individualism
American Heritage Dictionary:
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in·di·vid·u·al·ism
(ĭn'də-vĭj'ū-ə-lĭz'əm) 
n.
n.
- Belief in the primary importance of the individual and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence.
- Acts or an act based on this belief.
- A doctrine advocating freedom from government regulation in the pursuit of a person's economic goals.
- A doctrine holding that the interests of the individual should take precedence over the interests of the state or social group.
- The quality of being an individual; individuality.
- An individual characteristic; a quirk.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
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individualism
Political and social philosophy that emphasizes individual freedom. Modern individualism emerged in Britain with the ideas of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, and the concept was described by Alexis de Tocqueville as fundamental to the American temper. Individualism encompasses a value system, a theory of human nature, and a belief in certain political, economic, social, and religious arrangements. According to the individualist, all values are human-centred, the individual is of supreme importance, and all individuals are morally equal. Individualism places great value on self-reliance, on privacy, and on mutual respect. Negatively, it embraces opposition to authority and to all manner of controls over the individual, especially when exercised by the state. As a theory of human nature, individualism holds that the interests of the normal adult are best served by allowing him maximum freedom and responsibility for choosing his objectives and the means for obtaining them. The institutional embodiment of individualism follows from these principles. All individualists believe that government should keep its interference in the lives of individuals at a minimum, confining itself largely to maintaining law and order, preventing individuals from interfering with others, and enforcing agreements (contracts) voluntarily arrived at. Individualism also implies a property system according to which each person or family enjoys the maximum of opportunity to acquire property and to manage and dispose of it as he or they see fit. Although economic individualism and political individualism in the form of democracy advanced together for a while, in the course of the 19th century they eventually proved incompatible, as newly enfranchised voters came to demand governmental intervention in the economic process. Individualistic ideas lost ground in the later 19th and early 20th century with the rise of large-scale social organization and the emergence of political theories opposed to individualism, particularly communism and fascism. They reemerged in the latter half of the 20th century with the defeat of fascism and the fall of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. libertarianism.
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Barron's Business Dictionary:
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individualism
Philosophy or quality that characterizes a manager or employee who makes decisions and performs tasks in his own way or style. The advantage of encouraging individualism is that creativity and naturalism may result in greater motivation and accomplishment.
However, the company must be careful that the employee does not ignore corporate goals and policies.
However, the company must be careful that the employee does not ignore corporate goals and policies.
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Roget's Thesaurus:
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individualism
noun
- The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable: identity, individuality, selfhood. See be.
Oxford Dictionary of Politics:
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individualism
Political individualism—in its most common, though not its only meaning—is a fundamental belief in the protection of the rights of the individual against the incursions of the state and of political power. However, there are many dimensions of individualism and it is possible to be an ‘individualist’ in several different fields. In general usage, an ‘individualist’ denotes a person with a distinctive or unusual personal style, who stands out from the mass. In metaphysics or ontology individualism is a belief that the universe consists fundamentally of individual particulars, separable entities. The opponents of individualism in this sense are holists or monists. The typical holist belief is that the relations (usually systematic relations in some sense) between entities have a more fundamental existence than the entities themselves.
Within the Christian religion individualism is closely associated with Protestantism and the belief in the human capacity for personal contact with God rather than the necessity of instruction through a hierarchy. ‘Economic individualism’ is usually taken to refer to a faith in the capacity of individual action and ambition, working through the market, to create wealth and to bring about progress. Political individualism, as defined above, is a more ambiguous idea.
The central question about individualism per se concerns the connections between these different dimensions. To what extent are they associated and what is the form of the association? Margaret Thatcher is often quoted as saying, ‘There is no such thing as society, but only individuals’, an overtly ontological statement which is ethically and politically suggestive. She actually added the words ‘and families’, which two words can be taken as the thin end of a more collectivist philosophical wedge. The connections between many of these dimensions is not logical entailment: there is no contradiction in being a philosophical monist, yet believing that individual initiative is the chief engine of economic progress or that persons possess rights which should be protected from the power of the state. But a desire for ideological consistency creates an association between the different dimensions of individualism.
There is also an important paradox at the heart of individualism. John Stuart Mill offers one of the most morally appealing images of the individualist society, in which people are unconstrained by conformity and are able to advance civilization by the freest possible development of their own ideas and forms of expression. But how is this individualist society to be achieved? The society which most clearly embodies a belief in economic individualism in its norms and institutions, and the protection of individual rights in its constitution, is the United States. But the United States has often been criticized for its tendency to homogenize people, products, and places, and to require conformity from individuals. In the field of education, it has often been remarked that the withdrawal of authoritarian requirements for conformity in schools is often replaced by a more effective pressure for social conformity which arises from the pupils themselves. Many people believe that the ‘totalitarian’ Soviet Union produced greater individual artists and political thinkers than many more free societies. In extremis, the paradox implies that an element of despotism is required to produce the full flowering of the individual, that authoritarian political structures can serve to protect individuals from social and economic pressures to conform. (See interests, individual.)
— Lincoln Allison
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
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individualism
The view that the single person is the basic unit of political analysis, with social wholes being merely logical constructions, or ways of talking about numbers of such individuals and the relations among them. The consequence for the study of social facts is that they must be approached through the actions and intentions of individuals (methodological individualism). The approach has been a principal target of many sociologists, such as Durkheim. In liberal individualism the individual is the primary possessor of rights, with the activities of the state confined to the protection of those rights. Individualism is often charged with dissociating the ‘free’ individual from the matrix of social relations and norms that in fact make agency, freedom, and even self-consciousness possible. It is thus opposed by views holding that individual persons cannot be understood apart from linguistic, moral, legal, and social factors that shape their natures: such views are versions of holism, and the associated methodology that insists on the social whole as the basis of individual description is methodological holism. Marx expressed the position in the 6th thesis of the Theses on Feuerbach: ‘the essence of man is not an abstraction inherent in each particular individual. The real nature of man is the totality of social relations.’ Politically, individualism is associated with the right wing (the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously said that there is no such thing as society, only individuals), while holism at its extreme is apt to be expressed in such doctrines as collectivism and totalitarianism.
A similar division exists in the philosophy of language, over whether the properties of individual words are prior to, or derivative from, the properties of larger linguistic entities such as sentences or whole collections of beliefs or theories.
Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science & Medicine:
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individualism
Any social doctrine that advocates the autonomy of the individual in social actions and social affairs. Advocates of individualism in sport emphasize the importance of allowing the free expression of an individual's skills. In many sports there is a tension between individualism and collectivism.
Gale Encyclopedia of US History:
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Individualism
One of our most familiar terms of analysis, individualism is also one of the most elusive. It is employed in so many different ways—approving and disapproving, descriptive and normative, social and psychological, economic and political—that one never knows quite what is meant when the word is trotted out. It is rarely clear, for example, whether "individualism" is describing a consciously held set of formal philosophical or ideological doctrines or merely an ingrained ethos, or mentalité, a set of assumed internalized social norms that is not being articulated. Even more bewildering, the student of American culture is likely to find that "individualism" is first highly praised and then roundly condemned in nearly the same breath. Everyone, it seems, finds something to dislike about individualism, but rarely the same thing. Conservatives may be severe critics of individualism in the moral and expressive spheres, but tend to be staunch supporters of individualism in the economic sphere. By the same token, liberal critics of individualism are likely to restrict their criticism to economics and distributive justice, preferring instead to celebrate the very moral and expressive individualism that conservatives deplore.
Such confusion should not blind us to the irreducible core of validity in this often nebulous concept. A widely shared belief in the dignity and worth of the individual person has long been a distinctive feature of what we imprecisely call Western civilization. As the medievalist Colin Morris well expressed the matter, "We [Westerners] think of ourselves as people with frontiers, our personalities divided from each other as our bodies visibly are.… It is to us a matter of common sense that we stand apart from the natural order in which we are set, subjects over against its objectivity, and that we have our own distinct personality, beliefs, and attitude to life." But in fact, he continues, Western individualism is so far from "expressing the common experience of humanity" that it might more aptly be regarded as "an eccentricity among cultures." And yet this "eccentricity" forms the indispensable basis for the ideas of liberty and equality, which are among the West's chief gifts to humanity. Belief in the independent standing of the individual human being loses none of its central importance as a legitimizing principle of Western moral and political life because it emerged only in fits and starts over the course of Western history; has nearly always been applied selectively and inconsistently; and is often more honored in the breach than the observance.
The first stirrings of this emphasis on the individual person can be detected as far back as the world of classical antiquity, in the emergence of philosophical inquiry and democratic institutions in Greece, and especially in the intensely self-directed moral discipline of Hellenistic-era Epicureanism and Stoicism. The ideas and institutions arising out of biblical monotheism also played a vital part in the formation of an individualistic ideal, placing heavy emphasis upon the infinite value, personal agency, and moral accountability of the individual person. That emphasis reached a pinnacle of sorts in the synthetic vision of Western Christianity, which incorporated the divergent legacies of Athens and Jerusalem into a single universalized faith.
