INDIVIDUALISM. — In general, it is any system, approach, or tendency that considers the 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, the equivalent consists in the negation of universal realities or values that transcend the individual: as such, it is implicit (though 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.) and nominalism (v.) that limit the sphere of reality and truth to the concrete (individual) data of experience. From the metaphysical-epistemological presuppositions, logically, depend the further systematic expressions that it has assumed particularly in the ethical, religious, socio-political, and economic spheres.
As a tendency and psychological attitude, it assumes temperate forms, in accordance with the proper appreciation that Christianity accords to individual values, and may manifest itself in all expressions of life and action, wherever the individual accentuates, against norms, laws, or traditional canons, against the common practice of groups and collectivities, the characteristics of his own individuality. Indeed, at times—though improperly—the term is applied even to groups (nationalities, races, regions, associations) when they tend toward the preservation, explication, and enhancement of their distinct characteristics (biological, racial, cultural) in comparison with other groups and collectivities.
A first theoretical formulation of the absolute value of the individual (which, in the order of human reality—where alone the term is applicable—is assumed to be identical with the person) is found in classical antiquity with the naturalistic and empiricist doctrines of Democritus, the Sophists, Cynics, Hedonists, and later Epicurus. In ancient and medieval Christian thought, the clear consciousness derived from Revelation of the value of the individual as a person (it is well known how central individual self-awareness is in St. Augustine) is integrated with a vivid sense of community and the Church; yet manifestations of individualism can still be discerned in some heterodox movements and tendencies, both in the ethical and religious spheres (Beghards, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Fraticelli). Individual values, however, assume particular significance and importance in humanistic culture. With the Renaissance, individualism again takes on a naturalistic character (G. Cardano, L. Valla, P. Pomponazzi), allowing a new theoretical formulation of a hedonistic form of life that represents the first expression of libertinism. Protestantism (v.), through its doctrine of justification, attributes absolute value to individual conscience as the norm of truth and action; and thus represents the beginning of an ever more unlimited celebration of individual freedom in all spheres—religious, ethical, and practical. In the 17th century, it receives an explicit philosophical formulation through the great movements of empiricism (v.) and rationalism (v.), under whose impulse emerge expressions of "free thought," moral utilitarianism, and the political and economic liberalism of the 18th century. The Enlightenment (v.) may be said to be individualistic insofar as it exalts individual reason and its autonomy in the face of any extrinsic norm of authority, tradition, or Revelation. The devaluation of reason, chiefly through Romanticism (v.), provides new bases for individualistic expressions, leading to the exaltation of individuality as a power of action (Fr. Nietzsche). In the 19th century, it acquires 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 sets itself in antithesis to socialist movements, especially in their Marxist formulation. This political individualism, due to its diverse philosophical and economic foundations, takes shape in two attitudes: liberal and democratic. In the 20th century, it has found expression in various pragmatic and subjectivist systems, chiefly British and American, and has been assumed almost to the point of metaphysical significance (even if the term is not used in this sense) in the various forms of existentialism (v.), which, drawing on certain attitudes of S. Kierkegaard (in whom the vivid sense of the value of the individual was nourished by solid religious motives) and some formulations of Nietzsche, attributes meaning and positivity solely to the individual as such and to his existential moments, however understood and evaluated, according to the particular theorization of existence given in the various schools.
For a clear definition of the positions of individualism and an objective evaluation of them, it is essential to examine its principal forms separately.
