Individualism

Anglo-American Individualism

Individualism is a key part of the worldview of the Western liberal tradition, especially the Anglo-American version, whose philosophical progenitors included the [Page 649]seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, and the Englishman John Locke. In this philosophic tradition, society does not transcend the individuals who make it up. Interest-maximizing individuals (existing in a “state of nature”) exist prior to the establishment of society, which is formed when individuals recognize that it is in their interest to establish social order. Especially in its Lockean version, this “ontological individualism” was enormously influential among the founders of the United States. It envisions a society based primarily on an open-market economy, with a minimal government—conditions that would allow each individual to exercise personal autonomy most completely.

Individualism in the United States

Although primarily based on secular philosophic traditions, modern liberal, ontological individualism also has roots in Protestant religious traditions, which envision the individual as having a direct personal relationship to God, unmediated by an institutional church. The authoritative Protestant religious culture of the United States has helped to reinforce, intensify, and impart a sacred warrant to American individualism, even as parts of that religious culture have called on individuals to curb their self-interests in service of the common good.

Individualism emphasizes the dignity of each individual, respects the integrity of individual conscience, and insists on the protection of individual rights. It is central to the ideals that are most basic to American identity. As part of a liberal philosophical worldview, it has come under attack in the twentieth century from Fascists, Communists, radical nationalists, and religious fundamentalists, who believe in various ways and for various reasons in the subordination of the individual to a political community. But individualism has also come under criticism from thinkers sympathetic to its aspirations for individual freedom and integrity. These sympathetic critics note that under the conditions of dense interdependence characteristic of the modern world, individualism can lead to the opposite of the ideals of personal dignity and autonomy to which it aspires.

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