Yet none of these expressions of belief should be equated with what we mean by modern individualism. Such freedom as the premodern individual enjoyed, particularly after the advent of Christianity, was always constrained by belief in the metaphysical existence of an objective moral order, which could not be violated with impunity by antinomian rebels or advocates of romantic subjectivity. It was equally constrained by belief in the inherent frailty of human nature, which insisted that moral virtue could not be produced in social isolation. Although nearly all influential Western thinkers had conceded the signal importance of the individual, none employed the term "individualism" to express that belief. Only with the dawning of modernity did essential components of modern individualism such as the belief in natural rights—that is, rights that precede the creation of political society—began to fall into place and prepare the way for what was to come.
As for "individualism" itself, like many of our most useful words, it began life as a term of abuse, appearing first in the discourse of opponents of the French Revolution. The nineteenth-century French archconservative Joseph de Maistre used the word "individualism" to describe the Revolution's overturning of established social hierarchies and the dissolution of traditional social bonds in favor of an atomizing and leveling doctrine of natural individual rights, which freed each individual to be his or her own moral arbiter. Maistre's idea of "individualism" was not an affirmation of personal human dignity. Instead, for him it represented a disordered nightmare of egotism and moral anarchy.
Alexis de Tocqueville also employed the term critically, albeit much more moderately so, in his classic study Democracy in America (1835–1840), a locus classicus for the consideration of the term's American career. Individualism is, he argued, a characteristic pitfall for all societies that are "democratic," by which he meant societies lacking any legally sanctioned distinctions of rank or status among their members. Indeed, he concluded that the American propensity for individualism was characteristic of all modernity, because America, as the first "great republic," represented the avant-garde of human history, and therefore served as a pioneering exemplar of what the future would likely bring to Europe.
Tocqueville's complaint was very different from Maistre's, however. Egotism, he thought, was a mere emotional disorder, the passionate and exaggerated self-love one could find manifested throughout human history. But individualism was also something else. It was a more or less self-conscious social philosophy, "a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellow-creatures: and to draw apart with his family and friends: so that … he willingly leaves society at large to itself." In other words, individualism was a conscious and calculated withdrawal, not from all human contact, but more specifically from the responsibilities of citizenship and public life. For Tocqueville—who was, unlike Maistre, a qualified friend of democracy, which he believed to be the God-ordained direction of human history—there was no greater threat to the health and stability of this new order than such a tendency toward privatism.
So "individualism" began its life as a critical term, and a reasonably precise one. But it did not remain so. Indeed, the critical view of individualism taken by these two French writers seems strikingly at odds with the self-conception that would come to be characteristic of most Americans, who had little or no comparable experience of feudal, aristocratic, monarchical, and other premodern political institutions, and who saw individualism in a largely favorable light. In the American context, especially with the social opening that came with the rise of Jacksonian democracy, the word has only rarely taken on pejorative connotations. It was more likely to refer to the sturdy values of the self-reliant frontiersman or the self-made entrepreneur—or to a broadly libertarian under-standing of the relationship between the individual and society or the state, wherein the liberty and dignity of the former are shielded from the grasping hands of the latter. As such, it pointed toward a view of all political and social groups as mere aggregations of otherwise naturally self-sufficient individuals, whose social bonds are largely governed by choice and consent. Even more radically, it might point toward a view, increasingly pervasive in our own day, that to the maximum degree possible, the individual should be regarded as an entirely morally autonomous creature—accountable to no person and no "higher law," armed with a quiver of inviolable rights, protected by a zone of inviolable privacy, and left free to "grow" and "develop" as the promptings of the self dictate.
In any event, there seems little reason to doubt that the dominant view in our own day tends to endorse the highest possible degree of individual liberty and self-development in political, religious, social, and economic affairs. American history is a record of the defeat or weakening of nearly all competing ideas. The language of individual rights—the tendency to regard individual men and women as self-contained, choosing, contract-making, utility-maximizing, and values-creating actors, who accept only those duties and obligations they choose to accept—grew steadily more powerful and pervasive in the latter part of the twentieth century, and now stands triumphant. The recourse to individual rights, whether expressed as legal rights, voting rights, expressive rights, reproductive rights, sexual rights, membership rights, or consumer rights, has become the near-invincible trump card in most debates regarding public policy. Although there are serious challenges to the hegemony of such "rights talk," particularly as evidenced in the critical works of such communitarian thinkers as Mary Ann Glendon, Philip Selznick, and Amitai Etzioni, such challenges have yet to find a broad audience.
The Unique Development of American Individualism
This has not always been the state of affairs in America, and we are reminded of just this fact by much of the best scholarship in colonial and early national history in recent years. The crucial role of Protestant Christianity in making the early American social and political ethos has been repeatedly emphasized. For example, the political scientist Barry Alan Shain has made the case that it was not Enlightenment liberalism but a very constrained form of communitarian Reformed Protestantism that best represented the dominant social and political outlook of early America. The political theorist Michael Sandel has argued that, until the twentieth century, America's public philosophy was based largely on the "republican" assumption that the polity had a formative, prescriptive, "soulcraft" function to perform in matters of the economy, the family, church-state relations, personal morality, free speech, constitutional law, privacy, productive labor, and consumption. Like so much else about the early American milieu, that assumption has been so completely erased by the individualistic liberalism of our own day that we have forgotten it was ever there.
In retrospect, however, it is hard not to see those earlier perspectives as fatally fragile. Certainly by the middle of the nineteenth century, figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman—romantic American nationalists and prophets of the unconstrained self—were already trumpeting the note that would have the most lasting resonance in the American imagination. It was Emerson who declared famously that a society is a "conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members," and that "nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." And it was Whitman who declared that "the Great Idea" is "the idea of perfect and free individuals," and that "nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is." One could hardly deny that such driving, self-interested ambition was itself a logical corollary to the spirit of unrestrained self-development, although both men would live long enough to be disappointed in the crass materialism that seemed to take hold of American society in the post–Civil War years. So, too, there is the irresistible story of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, the semi-noble, semi-savage boy who lit out for the territory rather than enduring the phony rigors of civilization. Indeed, one sure index of the hold that individualism has had on American thought and expression is the culture's richness in figures of heroic individuality—and its relative poverty in providing convincing representations of community or social obligation.
There have always been a few important countercurrents, however, to this pervasive celebration of individuality. One such current emerged from women writers, both inside and outside the nascent feminist movement. Individualism being a game still reserved largely for males, the fiction and "domestic economy" literature produced by such nineteenth-century writers as the sisters Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe often had a very different tone, emphasizing the satisfactions of settlement, family life, nurture, and human connectedness—all the things that Henry David Thoreau and Huck Finn sought to escape. Such arguments were carried to a high pitch by the southern anti-suffragist Louisa McCord, who urged women to stand at a critical distance from the coarse individualism of the male public world. To be sure, the works of northern feminists such as Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were nothing if not individualistic in tone, testifying to the fact that some women were eager to get in on the game. Various forms of that same tension between equality and difference have persisted into the twenty-first century and continue to color our discussions of individualism and gender.
The immense human suffering and social dislocation wrought by industrialization was another stimulus to anti-individualistic thinking. One can see some elements of this critique emerging idiosyncratically in the antebellum years—for example, in the fascinating career of the anti-capitalist Catholic convert Orestes Brownson, who railed against individualism for destroying the grounds of human solidarity; or in the works of pro-slavery apologist George Fitzhugh, who presented slavery as an organic and patriarchal institution, far preferable to the inhumane and predatory institution of "wage slavery." But the best example could be found in one of the most widely read books of the nineteenth century, Edward Bellamy's 1888 fantasy Looking Backward, an effort to imagine a perfected postindustrial Boston, reconstituted as a socialist cooperative commonwealth in the year 2000. Bellamy openly reviled individualism, proposing in its place a post-Christian "religion of solidarity," which would radically de-emphasize the self, and instead emphasize social bonds over individual liberty (and traditional Christian doctrine).
The popularity of Bellamy's book showed that there was a market hungry for such ideas, and many of the most "progressive" forces of the day—ranging from the cooperation-minded Knights of Labor, the theological advocates of a modernist "social gospel," to Progressive reformers such as Herbert Croly, Jane Addams, and John Dewey—unreservedly admired and emulated its spirit. Indeed, the Progressive movement itself, at least in some of its manifestations, advanced a new corporate ideal that sought to downplay individualism and instead to defend and preserve "the public interest" in the face of industrial capital's power. In the hands of a sophisticated thinker like Dewey, a case was made that the values of community and individuality, far from being in opposition, are mutually supporting and mutually sustaining, particularly in an age dominated by large industrial combinations, immense asymmetries of wealth and power, and vast impersonal networks of communication. It was pointless, in their view, to restore the small-scale community of days past. Economic and social forces had rendered such community, with its personal bonds and face-to-face business transactions, impossible. The task ahead was the creation of something new, which Dewey called "The Great Community," a systematically reconstituted social order that, it was hoped, would adapt the best features of the old community forms to the inexorable realities of the new economy and society, and thereby preserve the possibility of a healthy form of individuality as well.