I. ETHICAL INDIVIDUALISM
In the strict sense, ethical individualism defends the absolute autonomy and moral independence of the individual, considered as an end in itself and thus as the norm of good and evil. Among the Sophists, it appears as a humanistic educational movement that aims, through perfect technical knowledge, at the full realization of individual capacities (ἀρετή), even in their political relations. Individualism assumes an exclusively subjective and egoistic meaning among the Cynics, who exalt the primitive instincts of nature, and among the Cyrenaics, who transform morality into the art of pleasure (cf. Diogenes Laertius, II, 87 ff.). This hedonism finds its complete formulation in the system of Epicurus (ibid., 136 ff.). Substantially no different is skepticism (v.), both ancient (Pyrrho, ibid., 101 ff.) and modern, in its exclusion of any universal norm of moral values. In the 17th and 18th centuries, ethical individualism takes the form of utilitarianism (v.). Kantian morality cannot properly be called individualistic, since although it rejects every extrinsic or transcendent norm of morality, practical reason posits itself, in individual conscience, as essentially universal law. On the contrary, intuitionism (v.) and moral sentimentalism (D. Hume, the Scottish School, Fr. Hutcheson, Th. Reid; Shaftesbury defends an "altruistic" individualism insofar as the individual, perfecting himself in the full and rich expression of his individuality, harmonizes with society and the world) must logically be traced back to individualism, since it ascribes moral values to a factor or principle that is by nature individualistic, such as feeling; and Nietzschean ethics, which, while admitting an objective morality for the masses, exempts outstanding individuals from any ethical norm other than their own will to power (ethics of the "Übermensch"). In practice, ethical individualism, if carried to its logical conclusions, results in the most absolute moral anarchism, since no superior and universal norm is recognized in any sphere of activity that can serve as a governing and directive law for individual wills. This extreme form was theorized in the radical individualism of M. Stirner, who advocates the full emancipation of the individual—outside of whom there is no good, law, or will—and thus an absolute theoretical-practical egoism (cf. Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, Leipzig 1845; Italian trans. by E. Zoccoli, 3rd ed., Turin 1921). Atheism and absolute relativism also characterize the pessimistic individualism of J. A. Bahnsen, who, in opposition to Schopenhauer’s universal will, admits only finite personalities ("Endi") 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 INDIVIDUALISM
In the strict sense, it advocates the independence of the individual from every faith and positive Revelation: historically it was among the essential claims of free thought and deism (v.). The widespread tendency (which has had systematic theorization in F. Schleiermacher) to consider religion as an exclusive matter of conscience, feeling, and individual aspirations is another manifestation of religious individualism: logically it leads to the effective dissolution of every objective, dogmatic, universal content of faith and thus to religious subjectivism. As a tendency, religious individualism is at the root, as has been noted, of many medieval heretical movements; of Protestantism, of which it represents an essential element in its structured inner life (v. LUTHER; REFORMATION); of Jansenism (v.) and Modernism (v.), which attributes, in determining the norm and truths of faith, an essential function to religious experience (v.), first and foremost of individuals. A further expression of religious individualism (of which there sometimes appear temperate manifestations even in Catholic spiritual schools) is found in the tendency (and the related doctrine) to undervalue worship and public expressions of piety (liturgy), and thus also the juridical, social, hierarchical organization of the Church, in order to prioritize, to a more or less exclusive degree, private prayer and individual piety (v. , for an evaluation of this aspect of individualism, the entries CHURCH; MYSTICAL BODY; COMMUNION OF SAINTS).
III. SOCIAL-POLITICAL INDIVIDUALISM
It is the system that considers the good and individual interest as the sole raison d'être of society, of its forms and developments. Individualistic, therefore, are the forms that derive the origin of the State from contractualism: J. Locke, Th. Hobbes (society arises from the conflict of individual rights, with the aim of guaranteeing essential goods), J.-J. Rousseau (society is the result of a free contract among individuals and must serve simply as protection for natural individual freedoms and rights). In the individualistic conception, the individual, as the repository and bearer of all values, is the only true reality and retains his radical autonomy within social collectivity. There is no other perfection or spiritual content in society than that which is actualized by the collectivity of individuals: the structure of society is to be understood solely as a complex or sum of individual values, relationships, and rights, coordinated and harmonized among themselves (the “atomistic” conception of society). Society therefore has no value in itself, nor is a true subordination of individual rights to social duties conceivable: individual rights find their limit only in the similar rights of other individuals. The task of authority (which in the individualistic conception is nothing more than the synthesis of individual wills) is therefore to protect individual freedom and guarantee maximum development. Consequently, state intervention in any sphere of activity—education, instruction, culture, religion, schools, family—is reduced to a minimum. In part, it is due to social individualism (which in practice also admits various gradations, from healthy liberalism to its extreme expression in political anarchism) that modern regimes have seen the rise of democratic forms with universal suffrage and popular representation.
