Individualism

INDIVIDUALISM. - It is, in general, every system, tendency or orientation 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, individualism therefore amounts to the denial of universal realities or values that transcend the individual: as such it is implicit (although the use of the term in this sense is rare: 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 metaphysical-gnoseological presuppositions there depend, logically, the further systematic expressions that individualism has assumed particularly in the ethical, religious, social-political and economic fields.

As a psychological tendency and attitude, individualism admits of moderate forms, in accordance with the just appreciation of individual values made by Christianity, and can have manifestations in all the expressions of life and action, wherever the individual emphasizes, against norms, laws or traditional canons, against the common practice of groups and collectivities, the characteristics of his own individuality. Indeed, sometimes, although improperly, one speaks of individualism in the case of groups themselves (nationalities, lineages, regions, associations) when they tend toward the preservation, development and strengthening of their own 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, to which alone the term individualism refers, is taken as identical with the person) occurs in the classical age with the naturalistic and empiricist doctrines of Democritus, of the Sophists, Cynics and 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 (striking is the prominence that individual self-consciousness assumes in St. Augustine) is integrated with a vivid sense of community and of the Church; nevertheless, manifestations of individualism can be discerned in certain heretical movements and tendencies both in the ethical and in the religious field (Beghards, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Fraticelli). Individual values, on the other hand, assume particular meaning and importance in humanistic culture. With the Renaissance, individualism returns to having a naturalistic character (G. Cardano, L. Valla, P. Pomponazzi), permitting a new theoretical formulation of a hedonistic form of life that represents the first expression of libertinism. Protestantism (v.), because of its doctrine of justification, attributes absolute value to the individual conscience as the norm of truth and action; and it therefore represents the beginning of an ever more unlimited celebration of individual freedom in all fields, religious, ethical and practical. In the 17th century individualism receives an explicit philosophical formulation with the great movements of empiricism (v.) and rationalism (v.), under whose impulse there arise the expressions of "free thought," of moral utilitarianism, of the political doctrines and of the economic liberalism of the 18th century. The Enlightenment (v.) can be called individualism insofar as it exalts individual reason and its autonomy in the face of any extrinsic norm of authority, tradition and Revelation. The devaluation of reason, brought about principally by Romanticism (v.), gives new foundations to individualistic expressions, leading to the exaltation of one's own individuality as a power of action (Fr. Nietzsche). In the 19th century individualism acquires the meaning and value of a political struggle against the State, in defense of the civil rights of the individual and of freedom of conscience, and subsequently it sets itself in antithesis to socialist movements, especially in the Marxist formulation. This political individualism, because of its various philosophical and economic foundations, takes shape in the two attitudes, liberal and democratic. In the 20th century individualism has expressed itself in various pragmatistic and subjectivistic systems, especially English and American, and is taken almost as having a metaphysical meaning (even if the use of the term in this sense is absent) in the various forms of existentialism (v.) which, taking up certain attitudes of S. Kirkegaard (in whom the most vivid sense of the value of the individual was nourished by solid religious motives), and certain formulations of Nietzsche, attributes meaning and positivity solely to the single individual as such and to his existential moments, however understood and evaluated, according to the particular theorization of existence itself that is given in the various currents.

For a clear definition of the positions of individualism and an objective evaluation of them, it is indispensable to examine its principal forms separately.

I. ETHICAL INDIVIDUALISM

In the strict sense, ethical I. defends the absolute autonomy and moral independence of the individual, considered as an end in himself and therefore as the norm of good and evil. In the Sophists it presents itself as a humanistic movement of education, which tends, through a perfect technical knowledge, toward the full development of individual capacities (ἀρχή), even in their political relations. I. takes on an exclusively subjective and egoistic meaning in the Cynics, who valorize the primordial instincts of nature, and in 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.). Skepticism (v.) does not differ substantially from it, whether ancient (Pyrrho, ibid., 101 ff.) or modern, in its exclusion of any universal norm of moral values. In the 17th and 18th centuries, ethical I. takes the form of utilitarianism (v.). The Kantian morality cannot properly be called individualistic, since although it rejects every extrinsic or transcendent norm of morality, nevertheless practical reason posits itself, in the individual conscience, as an essentially universal law. On the contrary, intuitionism (v.) and moral sentimentalism (D. Hume, Scottish School, Fr. Hutcheson, Th. Reid; Shaftesbury defends an "altruistic" I. insofar as the individual, perfecting himself in the full and rich unfolding of individuality, harmonizes with society and with the world) must logically be traced back to I., since it ascribes moral values to a factor or principle individualistic by its very nature, such as, principally, feeling; and so must the ethics of Nietzsche, which, while admitting an objective morality suited to the masses, withdraws from any ethical norm other than one's own action and will to power the eminent individualities (ethics of the "superman"). In practice, ethical I., if pushed to its logical conclusions, translates into the most absolute moral anarchism, insofar as no superior and universal norm is recognized, in any order of activity, that holds as an imperious law and directive of individual wills. This extreme form was theorized in the individualistic radicalism of M. Stirner, who advocates the full emancipation of the individual - outside of whom there is no good or law or will - and therefore an absolute theoretical-practical egoism (cf. Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, Leipzig 1845; Ital. trans. 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 ("enads") as the original and operative forces of the real, 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 of deism (v.). The widespread tendency (which received systematic theorization in F. Schleiermacher) to regard religion as exclusively a matter of conscience, of feeling and of individual aspirations, is another manifestation of religious i.: logically it concludes in the effective dissolution of every objective, dogmatic, universal content of faith and therefore in religious subjectivism. As a tendency, religious i. is at the basis, as has been mentioned, of many medieval heretical movements; of Protestantism, of which it represents an essential element in its intimate doctrinal structure (v. LUTERO; RIFORMA); of Jansenism (v.) and of Modernism (v.), which assigns, in the determination of the norm and of the truths of faith, an essential function to religious experience (v.), above all that of individual persons. A further expression of religious i. (of which tempered manifestations sometimes appear in Catholic spiritual schools themselves) is found in the tendency (and in the corresponding doctrine) to undervalue worship and the public expressions of piety (liturgy), and therefore also the juridical, social and hierarchical organization of the Church, in order to place before them, in a more or less exclusive measure, individual prayer and piety (v., for an evaluation of this aspect of i., the entries CHIESA; CORPO MISTICO; COMUNIONE DEI SANTI).