Individualism in a Postindustrial World
In retrospect, though, a social and political ideal based on solidarity seems never to have had much of a chance. Even the crisis of the Great Depression did little to dislodge Americans' individualistic assumptions, and a decisive blow to communitarian alternatives was administered by the rise of the totalitarian regimes of Europe, whose terrifying success in suppressing the individual for the sake of the nation threw all communitarian and corporate ideals into a disrepute from which they have yet to recover. The concerns generated thereby decisively shaped both the liberalism and the conservatism of the postwar years. Libertarians like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek and liberals like David Riesman, Lionel Trilling, and Reinhold Niebuhr—even conservatives like Robert Nisbet and Russell Kirk—all paid their disrespects to the Leviathan nation-state and thereby called into question the efficacy of any modern corporate or communitarian ideal. Instead, the social and political thought of postwar America seemed to be devoted to an entirely different ideal: the guardianship of the self.
The 1950s were awash in works devoted to that cause. Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950) warned against the conformism of "other-direction" in the American personality, and William Whyte's The Organization Man (1956) deplored the predominance of a "social ethic" in America's white-collar classes. Ayn Rand's fierce pop-Nietzschean novels celebrated the autonomy of the individual creative genius, sneered at altruism as a form of self-betrayal, and gave rise to the still lively intellectual movement called Objectivism. Neo-Freudian psychology concerned itself with the problems of the ego, and such leading psychological theorists as C. G. Jung and Erik Erikson focused obsessively on the problem of "individuation." Even the emergence of a New Left movement in the early 1960s, which purported to challenge the bourgeois assumptions of its liberal forebears, did little to alter this trend, since the movement's communitarian tendencies were no match for its commitment to a radical, near-anarchic standard of behavioral and expressive liberty.
In the age of postmodernity, then, the self has become the chief source of moral value. But one need only state such a proposition to realize how deeply problematic it is. Notwithstanding the naive certitude of Descartes's cogito, there is nothing more elusive than the self, which is both something that we "are" and something that we "have" in our less-than-full custody. Not only is it the ultimate seat of our subjectivity, it is equally the object of our therapeutic ministrations. Moreover, it is an entity whose highest refinement is its reflexive ability to stand outside of itself, enacting a selfhood that is beyond self. Indeed, the tortuous complexity of this description lends plausibility to one of the most powerful themes of post-modernism: its assertion that the modern idea of the unitary self cannot bear the weight placed upon it by fragmented modern life, and that in fact what we call the "self" is finally deconstructible into an ensemble of social roles. If so, though, then in what can individualism, let alone morality, be grounded?
It may be, too, that what appears to be unrestricted individualism turns out, on closer examination, to be something rather different. It may be that our broadened individual liberty is constrained in ways we hardly notice, so that we have been granted greater and greater freedom to live lives of less and less heft and consequence. A choosing consumer is not the same thing as a deliberating citizen, because the freedom to choose is not the same thing as freedom to shape. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, has argued that the expanding moral freedom of the modern world has been purchased at a very considerable price in public disempowerment. In our "bifurcated" modern world, moral evaluation has been relegated to "the realm of the personal," he says, while vast public bureaucracies and private corporations rule unchallenged over "the realm of the organizational" by means of impersonal procedural dicta. Hence individuals are remarkably free to order their personal lives as they see fit, but at the cost of having ceded any substantial voice in the shaping of public life. There is, MacIntyre has asserted, a "deep cultural agreement" between the ideal of the unencumbered private self and the corporatist ideal of rule by bureaucracy. Both accept a diminished understanding of humanity. In this view, we may already resemble the soma-numbed denizens of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) more than we would like to think.
Such a state of affairs bears an uncanny resemblance to the condition Tocqueville most feared, in which individualism enervates Americans' will to act in public ways. Accordingly, it would seem that the most useful response to the disintegration and diminution of the self might be a movement away from the characteristic preoccupations of modern sociology and psychology, and toward a fresh reconsideration of our political natures, in all their complexity, contingency, and promise. Just such a view was put forward memorably by the late American historian Christopher Lasch, who argued that it is in the school of public life, and in the embrace and exercise of the title of "citizen," that the selves of men and women become most meaningfully equal, individuated, mature, and free—not in those fleeting, and often illusory, moments when they evade the constraints of society and retreat into a weightless zone of privacy, subjectivity, and endlessly reconstructed narratives of the "self." This insight will be well worth our pondering in the years to come.
Bibliography
Arieli, Yehoshua. Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964.
Brown, Gillian. Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Curry, Richard O., and Lawrence B. Goodheart, eds. American Chameleon: Individualism in Trans-National Context. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991.
Hewitt, John P. Dilemmas of the American Self. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. Revised, New York: Norton, 1991.
———. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. Reprint, New York: Norton, 1991.
Lukes, Steven. Individualism. Reprint, Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1985.
McClay, Wilfred. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Morris, Colin. The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200. Reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
Sandel, Michael. Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1996.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: Economics:
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individualism
A view that stresses the importance and worth of each person. In economics, it is the doctrine that individuals best serve the public interest by pursuing their own self-interest. For example, the businessman who expands his company to increase his profits also creates jobs for many people and thereby serves the public interest. (See laissez-faire.)
Politics Q&A:
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What is individualism?
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) stated that all individuals are endowed with certain inalienable, or fundamental, inalterable rights. Our Founding Fathers placed great value on the individual in an American democracy, and believed strongly in the concept of individualism, which dictates that the primary function of government is to enable the individual person to achieve his or her highest potential, making the interests of the individual more important than those of the state. Since the early republic a concern for upholding individual freedom, and the limits that have been placed on individual freedom, have been at the heart of political debate, canvassing such topics as censorship, legalized abortion, homosexual rights, and affirmative action programs.
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Random House Word Menu:
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categories related to 'individualism'
- Attitudes and Behavior - individualism: view that society’s primary goal is promotion of the individual over group welfare
- Schools, Doctrines, and Movements - individualism: political philosophical theory emphasizing personal freedom and autonomy
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual".[1] Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance[2] while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or other institutions such as the government.[2]
Individualism makes the individual its focus[1] and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation." Liberalism , existentialism and anarchism are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis.[3] The term has also been used as a term denoting "The quality of being an individual; individuality"[2] related to possessing "An individual characteristic; a quirk."[2] Individualism is thus also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors[2][4] as so also with humanist philosophical positions and ethics.[5][6]
As commonly used, an individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." (q.v. "The problem of proper names"). From the 17th century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism.[7] Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires.
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Contents
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Forms of individualism
Philosophical individualism
Ethical egoism
Main article: Ethical egoism
Ethical egoism (also called simply egoism)[8] is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people do only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds merely that it is rational to act in one's self-interest. These doctrines may, though, be combined with ethical egoism.
Ethical egoism contrasts with ethical altruism, which holds that moral agents have an obligation to help and serve others. Egoism and altruism both contrast with ethical utilitarianism, which holds that a moral agent should treat one's self (also known as the subject) with no higher regard than one has for others (as egoism does, by elevating self-interests and "the self" to a status not granted to others), but that one also should not (as altruism does) sacrifice one's own interests to help others' interests, so long as one's own interests (i.e. one's own desires or well-being) are substantially-equivalent to the others' interests and well-being. Egoism, utilitarianism, and altruism are all forms of consequentialism, but egoism and altruism contrast with utilitarianism, in that egoism and altruism are both agent-focused forms of consequentialism (i.e. subject-focused or subjective), but utilitarianism is called agent-neutral (i.e. objective and impartial) as it does not treat the subject's (i.e. the self's, i.e. the moral "agent's") own interests as being more or less important than if the same interests, desires, or well-being were anyone else's.
Ethical egoism does not, however, require moral agents to harm the interests and well-being of others when making moral deliberation; e.g. what is in an agent's self-interest may be incidentally detrimental, beneficial, or neutral in its effect on others. Individualism allows for others' interest and well-being to be disregarded or not, as long as what is chosen is efficacious in satisfying the self-interest of the agent. Nor does ethical egoism necessarily entail that, in pursuing self-interest, one ought always to do what one wants to do; e.g. in the long term, the fulfilment of short-term desires may prove detrimental to the self. Fleeting pleasance, then, takes a back seat to protracted eudaemonia. In the words of James Rachels, "Ethical egoism [...] endorses selfishness, but it doesn't endorse foolishness."[9]
Ethical egoism is sometimes the philosophical basis for support of libertarianism or individualist anarchism as in Emile Armand, although these can also be based on altruistic motivations.[10] These are political positions based partly on a belief that individuals should not coercively prevent others from exercising freedom of action.
