, its members become separated from one another, divided and alienated. And that is what has happened to us. We are down in the valley. The rot we see in our politics is caused by a rot in our moral and cultural foundations—in the way we relate to one another, in the way we see ourselves as separable from one another, in the individualistic values that have become the water in which we swim. The first-mountain culture has proven insufficient, as it always does (xxii).
The “I’m Free to Be Myself” ecology promotes a “hyper-individualistic society.” Aspects of such a society include, Brooks believes, consumerism, the “therapeutic mindset,” and the promotion of technological achievement at the expense of genuine human intimacy. These features of hyper-individualist society drown out the higher truths embedded in the second-mountain culture: relationality, love, and dedication. It is useful to keep in mind that Brooks believes the first-mountain culture is insufficient, not fundamentally bad. As such, it needs to be supplemented by a culture that instead attends to the value of relinquishing the self to the other.
In each part of the book, Brooks discusses a different important commitment. Along the way, he consistently notes how the first-mountain culture’s over-dominance in American life is making it more and more difficult to actively pursue the good life as understood from the second-mountain perspective. As people become more careerist, they dedicate less time to vocational callings. As they seek greater independence, they are more willing to leave marriages (or never put energy into marriage in the first place). Fundamental philosophies and religious faiths get ignored in a secular age. This, as Brooks notes, happens even though surveys show the majority of people have had spiritually meaningful experiences. The problem is simply that the culture places an implicit taboo on the overarching validity of these experiences.
In short, Brooks believes that the human spirit is calling out for more than contemporary American culture has to offer. Building a community-oriented alternative is a necessary corrective.
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