III. INDIVIDUALISM SOCIAL-POLITICAL

It is the system that regards the good and interest of the individual as the sole reason for the existence of society, its forms and developments. Individualistic, therefore, are the forms that derive the origin of the State from contractualism: J. Locke, Th. Hobbes (society is born from the conflict of the rights of individuals, with the purpose of guaranteeing their essential goods), J.-J. Rousseau (society is the fruit of a free contract of individuals and must serve as a simple protection of individual natural liberties and rights). In the individualistic conception the individual, as the depositary and bearer of all values, is the only true reality and preserves within the social collectivity his radical autonomy. There is in society no other perfection or spiritual content than that which is put into act by the collectivity of individuals: the structure of society must be understood solely as a complex or sum of individual values, relations and rights, coordinated and harmonized among themselves (an "atomistic" conception of society). Society therefore has no value for itself, nor is a true and proper subordination of individual rights to social duties conceivable: individual rights find their limit only in the analogous rights of other individuals. The task of authority (which in the individualistic conception is nothing but the synthesis of individual wills) is therefore to protect individual liberty and to guarantee its maximum development. Consequently the intervention of the State is reduced to a minimum in any order of activity: education, instruction, culture, religion, school, family. It is due, in part, to political individualism (which in practice also admits of various gradations, from a sound liberalism to its extreme expression in political anarchism) that democratic forms with universal suffrage and popular representation became established in modern regimes.

To social individualism must be referred the practice and doctrine of the anti-conformist and anti-traditionalist attitude that claims for the individual the right of free discussion and criticism of every opinion, institution, tradition, authority, law, belief (libertines, free thinkers, encyclopedists). The influence of social individualism has particular reflections in the pedagogical field, entirely marked by an optimistic naturalism for which social bonds are often considered as mortifications of 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 the economic liberalism theorized by A. Smith, and then by the great representatives of the liberal-economic school (J. Bentham, J. Stuart Mill; v. LIBERALISM). Economic i. defends the full unfolding and therefore the protection of private initiative: any form of activity, enterprise and competition must be admitted and stimulated in the acquisition, production, distribution and consumption of wealth. From the free play of the activities of individuals, from the mutual interweaving and clash of individual interests, the greatest common good permitted by economic laws will necessarily be realized together with private profit. These principles are invoked for every form and moment of economic activity: therefore the intervention of authority is denied, in principle, in the management of enterprises and industry, in conflicts between capital and labor, in the determination of the contract, quality, quantity, morality and other circumstances of the work itself; and in general a legislative regulation of production, price, and consumption of goods is excluded. Economic i. 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.).

I. undoubtedly presents, in its general theoretical formulation, a positive aspect, inasmuch as it underlines the unconditional value that belongs to the individual as an ontological being, metaphysically prior to society. The valorization of the individual as a spiritual and free subject, responsible for his own moral perfection, is in the essence of Christianity, which has condemned, 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, subordinate to them in his existence, action and freedom. Both Hegelianism, which, by denying every transcendent end of 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 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 activity and spiritual responsibility. I. therefore represents a legitimate appeal to the sense of the ontological reality of the individual. But its error lies in not recognizing the universal value of human nature and reason and therefore in the denial of the essentiality of his social relationship. Only in his capacity for communication in truth and in good can the child become a man (pedagogy) and can man tend toward an 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, in science, in art, in culture, in ethics, in religion) except in relationship with the many, in a mutual exchange of goods and values. The first and most essential conquest of man as a spiritual being, truth, is not exclusively an individual work but, in large part, a social one. The individual as such, that is, isolated in his exclusive singularity, is therefore an abstraction, as is an abstraction any dissociation and isolation of human values (e.g., "homo oeconomicus"). Society is, in history and in the becoming of the human being, a reality as positive and operative as, in the metaphysical order, the ontological structure by which the individual is sustained in his being: if it is not to be understood, contrary to what idealism claims, as the Absolute in which the individual emerges as a fleeting moment, and again, as such, is submerged, it nonetheless stands as the condition and the essential instrument of the theoretical and practical actualization of the individual. And this in accordance, insofar as it is given to the human mind to comprehend, with the universal structure of being, organically compact in an intrinsic relationship of metaphysical-cosmic solidarity. The meaning and the function that must be recognized in the Church as a supernatural society lies precisely in its intimate correspondence to the social nature of the human being.

If therefore there is a sound i. that recognizes, in the historical, ethical, pedagogical, social-political-economic order, the metaphysical autonomy and therefore the original rights of the human person in the face of society, it cannot however fail to take into account the immanence of sociality in the human person himself, and must therefore be tempered, in its formulations and explications, according to the demands that - by its very nature and according to contingent historical circumstances - the consistency, solidity and perfection of the social bond bring to bear. And it is on the basis of such a conception of the individual-society relationship that Catholic thought, affirming the value and autonomy of the person, an interior principle of moral responsibility, precludes, in theory and in practice, through the commitment of social solidarity, his dissolution and mortification in egoism (v.), the necessary logical conclusion of i. For this reason Christian thought has developed and continues to develop, in opposition to the grave deviations of i., the new concept of personalism (v.).

Ugo Viglino