Objectivism
Main article: Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a system of philosophy created by philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905–1982) that holds: reality exists independent of consciousness; human beings gain knowledge rationally from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic; the moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest. Rand thinks the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez faire capitalism; and the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally. Objectivism celebrates man as his own hero, "with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."[11]
Existentialism
Main article: Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[12][13] generally held that the focus of philosophical thought should be to deal with the conditions of existence of the individual person and his or her emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts.[14][15] The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, posthumously regarded as the father of existentialism,[16][17] maintained that the individual solely has the responsibilities of giving one's own life meaning and living that life passionately and sincerely,[18][19] in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.[20]
Subsequent existential philosophers retain the emphasis on the individual, but differ, in varying degrees, on how one achieves and what constitutes a fulfilling life, what obstacles must be overcome, and what external and internal factors are involved, including the potential consequences of the existence[21][22] or non-existence of God.[23][24] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophy, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.[25][26] Existentialism became fashionable in the post-World War years as a way to reassert the importance of human individuality and freedom.[27]
Freethought
Main article: Freethought
Freethought holds that individuals should not accept ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason. Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of any logical fallacies or intellectually limiting effects of authority, confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend, and all other dogmas. Regarding religion, freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to scientifically validate the existence of supernatural phenomena.[28]
Humanism
Main article: Humanism
Humanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority.[29][30] Since the 19th century, humanism has been associated with an anti-clericalism inherited from the 18th-century Enlightenment philosophes. 21st century Humanism tends to strongly endorse human rights, including reproductive rights, gender equality, social justice, and the separation of church and state. The term covers organized non-theistic religions, secular humanism, and a humanistic life stance.[31]
Hedonism
Main article: Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of ethics which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.[32] The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure is the only thing that is good for a person. This is often used as a justification for evaluating actions in terms of how much pleasure and how little pain (i.e. suffering) they produce. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize this net pleasure (pleasure minus pain).
Libertinism
Main article: Libertine
A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behavior sanctioned by the larger society. Libertines, also known as rakes, placed value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the five senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and the Marquis de Sade. "Libertine" is defined today as "a dissolute person; usually a person who is morally unrestrained".
Philosophical anarchism
Main article: Philosophical anarchism
Philosophical anarchism is an anarchist school of thought[33] which contends that the State lacks moral legitimacy and -in contrast to revolutionary anarchism- does not advocate violent revolution to eliminate it but advocate peaceful evolution to superate it.[34] Though philosophical anarchism does not necessarily imply any action or desire for the elimination of the State, philosophical anarchists do not believe that they have an obligation or duty to obey the State, or conversely, that the State has a right to command.
Philosophical anarchism is a component especially of individualist anarchism.[35] Philosophical anarchists of historical note include Mohandas Gandhi, William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner,[36] Benjamin Tucker,[37] and Henry David Thoreau.[38] Contemporary philosophical anarchists include A. John Simmons and Robert Paul Wolff.
Subjectivism
Main article: Subjectivism
Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it. For example, Wittgenstein wrote in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "The subject doesn't belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world" (proposition 5.632). Metaphysical subjectivism is the theory that reality is what we perceive to be real, and that there is no underlying true reality that exists independently of perception. One can also hold that it is consciousness rather than perception that is reality (subjective idealism). In probability, a subjectivism stands for the belief that probabilities are simply degrees-of-belief by rational agents in a certain proposition, and which have no objective reality in and of themselves.
Ethical subjectivism stands in opposition to moral realism, which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of human opinion; to error theory, which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense; and to non-cognitivism, which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all. The most common forms of ethical subjectivism are also forms of moral relativism, with moral standards held to be relative to each culture or society (c.f. cultural relativism), or even to every individual. The latter view, as put forward by Protagoras, holds that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are subjects in the world. Moral subjectivism is that species of moral relativism that relativizes moral value to the individual subject.
Solipsism
Main article: Solipsism
Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus (alone) and ipse (self). Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. As such it is the only epistemological position that, by its own postulate, is both irrefutable and yet indefensible in the same manner. Although the number of individuals sincerely espousing solipsism has been small, it is not uncommon for one philosopher to accuse another's arguments of entailing solipsism as an unwanted consequence, in a kind of reductio ad absurdum. In the history of philosophy, solipsism has served as a skeptical hypothesis.
Political individualism
With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Individualists are chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state or religious morality). For L. Susan Brown "Liberalism and anarchism are two political philosophies that are fundamentally concerned with individual freedom yet differ from one another in very distinct ways. Anarchism shares with liberalism a radical commitment to individual freedom while rejecting liberalism's competitive property relations."[3]
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labor, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right to privacy, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and the right to marry and have a family. Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, it is important to note the distinctions between positive rights and negative rights. Common civil liberties include the rights of people, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and additionally, the right to due process, to a trial and to privacy. Civil libertarianism is a strain of political thought that supports civil liberties, or which emphasizes the supremacy of individual rights and personal freedoms over and against any kind of authority (such as a state, a corporation, social norms imposed through peer pressure, etc.).[39] Civil libertarianism is not a complete ideology; rather, it is a collection of views on the specific issues of civil liberties and civil rights. Because of this, a civil libertarian outlook is compatible with many other political philosophies, and civil libertarianism is found on both the right and left in modern politics.[40]
Liberalism
Main article: Liberalism
Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom; worthy of a free man, gentlemanlike, courteous, generous")[41] is the belief in the importance of individual freedom. This belief is widely accepted in the United States, Europe, Australia and other Western nations, and was recognized as an important value by many Western philosophers throughout history, in particular since the Enlightenment. It is often rejected by collectivist, Islamic, or confucian societies in Asia or the Middle East. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote praising "the idea of a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed".[42]
Modern liberalism has its roots in the Age of Enlightenment and rejects many foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status, and established religion. John Locke is often credited with the philosophical foundations of classical liberalism. He wrote "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."[43]
In the 17th century, liberal ideas began to influence governments in Europe, in nations such as The Netherlands, Switzerland, England and Poland, but they were strongly opposed, often by armed might, by those who favored absolute monarchy and established religion. In the 18th century, in America, the first modern liberal state was founded, without a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy.[44] The American Declaration of Independence includes the words (which echo Locke) "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to insure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."[45]
Liberalism comes in many forms. According to John N. Gray, the essence of liberalism is toleration of different beliefs and of different ideas as to what constitutes a good life.[46]
Anarchism
Main article: Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful,[47][48] or alternatively as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations.[49][50][51][52][53][54] Proponents of anarchism, known as "anarchists", advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical[49][55][56] voluntary associations.[57][58]
For influential Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta "All anarchists, whatever tendency they belong to, are individualists in some way or other. But the opposite is not true; not by any means. The individualists are thus divided into two distinct categories: one which claims the right to full development for all human individuality, their own and that of others; the other which only thinks about its own individuality and has absolutely no hesitation in sacrificing the individuality of others. The Tsar of all the Russias belongs to the latter category of individualists. We belong to the former."[59]
Individualist anarchism
Main article: Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and their will over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.[60][61] Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict.
In 1793, William Godwin, who has often[62] been cited as the first anarchist, wrote Political Justice, which some consider to be the first expression of anarchism.[63][64] Godwin, a philosophical anarchist, from a rationalist and utilitarian basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a minimal state as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge.[63][65] Godwin advocated individualism, proposing that all cooperation in labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive with the general good.[66][67]
An influential form of individualist anarchism, called "egoism,"[68] or egoist anarchism, was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, the German Max Stirner.[69] Stirner's The Ego and Its Own, published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy.[69] According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of the individual is their power to obtain what they desire,[70] without regard for God, state, or morality.[71] To Stirner, rights were spooks in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the individuals are its reality".[72] Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will,[73] which Stirner proposed as a form of organization in place of the state.[74] Egoist anarchists claim that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.[75] "Egoism" has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and LGBT activist John Henry Mackay.
Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist,[76] and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published.[77] For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster "It is apparent...that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews...William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form.".[78] Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his books Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Later Benjamin Tucker fused Stirner's egoism with the economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic influential publication Liberty.
From these early influences individualist anarchism in different countries attracted a small but diverse following of bohemian artists and intellectuals,[79] free love and birth control advocates (see Anarchism and issues related to love and sex),[80][81] individualist naturists nudists (see anarcho-naturism),[82][83][84] freethought and anti-clearical activists[85][86] as well as young anarchist outlaws in what came to be known as illegalism and individual reclamation[87][88](see European individualist anarchism and individualist anarchism in France). These authors and activists included Oscar Wilde, Emile Armand, Han Ryner, Henri Zisly, Renzo Novatore, Miguel Gimenez Igualada, Adolf Brand and Lev Chernyi among others.
