INDIVIDUALISMO. — In general, every system, orientation, individual (v.) as the most authentic and essential reality (in its extreme form, as the only authentic reality), and consequently places in it the fundamental norm of all values. In metaphysics, i. therefore amounts to the denial of universal realities or values that transcend the individual: as such, it is implicit (although the term is rarely used in this sense: Ch. Renouvier, in A. Lalande, Vocab. techn. et crit. de la philos., 5th ed., Paris 1947, p. 484, note) in the various forms of empiricism (v.) nominalism (v.) that limit the sphere of reality and truth to the concrete (individual) data of experience. The further systematic expressions that i. has assumed, particularly in the ethical, religious, sociopolitical, and economic fields, logically depend on these metaphysical-epistemological presuppositions.
As a psychological tendency and attitude, i. admits of moderate forms, in accord with the just appreciation of individual values made by Christianity, and may have manifestations in every expression of life and action, wherever the individual emphasizes the characteristics of his own individuality against traditional norms, laws, or canons, and against the common practice of groups and collectivities. Indeed, sometimes, although improperly, one speaks of i. even in the case of groups (nationalities, races, regions, associations) when they tend to preserve, express, and strengthen their own distinctive characteristics (biological, racial, cultural) in comparison with other groups and collectivities.
A first theoretical formulation of the absolute value of the individual (who, in the order of human reality, to which alone the term i. refers, is taken as identical with the person) appeared in the classical age with the naturalistic and empiricist doctrines of Democritus, the Sophists, the Cynics, and the Hedonists, and later of Epicurus. In ancient and medieval Christian thought, the clear awareness, derived from Revelation, of the value of the individual as a person (one indication is the importance assumed by individual self-consciousness in s. Agostino) was integrated with a vivid sense of community and of the Church; nevertheless, manifestations of i. may be discerned in certain heretical movements and tendencies, both in the ethical and in the religious sphere (Beguards, Brothers of the Free Spirit, Fraticelli). Individual values instead assumed particular significance and importance in humanistic culture. With the Renaissance, i. once again acquired a naturalistic character (G. Cardano, L. Valla, P. Pomponazzi), making possible a new theoretical formulation of a hedonistic form of life that represented the first expression of libertinism. Protestantism (v.), through its doctrine of justification, attributed absolute value to individual conscience as the norm of truth and action; it therefore represented the beginning of an increasingly unlimited celebration of individual freedom in every sphere—religious, ethical, and practical. In the seventeenth century, i. received an explicit philosophical formulation through the great movements of empiricism (v.) rationalism (v.), under whose impetus arose the expressions of “free thought,” moral utilitarianism, and the political doctrines and economic liberalism of the eighteenth century. Enlightenment (v.) may be called i. insofar as it exalts individual reason and its autonomy in the face of every extrinsic norm of authority, tradition, and Revelation. The devaluation of reason, Romanticism (v.), provided new foundations for individualistic expressions, leading to the exaltation of one’s own individuality as a power of action (Fr. Nietzsche). In the nineteenth century, i. acquired the meaning and value of a political struggle against the State, in defense of the civil rights of the individual and freedom of conscience, and subsequently set itself in opposition to socialist movements, especially in their Marxist formulation. This political i., on account of its various philosophical and economic foundations, took shape in the two attitudes of liberalism and democracy. In the twentieth century, i. found expression in various pragmatic and subjectivist systems, especially English and American ones, and came close to assuming a metaphysical significance (even though the term is not used in this sense) existentialism (v.) which, taking up certain attitudes of S. Kirkegaard (in whom the intensely vivid sense of the value of the individual was nourished by solid religious motives), as well as certain formulations of Nietzsche, attribute meaning and positivity solely to the individual as such and to his existential moments, however these may be understood and evaluated, according to the particular theorization of existence itself given in the various orientations.
For a clear definition of the positions of i. and an objective evaluation of them, it is indispensable to examine its principal forms separately.
I.
