Individualism

Problems

Individualism rests on two principles:

individual freedom, or right initially to be worried condition of the individuals of the company before the condition of the company itself
moral autonomy: each individual must carry out an individual reflection, without its opinions being dictated by any social Groupe.

One could consider that Descartes is the precursor of individualism when, following the lawsuit of Galileo, emphasizing the position of the prone thinking (Cogito), it is opposed to certain types of organization of its time. The individualistic principle thus raised as of the XVIIe and 18th centuries the question of the relation between the individual interest and the General interest. How to ensure a certain cohesion in an individualistic company?

The assertion of the individual can also be regarded as a means of emphasizing the individual talents to build a viable collective organization. To oppose individualism and community is thus an error.

The individualistic principle meets however various objections. Thus any individual depends for his survival on a company, therefore of a group towards which it has duties naturally: the company allows him to live; the individualistic ideal is thus in its principle a disavowal of the living conditions of the individual. Thus principles of Nationalism, even in certain cases of Democracy (the individual must yield with the will of the majority, which Tocqueville names the “tyranny of the majority”), some Idéologie S of the type collectivist or thought political such as the Socialisme, but also in Sociologie the Méthodologie holist, tend on the contrary to give the primacy to the company on the individual.

See also: Theories of the social contract, Of the social contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Christian personalism

A weakened version of individualism is preached by thinkers like Emmanuel Mounier under the name of Personnalisme. Individualism is a form of Liberté and is posed in theory fundamental several types of company: Anarchism, Liberalism…

Anarchistic individualism

The anarchistic individualism proposes anarchistic answers to the problems of individualism. I.e. so that individualism is realized fully, it is necessary as a preliminary to be freed from any authority being exerted on the individual such as the State or the Religion. The individualistic anarchists (or individualistic anarchists) are against the private property (such as the law conceives it), whether it is personal or collective.

Liberal individualism

It consists in the refusal of any transcendent end that the community could impose on the individual. Thus for Friedrich Hayek, “to recognize the individual as judges in last spring of its own ends, to believe that as far as possible his own opinions must control its acts, such is the gasoline of individualism. ”

Individualism libertarien

Individualism Libertarien, proposes to make confidence with self-regulation: the company is founded on:

a balancing of the relations and behaviors social by tacit or formal contracts (the State and other communities being thus considered legitimate only in the form of contracts, in front of being decided freely, among others);
the exchange of services on the level of the Gone or each one would obtain satisfaction of its individual interest (bread is found because the interest of the bakers is to sell some).

The individualism from the sociological point of view

The contemporary Sociologie stresses the new character of the contemporary Western company which is announced by an unknown individualism of the old companies. In those indeed, the source of the standards and values is always external with the individual and lies primarily in the group, the company including which defines, at the ideological level, the position and the statute of the individuals, for example by assigning by the birth the place of each one in the system of castes Hindus (Louis Dumont).

On the other hand, in the Western company marked by the secularization and the disenchantment of the world (Marcel Gauchet), the individual does not recognize any more any higher and sacrilized authority. Whereas the old companies were characterized by their “holism” (according to the expression of Louis Dumont) and by their hierarchical structure (systems of the castes in India, hierarchy of the orders - clergy, nobility, Tiers State - in the Old Mode in Europe), the modern society (at least in Occident) is dominated by values of equality and freedom, characteristic of individualism (the general assertion of these values does not mean obviously that they are translated on the level of the facts).

From this point of view, Christian personalism, anarchistic individualism or liberal individualism are only alternatives (sometimes exacerbated) of an individualism much major which characterizes the whole of our Western companies.

Individualism of companies contemporary - opposed to the holism of the old companies - must not to be confused with quarrel methodological in social sciences which opposes holding them of Individualism methodological which conceives the social effects like an aggregation of individual actions (Raymond Boudon) and holding them of a design “holist”, “determinist” or “structuralist”, which as a whole stress the company like a reality or a structure (relatively) independent of the individuals who compose it (Durkheim, Bourdieu). Without being completely gummed, this debate, which marked French sociology in the years 1970 and 1980, left the place today to more moderate positions.

Individualism in the literature

See work, often misunderstood, of max Stirner, the single one and its property .
See the novel of Yves Trottier, the Share of the large .
See the proclamation Total Refusal , of Paul-Emile Borduas.
Voir the Source lives of Ayn Rand (and more particularly the plea of Howard Roark for its defense which illustrates radical individualism).

References

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