Economic individualism
The doctrine of economic individualism holds that each individual should be allowed autonomy in making his or her own economic decisions as opposed to those decisions being made by the state, the community, the corporation etc. for him or her.
Classical liberalism
Main article: Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the 19th century in England, Western Europe, and the Americas. It followed earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to personal freedom and popular government, but differed from earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to free markets and classical economics.[89] Notable classical liberals in the 19th century include Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. Classical liberalism was revived in the 20th century by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, and further developed by Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, Loren Lomasky, and Jan Narveson.[90]
The phrase classical liberalism is also sometimes used to refer to all forms of liberalism before the 20th century. And, after 1970, the phrase began to be used by Libertarians to describe their belief in the primacy of economic freedom and minimal government. It is sometimes difficult to tell which meaning is intended in a given source.
Individualist anarchism and economics
In regards to economic questions within individualist anarchism there are adherents to mutualism (Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Emile Armand), early Benjamin Tucker); natural rights positions (Early Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Josiah Warren); and egoistic disrespect for "ghosts" such as private property and markets (Max Stirner, John Henry Mackay, Lev Chernyi, later Benjamin Tucker, Renzo Novatore, illegalism).
Mutualism
Main article: Mutualism (economic theory)
Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought which can be traced to the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market.[91] Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank which would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate only high enough to cover the costs of administration.[92] Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value which holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility".[93] Receiving anything less would be considered exploitation, theft of labor, or usury.
Libertarian socialism
Main article: Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism,[95][96] and sometimes left libertarianism)[97][98] is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production. Libertarian socialism is opposed to all coercive forms of social organization, and promotes free association in place of government and opposes what it sees as the coercive social relations of capitalism, such as wage labor.[99] The term libertarian socialism is used by some socialists to differentiate their philosophy from state socialism[100][101] or by some as a synonym for left anarchism.[95][96][102]
Adherents of libertarian socialism assert that a society based on freedom and equality can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite.[103] Libertarian socialism also constitutes a tendency of thought that promotes the identification, criticism and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of life.
Accordingly, libertarian socialists believe that "the exercise of power in any institutionalized form—whether economic, political, religious, or sexual—brutalizes both the wielder of power and the one over whom it is exercised".[104] Libertarian socialists generally place their hopes in decentralized means of direct democracy such as libertarian municipalism, citizens' assemblies, trade unions and workers' councils.[105]
Political philosophies commonly described as libertarian socialist include most varieties of anarchism (especially anarchist communism, anarchist collectivism, anarcho-syndicalism,[106] mutualism[107]) as well as autonomism, communalism, participism, some versions of "utopian socialism[108] and individualist anarchism[109][110][111]., and also libertarian Marxist philosophies such as council communism and Luxemburgism.[112]
Left-libertarianism
Main article: Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism (sometimes synonymous with left-wing libertarianism and libertarian socialism)[113][114] is a term that has been used to describe several different libertarian political movements and theorists.
Left-libertarianism, as defended by contemporary theorists such as Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, and Michael Otsuka, is a doctrine that has a strong commitment to personal liberty and has an egalitarian view concerning natural resources, believing that it is illegitimate for anyone to claim private ownership of resources to the detriment of others.[115][116] Some left-libertarians of this type support some form of income redistribution on the grounds of a claim by each individual to be entitled to an equal share of natural resources.[116] Social anarchists, including Murray Bookchin,[117] anarcho-communists[118] such as Peter Kropotkin and anarcho-collectivists such as Mikhail Bakunin, are sometimes called left-libertarian.[119] Noam Chomsky also refers to himself as a left libertarian.[120] The term is sometimes used synonymously with libertarian socialism[121] or used in self-description by geoists who support individuals paying rent to the community for the use of land. Left libertarian parties, such as Green, share with "traditional socialism a distrust of the market, of private investment, and of the achievement ethic, and a commitment to expansion of the welfare state."[122]
Right-libertarianism
Main article: Right-libertarianism
Right-libertarianism or right libertarianism is a phrase used by some to describe either non-collectivist forms of libertarianism[123] or a variety of different libertarian views some label "right" of mainstream libertarianism including "libertarian conservatism".
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls it "right libertarianism" but states: "Libertarianism is often thought of as 'right-wing' doctrine. This, however, is mistaken for at least two reasons. First, on social—rather than economic—issues, libertarianism tends to be 'left-wing'. It opposes laws that restrict consensual and private sexual relationships between adults (e.g., gay sex, non-marital sex, and deviant sex), laws that restrict drug use, laws that impose religious views or practices on individuals, and compulsory military service. Second, in addition to the better-known version of libertarianism—right-libertarianism—there is also a version known as 'left-libertarianism'. Both endorse full self-ownership, but they differ with respect to the powers agents have to appropriate unappropriated natural resources (land, air, water, etc.)."[124]
Methodological individualism
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For some individualists, who hold a view known as methodological individualism, the word "society" cannot refer to anything more than a very large collection of individuals. Society does not have an existence above or beyond these individuals, and thus cannot be properly said to carry out actions, since actions require intentionality, intentionality requires an agent, and society as a whole cannot be properly said to possess agency; only individuals can be agents. The same holds for the government. Under this view, a government is composed of individuals; despite that democratic governments are elected by popular vote, the fact remains that all of the activities of government are carried out by means of the intentions and actions of individuals. Strictly speaking, the government itself does not act. For example, the point is sometimes made that "we" have decided to enact a certain policy, and sometimes this usage is used to imply that the entity known as "society" supports the policy and thus it is justified. The methodological individualist points out that "we" in fact did not enact or carry out this policy; among those who voted, a certain group of people voted for the policy, individuals all, and another group voted against it. The decision that emerged was not made by the "people", or by the "government"; it was made by those on the winning side of the vote. This is significant because in any collective there exists individuals who oppose the policy whose wills are being overridden, and the use of "we" tends to obscure that fact. The individualist wishes to highlight the importance of the individual and prevent subsumption into a collective. For these reasons, methodological individualists tend to disagree with claims such as "we deserve the government we have, because we are doing it to ourselves," since perhaps that individual and very possibly many others disagree with the actions of the individuals who hold government power. That said, many individualists are willing to use "we" in reference to government or society as a convenient shorthand as long as the fact that these entities are composed of individuals is kept in mind.
Etymology
In the English language, the word "individualism" was first introduced, as a pejorative, by the Owenites in the late 1830s, although it is unclear if they were influenced by Saint-Simonianism or came up with it independently.[125] A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith, who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite. Although an early Owenite socialist, he eventually rejected its collective idea of property, and found in individualism a "universalism" that allowed for the development of the "original genius." Without individualism, Smith argued, individuals cannot amass property to increase one's happiness.[125] William Maccall, another Unitarian preacher, and probably an acquaintance of Smith, came somewhat later, although influenced by John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and German Romanticism, to the same positive conclusions, in his 1847 work "Elements of Individualism".[126]
Individualism and society
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An individualist enters into society to further his or her own interests, or at least demands the right to serve his or her own interests, without taking the interests of society into consideration (an individualist need not be an egoist). The individualist does not lend credence to any philosophy that requires the sacrifice of the self-interest of the individual for any higher social causes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would argue, however, that his concept of "general will" in the "social contract" is not the simple collection of individual wills and precisely furthers the interests of the individual (the constraint of law itself would be beneficial for the individual, as the lack of respect for the law necessarily entails, in Rousseau's eyes, a form of ignorance and submission to one's passions instead of the preferred autonomy of reason).[citation needed]
Societies and groups can differ in the extent to which they are based upon predominantly "self-regarding" (individualistic, and arguably self-interested) rather than "other-regarding" (group-oriented, and group, or society-minded) behavior. Ruth Benedict made a distinction, relevant in this context, between "guilt" societies (e.g., medieval Europe) with an "internal reference standard", and "shame" societies (e.g., Japan, "bringing shame upon one's ancestors") with an "external reference standard", where people look to their peers for feedback on whether an action is "acceptable" or not (also known as "group-think").
The extent to which society or groups are "individualistic" can vary from time to time, and from country to country. For example, Japanese society is more group-oriented (e.g., decisions tend to be taken by consensus among groups, rather than by individuals), and it has been argued that "personalities are less developed" (than is usual in the West).[citation needed] Compare individualistic culture.
John Kenneth Galbraith made a classic distinction between "private affluence and public squalor" in the USA, and private squalor and public affluence in (for example) Europe, and there is a correlation between individualism and degrees of public-sector intervention and taxation.[citation needed]
Individualism is often contrasted[127] either with totalitarianism or with collectivism, but in fact there is a spectrum of behaviors at the societal level ranging from highly individualistic societies through mixed societies (a term the UK has used[citation needed] in the post-World War II period) to collectivist.
Individualism, sometimes closely associated with certain variants of anarchism or liberalism, typically takes it for granted that individuals know best and that public authority or society has no right to interfere in the person's decision-making process, unless a very compelling need to do so arises (and maybe not even in those circumstances). This type of argument can occur in policy debates regarding regulation of industries, as well as in relation to personal choice of lifestyle.