Social individualism is also related to the practice and doctrine of an anticonformist and anti-traditionalist attitude that claims for the individual the right to free discussion and criticism of every opinion, institution, tradition, authority, law, or belief (libertines, free thinkers, encyclopedists). The influence of social individualism has particular repercussions in the pedagogical field, which is entirely imbued with an optimistic naturalism whereby social bonds are often seen as stifling the free development of man (Rousseau).
IV. ECONOMIC INDIVIDUALISM
It derives from the optimistic principle that the free development of private initiative also leads to the maximum social development. Historically it coincides with economic liberalism theorized by A. Smith, and later by the great representatives of the liberal economic school (J. Bentham, J. Stuart Mill; V. LIBERALISM). Economic individualism defends the full expression and therefore the protection of private initiative: any form of assignment, enterprise, and competition must be admitted and encouraged in the acquisition, production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. From the free interplay of individual activities, from the mutual interweaving and clash of individual interests, there necessarily arises, along with private profit, the greatest common good permitted by economic laws. These principles are invoked for every form and moment of economic activity: hence, in principle, the intervention of authority in the management of enterprises and industry, in conflicts between capital and labor, in the determination of contracts, quality, quantity, morality, and other circumstances of labor itself is denied; and in general, legislative regulation of production, price, and consumption of goods is excluded. Economic individualism has had its maximum expression, at times unfortunately with a fairly rigorous fidelity to its theoretical principles, in the extreme forms of modern capitalism (v.).
Individualism undoubtedly presents, in its general theoretical formulation, a positive aspect, in that it emphasizes the unconditional value that belongs to the individual as an ontological being, metaphysically prior to society. The exaltation of the individual as a spiritual and free subject, responsible for his own moral perfection, is at the heart of Christianity, which has condemned, both in the past and in the present, every conception in which the individual is understood solely in function of the State, a contingent and transitory element of social structures, subordinated in its existence, action, and freedom to them. Both Hegelianism—which, by denying any transcendent end for the individual, sees in the State the exclusive reality in which and for which the ideal Absolute is realized—and Marxist collectivism—which, in reducing the individual to a naturalistic value, denies, in relation to the collectivity and its restricted ends, his autonomy and freedom—fail to correspond to the authentic situation of man as the material subject of spiritual activity and responsibility. Individualism thus represents a legitimate appeal to the ontological reality of the individual. But its error lies in failing to recognize the universal value of nature and human reason and, consequently, in denying the essential nature of man’s social relationship. It is only in his capacity for communication in truth and goodness that the child can become a man (pedagogy) and man can 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, cannot be adequately defined (in education, science, art, culture, ethics, or religion) except in relation to others, in a mutual exchange of goods and values. The first and most essential achievement of man as a spiritual being, truth, is not the work of the individual alone 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 is, in the metaphysical order, the ontological structure by which the individual sustains his being: if it is not to be understood, against what idealism claims, as the Absolute in which the individual emerges as a fleeting moment and is then, as such, submerged, it nonetheless stands as the essential condition and instrument for the theoretical and practical actualization of the individual. And this, insofar as the human mind can comprehend it, is in accord with the universal structure of being, organically compact in an intrinsic relationship of metaphysical-cosmic solidarity. The meaning 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 healthy individualism that recognizes, in the historical, ethical, pedagogical, socio-political, and economic orders, the metaphysical autonomy and thus the original rights of the human person in relation to society, it cannot, however, fail to take into account the immanence of sociality within the human person itself. It must therefore be tempered, in its formulations and applications, according to the demands that—by its very nature and in light of contingent historical circumstances—it makes for the consistency, stability, 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 as an interior principle of moral responsibility, precludes in theory and practice—through the commitment to social solidarity—the dissolution and mortification of the individual in egoism (q.v.), a necessary logical conclusion of individualism. For this reason, Christian thought has developed and continues to develop, in opposition to the grave deviations of individualism, the new concept of personalism (q.v.).