Concept
Individualism
Overview
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook that emphasizes the worth or central role of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and advocating that the interests of the individual should take precedence over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference with one's interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism focuses on the individual and thus starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation".
Individualism represents one type of sociocultural perspective and is often defined in contrast to other perspectives, such as communitarianism, collectivism, and corporatism.
Individualism is also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles, which tend toward self-creation and experimentation rather than tradition or popular opinions and behaviors, and it is also associated with humanist philosophical positions and ethics. "Individualism" has also been used as a term denoting "[t]he quality of being an individual; individuality", related to possessing "[a]n individual characteristic; a quirk".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Individualism is discussed.
In spite of all this, individualism is the most modest stage of the will to power. *** When one has reached a certain degree of independence, one always longs for more: separation in proportion to the degree of force; the individual is no longer content to regard himself as equal to everybody, he actually _seeks for his peer_--he makes himself stand out from others. Individualism is followed by a development in…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
But it is certain that the country has reached a state of development, in which these individual achievements and possibilities require new civic and political agencies if they are to be maintained as realities. Individualism means inequity, harshness, and retrogression to barbarism (no matter under what veneer of display and luxury), unless it is a _generalized_ individualism: an individualism which takes into…
John Dewey, Ethics
states what it is; names the idea
In English and American writings the terms subjective and subjectivism usually carry with them a disparaging color. Quite otherwise is it in German literature. This sets the age of subjectivism, whose commencement, roughly speaking, coincides with the influence of Kantian thought, in sharp opposition to the age of individualism, as well as to a prior period of subordination to external authority. Individualism means…
John Dewey, German philosophy and politics
states what it is; names the idea
Still more salutary is the moral part of the instruction afforded by the participation of the private citizen, if even rarely, in public functions. He is called upon, while so engaged, to weigh interests not his own; to be guided, in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities; to apply, at every turn, principles and maxims which have for their reason of existence the general good; and…
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government
states what it is; author linked in the graph
Again, an enumeration of such kinds as _contrary_ and _contradictory, affirmative_ and _negative_ notions, &c, is only a chance-directed gleaning of logical forms which properly belong to the sphere of Being or Essence, (where they have been already examined,) and which have nothing to do with the specific notional character as such. The true distinctions in the notion, universal, particular, and individual, may be…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
states what it is; author linked in the graph
Philosophers who discussed Individualism
- Georg Simmel
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Feminism
- Max Stirner
- Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Judith Butler
- John Stuart Mill
- Tibor Machan
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Max Weber
- Marshall McLuhan
- Murray Rothbard
- Robert A. Heinlein
- Renaissance
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Mou Tsung-san
- Ferdinand Tönnies
- Wilhelm Wundt
- Martha Nussbaum
- Young Marx
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
- György Lukács
- Henry David Thoreau
Related ideas
- Egalitarianism
- Moral nihilism
- Anarcho-capitalism
- Austrian school of economics
- John Gray (philosopher)
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Christian existentialism
- Reification (fallacy)
- Consent of the governed
- Political freedom
- Max Stirner
- Foundationalism
- Friedrich Hayek
- Free market
- Anarchism
- Gross domestic product
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Gender equality
- Thomas Carlyle
- Passion (emotion)
- Great Britain
- Philosophy
- Human rights
- Abrahamic religions
Opposing perspectives
- Individual and group rights
- Autonomy
- Philosophy of self
- Conformity
- Well-being
- University of California Press
- Socialism
- Civil and political rights
- Civil liberties
- Altruism (ethics)
- Freedom
- Subject and object (philosophy)
- Right-wing politics
- Consequentialism
- Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy)
- Ideology
- Conservatism in the United States
- Humility
- Modern era
- Liberté, égalité, fraternité
- Black conservatism
- Fascism and ideology
- Paternalistic conservatism
- Integral humanism (Hindu nationalism)
Place in the tradition
Part of Anarchism.