Individualism as creative independent lifestyle
The anarchist[128] writer and bohemian Oscar Wilde wrote in his famous essay The Soul of Man under Socialism that "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine."[129] For anarchist historian George Woodcock "Wilde's aim in The Soul of Man under Socialism is to seek the society most favorable to the artist...for Wilde art is the supreme end, containing within itself enlightenment and regeneration, to which all else in society must be subordinated...Wilde represents the anarchist as aesthete."[130] The word individualism in this way has been used to denote a personality with a strong tendency towards self creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors[2][4]
Anarchist writer Murray Bookchin describes a lot of individualist anarchism as people who "expressed their opposition in uniquely personal forms, especially in fiery tracts, outrageous behavior, and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural ghettos of fin de sicle New York, Paris, and London. As a credo, individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom ('free love') and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing."[79]
In relation to this view of individuality, French Individualist anarchist Emile Armand advocates egoistical denial of social conventions and dogmas to live in accord to one's own ways and desires in daily life since he emphasized anarchism as a way of life and practice. In this way he manifests "So the anarchist individualist tends to reproduce himself, to perpetuate his spirit in other individuals who will share his views and who will make it possible for a state of affairs to be established from which authoritarianism has been banished. It is this desire, this will, not only to live, but also to reproduce oneself, which we shall call "activity".[131]
In the book Imperfect garden : the legacy of humanism, humanist philosopher Tzvetan Todorov identifies individualism as an important current of socio-political thought within modernity and as examples of it he mentions Michel de Montaigne, François de La Rochefoucauld, Marquis de Sade, and Charles Baudelaire[132] In La Rochefoucauld, he identifies a tendency similar to stoicism in which "the honest person works his being in the manner of an sculptor who searches the liberation of the forms which are inside a block of marble, to extract the truth of that matter."[132] In Baudelaire he finds the dandy trait in which one searches to cultivate "the idea of beauty within oneself, of satisfying one´s passions of feeling and thinking."[132]
The Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky one manifested that "The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even—if you will—eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with."[133] Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared", “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist”—a point of view developed at length in both the life and work of (Henry David) Thoreau. Equally memorable and influential on Walt Whitman is Emerson’s idea that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”...Emerson opposes on principle the reliance on social structures (civil, religious) precisely because through them the individual approaches the divine second hand, mediated by the once original experience of a genius from another age: “An institution,” as he explains, “is the lengthened shadow of one man.” To achieve this original relation one must “Insist on one’s self; never imitate” for if the relationship is secondary the connection is lost."[134]
See also
References
- ^ a b http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/286303/individualism "Individualism" on Encyclopædia Britannica Online
- ^ a b c d e f http://www.thefreedictionary.com/individualism "individualism" on The Free Dictionary
- ^ a b L. Susan Brown. The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism. BLACK ROSE BOOKS LID. 1993
- ^ a b http://www.jstor.org/pss/2570771 Bohemianism: the underworld of Art by George S. Snyderman and William Josephs
- ^ "The leading intellectual trait of the era was the recovery, to a certain degree, of the secular and humane philosophy of Greece and Rome. Another humanist trend which cannot be ignored was the rebirth of individualism, which, developed by Greece and Rome to a remarkable degree, had been suppressed by the rise of a caste system in the later Roman Empire, by the Church and by feudalism in the Middle Ages."The history guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History"
- ^ "Anthropocentricity and individualism...Humanism and Italian art were similar in giving paramount attention to human experience, both in its everyday immediacy and in its positive or negative extremes...The human-centredness of Renaissance art, moreover, was not just a generalized endorsement of earthly experience. Like the humanists, Italian artists stressed the autonomy and dignity of the individual.""Humanism" on Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Abbs 1986, cited in Klein 2005, pp.26-27
- ^ Sanders, Steven M. Is egoism morally defensible? Philosophia. Springer Netherlands. Volume 18, Numbers 2–3 / July, 1988
- ^ Rachels 2008, p. 534.
- ^ Ridgely, D.A. (August 24, 2008). "Selfishness, Egoism and Altruistic Libertarianism". http://www.positiveliberty.com/2008/08/selfishness-egoism-and-altruistic-libertarianism.html. Retrieved 2008-08-24.[dead link]
- ^ "About the Author" in Rand 1992, pp. 1170–1171
- ^ Macquarrie, John. Existentialism, New York (1972), pp. 18–21.
- ^ Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, New York (1995), p. 259.
- ^ Macquarrie. Existentialism, pp. 14–15.
- ^ Cooper, D. E. Existentialism: A Reconstruction (Basil Blackwell, 1999, p. 8)
- ^ Marino, Gordon. Basic Writings of Existentialism (Modern Library, 2004, p. ix, 3).
- ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/
- ^ Watts, Michael. Kierkegaard (Oneworld, 2003, pp, 4-6).
- ^ Lowrie, Walter. Kierkegaard's attack upon "Christendom" (Princeton, 1968, pp. 37-40)
- ^ Corrigan, John. The Oxford handbook of religion and emotion (Oxford, 2008, pp. 387-388)
- ^ Livingston, James et al. Modern Christian Thought: The Twentieth Century (Fortress Press, 2006, Chapter 5: Christian Existentialism).
- ^ Martin, Clancy. Religious Existentialism in Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (Blackwell, 2006, pages 188-205)
- ^ Robert C. Solomon, Existentialism (McGraw-Hill, 1974, pages 1–2)
- ^ D.E. Cooper Existentialism: A Reconstruction (Basil Blackwell, 1999, page 8).
- ^ Ernst Breisach, Introduction to Modern Existentialism, New York (1962), page 5
- ^ Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism: From Dostoevesky to Sartre, New York (1956), page 12
- ^ Guignon, Charles B. and Derk Pereboom. Existentialism: basic writings (Hackett Publishing, 2001, page xiii)
- ^ Hastings, James. Encyclopedia of Religion
- ^ Compact Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2007. "humanism n. 1 a rationalistic system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. 2 a Renaissance cultural movement that turned away from medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought." Typically, abridgments of this definition omit all senses except #1, such as in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Collins Essential English Dictionary, and Webster's Concise Dictionary. New York: RHR Press. 2001. p. 177.
- ^ "Definitions of humanism (subsection)". Institute for Humanist Studies. http://humaniststudies.org/humphil.html. Retrieved 16 Jan 2007.
- ^ Edwords, Fred (1989). "What Is Humanism?". American Humanist Association. http://www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/about_humanism/What_is_Humanism. Retrieved 19 August 2009. "Secular and Religious Humanists both share the same worldview and the same basic principles... From the standpoint of philosophy alone, there is no difference between the two. It is only in the definition of religion and in the practice of the philosophy that Religious and Secular Humanists effectively disagree."
- ^ Hedonism, 2004-04-20 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ^ Wayne Gabardi, review of Anarchism by David Miller, published in American Political Science Review Vol. 80, No. 1. (Mar., 1986), pp. 300-302.
- ^ According to scholar Allan Antliff, Benjamin Tucker coined the term "philosophical anarchism," to distinguish peaceful evolutionary anarchism from revolutionary variants. Antliff, Allan. 2001. Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde. University of Chicago Press. p.4
- ^ Outhwaite, William & Tourain, Alain (Eds.). (2003). Anarchism. The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought (2nd Edition, p. 12). Blackwell Publishing
- ^ Michael Freeden identifies four broad types of individualist anarchism. He says the first is the type associated with William Godwin that advocates self-government with a "progressive rationalism that included benevolence to others." The second type is the amoral self-serving rationality of Egoism, as most associated with Max Stirner. The third type is "found in Herbert Spencer's early predictions, and in that of some of his disciples such as Donisthorpe, foreseeing the redundancy of the state in the source of social evolution." The fourth type retains a moderated form of Egoism and accounts for social cooperation through the advocacy of market. Freeden, Micheal. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829414-X. pp. 313-314.
- ^ Tucker, Benjamin R., Instead of a Book, by a Man too Busy to Write One: A Fragmentary Exposition of Philosophical Anarchism (1897, New York)
- ^ Broderick, John C. Thoreau's Proposals for Legislation. American Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Autumn, 1955). p. 285
- ^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/civil%20libertarian?r=14
- ^ http://politicalcompass.org/analysis2
- ^ http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=liberalis&ending=
- ^ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-954059-4.
- ^ Locke, John (1690). Two Treatises of Government (10th edition). Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/trgov10h.htm. Retrieved January 21, 2009.
- ^ Paul E. Sigmund, editor, The Selected Political Writings of John Locke, Norton, 2003, ISBN 0-393-96451-5 p. iv "(Locke's thoughts) underlie many of the fundamental political ideas of American liberal constitutional democracy...", "At the time Locke wrote, his principles were accepted in theory by a few and in practice by none."