I. ETHICAL
In the strict sense, ethical i. defends the absolute autonomy and moral independence of the individual, considered as an end in itself and therefore as the norm of good and evil. Among the Sophists it presents itself as a humanistic movement of education, which, through a perfect technical knowledge, tends toward the full enhancement of individual capacities (ἀρχή), including in their political relations. I. assumes an exclusively subjective and egoistic significance among the Cynics, who valued the primordial instincts of nature, and among the Cyrenaics, who transformed morality into the art of pleasure (cf. Diogene Laerzio, II, 87 ff.). This hedonism finds its complete formulation in the system of Epicurus (ibid., 136 ff.). Skepticism (v.) is not substantially different, whether ancient (Pirrone, ibid., 101 ff.) or modern, in excluding any universal norm of moral values. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ethical i. utilitarianism (v.). Kantian morality cannot properly be called individualistic, since, although it rejects every extrinsic or transcendent norm of morality, practical reason nevertheless presents itself, in the individual conscience, as an essentially universal law. On the contrary, intuitionism (v.) and moral sentimentalism (D. Hume, the Scottish School, Fr. Hutcheson, Th. Reid; Shaftesbury defends an “altruistic” i., insofar as the individual, perfecting himself through the full and rich expression of individuality, harmonizes with society and with the world) must logically be traced back to i.; these attribute moral values to a factor or principle that is individualistic by its very nature, namely, above all, feeling. The Nicaean ethic, while admitting an objective morality suited to the masses, exempts eminent individualities from any ethical norm other than their own action and will to power (the ethic of the “superman”). In practice, ethical i., if driven to its logical conclusions, translates into the most absolute moral anarchism, since, in every sphere of activity, no higher and universal norm is recognized as an imperative law directing individual wills. This extreme form was theorized in the individualistic radicalism of M. Stirner, who advocated the complete emancipation of the individual—outside of whom there is no good, law, or will—and hence an absolute theoretical-practical egoism (cf. Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, Leipzig 1845; Italian translation by E. Zoccoli, 3rd ed., Turin 1921). Atheism and absolute relativism also characterize the pessimistic i. of J. A. Bahnsen, who, against Schopenhauer’s universal will, admits only finite personalities (“monads”) as the original and operative forces of reality, tormented within themselves by irrationality and division (cf. Beiträge zur Charakterologie, 2 vols., Leipzig 1867).II. RELIGIOUS I
In the strict sense, it advocates the individual’s independence from every positive faith and Revelation: historically, it was among the deism (v.). The widespread tendency (which received systematic theoretical formulation in F. Schleiermacher) to regard religion as an exclusive matter of conscience, feeling, and individual aspirations is another manifestation of religious i.: logically, it leads to the effective dissolution of every objective, dogmatic, universal content of faith and hence to religious subjectivism. As a tendency, religious i. lies at the basis, as has been mentioned, of many medieval heretical movements; of Protestantism, of which it constitutes an essential element in its intimate doctrinal structure (v. LUTERO; HIFORMA); of glansenismo (v.) modernism (v.), which attributes an essential function in determining the norm and religious experience (v.), first and foremost that of individual persons. A further expression of religious i. (of which tempered manifestations are sometimes found in Catholic spiritual schools themselves) is found in the tendency (and corresponding doctrine) to underestimate worship and the public expressions of piety (liturgy), and consequently also the juridical, social, and hierarchical organization of the Church, giving precedence to individual prayer and piety, to a greater or lesser degree exclusively (v. CHIESA; CORPO MISTICO; COMUNIONE DEI SANTI).III. SOCIAL-POLITICAL I
This is the system that regards the individual good and interest as the sole raison d’être of society and of its forms and development. Individualistic, therefore, are the forms that derive the origin of the State from contractualism: J. Locke, Th. Hobbes (society arises from the conflict of individuals’ rights, with the purpose of guaranteeing their essential goods), J.-J. Rousseau (society is the product of a free contract among individuals and must serve simply to safeguard individual natural liberties and rights). In the individualistic conception, the individual, as the repository and bearer of all values, is the sole true reality and retains his radical autonomy within the social collectivity. There is no perfection or spiritual content in society other than that brought into being by the collectivity of individuals: the structure of society is to be understood solely as a complex or sum of individual values, relations, and rights, coordinated and harmonized among themselves (the “atomistic” conception of society). Society therefore has no value in itself, nor is any genuine subordination of individual rights to social duties conceivable: individual rights find their limit only in analogous rights belonging to other individuals. The task of authority (which, in the individualistic conception, is nothing other than the synthesis of individual wills) is therefore to protect individual freedom and ensure its fullest development. Consequently, State intervention in every sphere of activity is reduced to a minimum: education, instruction, culture, religion, school, and family. The establishment of democratic forms based on universal suffrage and popular representation in modern regimes is due in part to political i. (which in practice likewise admits various gradations, from a sound liberalism to its extreme expression in political anarchism).To social i. should be referred the practice and doctrine of the nonconformist and antitraditionalist attitude that claims for the individual the right to free discussion and criticism of every opinion, institution, tradition, authority, law, and belief (libertines, freethinkers, encyclopedists). The influence of social i. has particular repercussions in the pedagogical field, which is entirely marked by an optimistic naturalism, whereby social bonds are often regarded as mortifications of man’s free development (Rousseau).