- ^ Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
- ^ John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, The New Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-56584-678-4
- ^ Malatesta, Errico. "Towards Anarchism". MAN! (Los Angeles: International Group of San Francisco). OCLC 3930443. http://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1930s/xx/toanarchy.htm. Agrell, Siri (2007-05-14). "Working for The Man". The Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070514.wxlanarchist14/BNStory/lifeWork/home/. Retrieved 2008-04-14. "Anarchism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 2006. Archived from the original on 14 December 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20061214085638/http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9117285. Retrieved 2006-08-29. "Anarchism". The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: 14. 2005. "Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable." The following sources cite anarchism as a political philosophy: Mclaughlin, Paul (2007). Anarchism and Authority. Aldershot: Ashgate. p. 59. ISBN 0-7546-6196-2. Johnston, R. (2000). The Dictionary of Human Geography. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers. p. 24. ISBN 0-631-20561-6.
- ^ Slevin, Carl. "Anarchism." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003.
- ^ a b "The IAF - IFA fights for : the abolition of all forms of authority whether economical, political, social, religious, cultural or sexual.""Principles of The International of Anarchist Federations"
- ^ "Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations." Emma Goldman. "What it Really Stands for Anarchy" in Anarchism and Other Essays.
- ^ Individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker defined anarchism as opposition to authority as follows "They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left, — follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism...Authority, takes many shapes, but, broadly speaking, her enemies divide themselves into three classes: first, those who abhor her both as a means and as an end of progress, opposing her openly, avowedly, sincerely, consistently, universally; second, those who profess to believe in her as a means of progress, but who accept her only so far as they think she will subserve their own selfish interests, denying her and her blessings to the rest of the world; third, those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her. These three phases of opposition to Liberty are met in almost every sphere of thought and human activity. Good representatives of the first are seen in the Catholic Church and the Russian autocracy; of the second, in the Protestant Church and the Manchester school of politics and political economy; of the third, in the atheism of Gambetta and the socialism of the socialism off Karl Marg." Benjamin Tucker. Individual Liberty.
- ^ Ward, Colin (1966). "Anarchism as a Theory of Organization". Archived from the original on 25 March 2010. http://web.archive.org/web/20100325081119/http://www.panarchy.org/ward/organization.1966.html. Retrieved 1 March 2010.
- ^ Anarchist historian George Woodcock report of Mikhail Bakunin's anti-authoritarianism and shows opposition to both state and non-state forms of authority as follows: "All anarchists deny authority; many of them fight against it." (pg. 9)...Bakunin did not convert the League's central committee to his full program, but he did persuade them to accept a remarkably radical recommendation to the Berne Congress of September 1868, demanding economic equality and implicitly attacking authority in both Church and State."
- ^ Brown, L. Susan (2002). "Anarchism as a Political Philosophy of Existential Individualism: Implications for Feminism". The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism and Anarchism. Black Rose Books Ltd. Publishing. p. 106.
- ^ "That is why Anarchy, when it works to destroy authority in all its aspects, when it demands the abrogation of laws and the abolition of the mechanism that serves to impose them, when it refuses all hierarchical organization and preaches free agreement — at the same time strives to maintain and enlarge the precious kernel of social customs without which no human or animal society can exist." Peter Kropotkin. Anarchism: its philosophy and ideal
- ^ "anarchists are opposed to irrational (e.g., illegitimate) authority, in other words, hierarchy — hierarchy being the institutionalisation of authority within a society." "B.1 Why are anarchists against authority and hierarchy?" in An Anarchist FAQ
- ^ "ANARCHISM, a social philosophy that rejects authoritarian government and maintains that voluntary institutions are best suited to express man’s natural social tendencies." George Woodcock. "Anarchism" at The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ^ "In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions." Peter Kropotkin. “Anarchism” from the Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Errico Malatesta. "Anarchism, Individualism and Organization" at the 1907 International Anarchist Congress
- ^ "What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience."Mini-Manual of Individualism by Han Ryner
- ^ "I do not admit anything except the existence of the individual, as a condition of his sovereignty. To say that the sovereignty of the individual is conditioned by Liberty is simply another way of saying that it is conditioned by itself.""Anarchism and the State" in Individual Liberty
- ^ Everhart, Robert B. The Public School Monopoly: A Critical Analysis of Education and the State in American Society. Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 1982. p. 115.
- ^ a b William Godwin entry by Mark Philip in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006-05-20
- ^ Adams, Ian. Political Ideology Today. Manchester University Press, 2001. p. 116.
- ^ Godwin, William (1796) [1793]. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners. G.G. and J. Robinson. OCLC 2340417.
- ^ Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Retrieved 7 December 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
- ^ Paul McLaughlin. Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007. p. 119.
- ^ Goodway, David. Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow. Liverpool University Press, 2006, p. 99.
- ^ a b Max Stirner entry by David Leopold in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006-08-04
- ^ The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge. Encyclopedia Corporation. p. 176.
- ^ Miller, David. "Anarchism." 1987. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Blackwell Publishing. p. 11.
- ^ "What my might reaches is my property; and let me claim as property everything I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as fas as I entitle, that is, empower myself to take..." In Ossar, Michael. 1980. Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller. SUNY Press. p. 27.
- ^ Nyberg, Svein Olav. "max stirner". Non Serviam. http://www.nonserviam.com/stirner/philosophy/index.html. Retrieved 2008-12-04.[dead link]
- ^ Thomas, Paul (1985). Karl Marx and the Anarchists. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul. p. 142. ISBN 0-7102-0685-2.
- ^ Carlson, Andrew (1972). "Philosophical Egoism: German Antecedents". Anarchism in Germany. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-0484-0. http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/carlson.html. Retrieved 2008-12-04.
- ^ Palmer, Brian (2010-12-29) What do anarchists want from us?, Slate.com
- ^ William Bailie, [1] Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist — A Sociological Study, Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1906, p. 20
- ^ a b "2. Individualist Anarchism and Reaction" in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism - An Unbridgeable Chasm
- ^ The Free Love Movement and Radical Individualism By Wendy McElroy
- ^ "La insumisión voluntaria: El anarquismo individualista español durante la Dictadura y la Segunda República (1923-1938)" by Xavier Díez
- ^ "Los anarco-individualistas, G.I.A...Una escisión de la FAI producida en el IX Congreso (Carrara, 1965) se pr odujo cuando un sector de anarquistas de tendencia humanista rechazan la interpretación que ellos juzgan disciplinaria del pacto asociativo" clásico, y crean los GIA (Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica) . Esta pequeña federación de grupos, hoy nutrida sobre todo de veteranos anarco-individualistas de orientación pacifista, naturista, etcétera defiende la autonomía personal y rechaza a rajatabla toda forma de intervención en los procesos del sistema, como sería por ejemplo el sindicalismo. Su portavoz es L'Internazionale con sede en Ancona. La escisión de los GIA prefiguraba, en sentido contrario, el gran debate que pronto había de comenzar en el seno del movimiento""El movimiento libertario en Italia" by Bicicleta. REVISTA DE COMUNICACIONES LIBERTARIAS Year 1 No. Noviembre, 1 1977
- ^ "Proliferarán así diversos grupos que practicarán el excursionismo, el naturismo, el nudismo, la emancipación sexual o el esperantismo, alrededor de asociaciones informales vinculadas de una manera o de otra al anarquismo. Precisamente las limitaciones a las asociaciones obreras impuestas desde la legislación especial de la Dictadura potenciarán indirectamente esta especie de asociacionismo informal en que confluirá el movimiento anarquista con esta heterogeneidad de prácticas y tendencias. Uno de los grupos más destacados, que será el impulsor de la revista individualista Ética será el Ateneo Naturista Ecléctico, con sede en Barcelona, con sus diferentes secciones la más destacada de las cuales será el grupo excursionista Sol y Vida.""La insumisión voluntaria: El anarquismo individualista español durante la Dictadura y la Segunda República (1923-1938)" by Xavier Díez
- ^ "Les anarchistes individualistes du début du siècle l'avaient bien compris, et intégraient le naturisme dans leurs préoccupations. Il est vraiment dommage que ce discours se soit peu à peu effacé, d'antan plus que nous assistons, en ce moment, à un retour en force du puritanisme (conservateur par essence).""Anarchisme et naturisme, aujourd'hui." by Cathy Ytak
- ^ Wendy McElroy. "The culture of individualist anarchist in Late-nineteenth century America"
- ^ Xavier Diez. El anarquismo individualista en España (1923-1939) Virus Editorial. 2007. pg. 143
- ^ The "Illegalists", by Doug Imrie (published by Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed)
- ^ Parry, Richard. The Bonnot Gang. Rebel Press, 1987. p. 15
- ^ Modern political philosophy (1999), Richard Hudelson, p, 37
- ^ David Conway. Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal. Palgrave Macmillan. 1998. ISBN 978-0-312-21932-1 p. 8
- ^ Mutualist.org Introduction
- ^ Miller, David. 1987. "Mutualism." The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Blackwell Publishing. p. 11
- ^ Tandy, Francis D., 1896, Voluntary Socialism, chapter 6, paragraph 15.
- ^ Tucker said, "the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labour, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labour by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labour. . . . And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege. . . every man will be a labourer exchanging with fellow-labourers . . . What Anarchistic-Socialism aims to abolish is usury . . . it wants to deprive capital of its reward."Benjamin Tucker. Instead of a Book, p. 404]
- ^ a b Ostergaard, Geoffrey. "Anarchism". A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Blackwell Publishing, 1991. p. 21.
- ^ a b Chomsky, Noam and Carlos Peregrín Otero. Language and Politics. AK Press, 2004, p. 739
- ^ Bookchin, Murray and Janet Biehl. The Murray Bookchin Reader. Cassell, 1997. p. 170
- ^ Hicks, Steven V. and Daniel E. Shannon. The American journal of economics and sociolology. Blackwell Pub, 2003. p. 612
- ^ As Noam Chomsky put it, a consistent libertarian "must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery, which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer". Chomsky, Noam. Otero, Carlos. Radical Priorities AK Press (2003) p.26
- ^ Paul Zarembka. Transitions in Latin America and in Poland and Syria. Emerald Group Publishing, 2007. p. 25
- ^ Guerin, Daniel. Anarchism: A Matter of Words: "Some contemporary anarchists have tried to clear up the misunderstanding by adopting a more explicit term: they align themselves with libertarian socialism or communism." Faatz, Chris, Towards a Libertarian Socialism.
- ^ Ross, Dr. Jeffery Ian. Controlling State Crime, Transaction Publishers (200) p. 400
- ^ Mendes, Silva. Socialismo Libertário ou Anarchismo Vol. 1 (1896): "Society should be free through mankind's spontaneous federative affiliation to life, based on the community of land and tools of the trade; meaning: Anarchy will be equality by abolition of private property and liberty by abolition of authority".
- ^ Ackelsberg, Martha A. (2005). Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women. AK Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-902593-96-8.
- ^ Rocker, Rudolf (2004). Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. AK Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-902593-92-0.
- ^ Sims, Franwa (2006). The Anacostia Diaries As It Is. Lulu Press. p. 160.
- ^ A Mutualist FAQ: A.4. Are Mutualists Socialists?
- ^ Kent Bromley, in his preface to Peter Kropotkin's book The Conquest of Bread, considered early French utopian socialist Charles Fourier to be the founder of the libertarian branch of socialist thought, as opposed to the authoritarian socialist ideas of Babeuf and Buonarroti."Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread, preface by Kent Bromley, New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1906.
- ^ "(Benjamin) Tucker referred to himself many times as a socialist and considered his philosophy to be "Anarchistic socialism." "An Anarchist FAQby Various Authors
- ^ French individualist anarchist Emile Armand shows clearly opposition to capitalism and centralized economies when he said that the individualist anarchist "inwardly he remains refractory -- fatally refractory -- morally, intellectually, economically (The capitalist economy and the directed economy, the speculators and the fabricators of single are equally repugnant to him.)""Anarchist Individualism as a Life and Activity" by Emile Armand
- ^ Anarchist Peter Sabatini reports that In the United States "of early to mid-19th century, there appeared an array of communal and "utopian" counterculture groups (including the so-called free love movement). William Godwin's anarchism exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren (1798-1874), considered to be the first individualist anarchist"Peter Sabatini. "Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy"
- ^ Murray Bookchin, Ghost of Anarcho-Syndicalism; Robert Graham, The General Idea of Proudhon's Revolution
- ^ Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl. The Murray Bookchin Reader. Cassell, 1997. p. 170
- ^ Steven V Hicks, Daniel E Shannon. The American journal of economics and sociolology. Blackwell Pub, 2003. p. 612
- ^ "Libertarianism" entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Prof. Will Kymlicka "libertarianism, left-" in Honderich, Ted (2005). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-926479-7. "It combines the libertarian assumption that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership over his person with the egalitarian premise that natural resources should be shared equally. Right-wing libertarians argue that the right of self-ownership entails the right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as unequal amounts of land. According to left-libertarians, however, the world's natural resources were initially unowned, or belonged equally to all, and it is illegitimate for anyone to claim exclusive private ownership of these resources to the detriment of others. Such private appropriation is legitimate only if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if those who appropriate more are taxed to compensate those who are thereby excluded from what was once common property." See also Steiner, Hillel & Vallentyne. 2000. Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 1 - ^ a b Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran. 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. Sage Publications Inc. p. 128
- ^ Joy Palmer, David Edward Cooper, Peter Blaze Corcoran. Fifty key thinkers on the environment. Routledge. 2001. p. 241
- ^ DeLeon, David. 1978. The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 1978
- ^ Goodwin, Barbara. 1987. Using Political Ideas, 4th edition. John Wiley & Sons. p. 137-138
- ^ O'Hara, Phillip Anthony. 1999. Encyclopedia of Political Economy. Routledge. p. 15
- ^ e.g. Faatz, Chris, "Toward[s] a Libertarian Socialism." Available at [2].
- ^ Herbert Kitschelt, cited in Radical right-wing populism in Western Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 1994. pp. 180-181.
- ^ Serena Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert and the Market: A Philosophical Study, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 14, 88, 100.
- ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Libertarianism, Stanford University, July 24, 2006 version.
- ^ a b Claeys, Gregory (1986). ""Individualism," "Socialism," and "Social Science": Further Notes on a Process of Conceptual Formation, 1800-1850". Journal of the History of Ideas (University of Pennsylvania Press) 47 (1): 81–93. doi:10.2307/2709596. JSTOR 2709596.
- ^ Swart, Koenraad W. (1962). ""Individualism" in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (1826-1860)". Journal of the History of Ideas (University of Pennsylvania Press) 23 (1): 77–90. doi:10.2307/2708058. JSTOR 2708058.
- ^ Hayek, F.A. (1994). The Road to Serfdom. United States of America: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 17, 37–48. ISBN 0-226-32061-8.
- ^ "The most ambitious contribution to literary anarchism during the 1890's was undoubtedly Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man under Socialism. Wilde, as we have seen, declared himself an anarchist on at least one occasion during the 1890's, and he greatly admired Kropotkin, whom he had met. Later, in De Profundis, he described Kropotkin's life as one "of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience" and talked of him as "a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ that seems coming out of Russia." But in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, which appeared in 1890, it is Godwin rather than Kropotkin whose influence seems dominant." George Woodcock. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. 1962. (pg. 447)
- ^ The soul of man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde
- ^ George Woodcock. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. 1962. (pg. 447)
- ^ "Anarchist Individualism as a Life and Activity" by Emile Armand
- ^ a b c Imperfect garden : the legacy of humanism. Princeton University Press. 2002.
- ^ http://quotes.dictionary.com/The_surest_defense_against_Evil_is_extreme_individualism Share Joseph Brodsky Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940) Address, 1984, delivered at Williams College. "A Commencement Address," Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986).
- ^ "Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)" on Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Further reading
- Brown, L. Susan (1993). The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism. BLACK ROSE BOOKS LID.
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1847). Self-Reliance. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd..
- Dumont, Louis (1986). Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-16958-8.
- Lukes, Steven (1973). Individualism. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-631-14750-0.
- Renaut, Alain (1999). The Era of the Individual. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02938-5.
- Shanahan, Daniel. (1991) Toward a Genealogy of Individualism. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0-87023-811-6.
- Watt, Ian. (1996) Myths of Modern Individualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-48011-6.
- Barzilai, Gad. (2003). Communities and Law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-11315-1.
- Fruehwald, Edwin, A Biological Basis of Rights, 19 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 195 (2010).
External links
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Translations:
Top
Individualism
Dansk (Danish)
n. - individualisme, egoisme
Nederlands (Dutch)
individualisme, zelfzuchtigheid
Français (French)
n. - individualisme
Deutsch (German)
n. - Individualismus
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ατομικισμός, ατομοκρατία, ατομικότητα
Italiano (Italian)
individualismo
Português (Portuguese)
n. - individualismo (m)
Русский (Russian)
индивидуализм
Español (Spanish)
n. - individualismo
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - individualism, individualitet, egoism
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
个人主义, 利己主义
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 個人主義, 利己主義
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 個人主義, 利己主義, 個性, 特異性
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) الفرديه
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - עקרון העצמאות האישית וההישענות העצמית, אנוכיות, אגואיזם, אינדיבידואליזם, תיאוריה חברתית התומכת בפעולה חופשית של יחידים
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Mentioned in
Qualities of Adult Youth Ministers
(Spirituality & Philosophy Film)
Robert Cushman
(literature)
Up Is Down
(1970 Children's/Family Film)
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