IV. ECONOMIC INDIVIDUALISM
It derives from the optimistic principle that the free development of private initiative also leads to the greatest possible social development. Historically, it coincides with the economic liberalism theorized by A. Smith and subsequently by the great representatives of the economic-liberal school (J. Bentham, J. Stuart Mill; V. LIBERALISMO). Economic individualism defends the full exercise and therefore the protection of private initiative: every form of activity, enterprise, and competition is to be admitted and encouraged in the acquisition, production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. From the free play of individual activities, from the mutual interweaving and collision of individual interests, there will necessarily be realized, together with private profit, the greatest common good permitted by economic laws. These principles are invoked for every form and stage of economic activity: in principle, therefore, the intervention of authority in the management of enterprises and industry, in conflicts between capital and labor, in determining the contract, quality, quantity, morality, and other circumstances of the work itself is denied; and, in general, legislative regulation of the production, price, and consumption of goods is excluded. Economic individualism has found its greatest expression, at times unfortunately with fairly rigorous fidelity to its theoretical principles, in capitalism (v.).Individualism undeniably presents, in its general theoretical formulation, a positive aspect, insofar as it emphasizes the unconditional value belonging to the individual as an ontological being, metaphysically prior to society. The elevation of the individual as a spiritual and free subject, responsible for his own moral perfection, lies at the essence of Christianity, which has condemned, in the past and in the present, every conception in which the individual is understood solely as a function of the State, a contingent and transitory element of social structures, subordinated to them in his existence, action, and freedom. Both Hegelianism, which, by denying any transcendent end of the individual, sees in the State the exclusive reality in which and through which the Absolute is actualized, and Marxist collectivism, which, by reducing the individual to a naturalistic value, fails to recognize, in the face of the collectivity and its earthly ends, his autonomy and freedom, do not correspond to the authentic situation of man as a metaphysical subject of spiritual activity and responsibility. Individualism therefore represents a legitimate reminder of the ontological reality of the individual. But its error lies in failing to recognize the universal value of human nature and reason and therefore in denying the essential nature of his social relationship. Only through his capacity to communicate in truth and goodness can the child become a man (pedagogy), and man strive toward ever-greater perfection, both personal and collective. The human person, as a spiritual principle situated in time and bound to a biological organism, is not adequately defined (in education, science, art, culture, ethics, or religion) except in relation to the many, through a mutual exchange of goods and values. Man’s first and most essential acquisition as a spiritual being, truth, is not exclusively an individual work but, to a large extent, a social one. The individual as such, that is, isolated in his exclusive singularity, is therefore an abstraction, as is any dissociation and isolation of human values (e.g., the « homo oeconomicus »). Society is, in the history and becoming of the human being, a reality just as positive and operative as, in the metaphysical order, the ontological structure by which the individual is sustained in his being: although it must not be understood, contrary to what idealism claims, as the Absolute in which the individual emerges as a fleeting moment and is once again, as such, submerged, it nevertheless presents itself as the essential condition and instrument for the theoretical and practical actualization of the individual. And this accords, insofar as the human mind is capable of understanding it, with the universal structure of being, organically unified in an intrinsic relation of metaphysical-cosmic solidarity. The significance and function to be recognized in the Church as a supernatural society lie precisely in its intimate correspondence to the social nature of the human being.
If, therefore, there is a sound individualism which recognizes, in the historical, ethical, pedagogical, and socio-political-economic order, the metaphysical autonomy and hence the original rights of the human person vis-à-vis society, it nevertheless cannot fail to take account of the immanence of sociality in the human person himself, and must therefore be tempered, in its formulations and expressions, according to the demands asserted—by its very nature and in accordance with contingent historical circumstances—by the substance, solidity, and perfection of the social bond. It is on the basis of this conception of the individual-society relationship that Catholic thought, while affirming the value and autonomy of the person, the interior principle of moral responsibility, prevents, in theory and practice, through its commitment to social solidarity, egoism (v.), the necessary logical conclusion of individualism. For this reason Christian thought has developed, and continues to develop, in opposition to the serious deviations of individualism, personalism (v.).