Political Philosophy and Individualism Essay

case-by-caseisticisation is the moral stance, political school of thought, political theory, or affable scene that emphasizes the moral worth of the person. Individualists promote the exercise of ones goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance and advocate that interests of the soul should contact precedence over the state or a social group, objet dart opposing external interference upon ones own interests by high society or institutions such as the government. laissez faire makes the individual its cogitate and so starts with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of elementary importance in the struggle for liberation. Individualism thus involves the right of the individual to immunity and self-realization. An individualist enters into society to further his or her own interests, or at least demands the right to serve his or her own interests, without victorious the interests of society into consideration.The individualist does n ot lend credence to any philosophy that requires the sacrifice of the self-interest of the individual for any higher social causes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would argue, however, that his archetype of general will in the social contract is not the wide collection of individual wills and precisely furthers the interests of the individual (the constraint of law itself would be beneficial for the individual, as the lack of respect for the law necessarily entails, in Rousseaus eyes, a form of ignorance and submission to ones passions sooner of the preferred autonomy of reason).Individualists be chiefly come to with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state or religious morality). (Encyclopedia Britannica) Individualism, political and social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual. Individualism once exhibited interesting depicted object variations, but its various meanings have since generally merged. F ollowing the upheaval of the French Revolution, individualizatione was used pejoratively in Franceto advert the sources of social dissolution and anarchy and the elevation of individual interests above those of the collective.The limits negative connotation was employed by French reactionaries, nationalists, conservatives, liberals, and socialists alike, patronage their different sides of a feasible and desirable social order. In Germany, the ideas of individual unique(p)ness (Einzigkeit) and self-realizationin sum, the Romantic notion of individualitycontributed to the craze of individual genius and were later transformed into an organic theory of national community. correspond to this view, state and society ar not artificial constructs erected on the basis of a social contract but instead unique and self-sufficient cultural wholes.In England, individuality encompassed religious nonconformance (i. e. , nonconformity with the Church of England) and economic liberalism in i ts various versions, including both laissez-faire and arrest state-interventionist approaches. In the United States, identity became part of the core American ideology by the 19th century, incorporating the influences of New England Puritanism, Jeffersonianism, and the philosophy of natural rights. American personal identity was universalist and idealist but acquired a harsher edge as it became infused with elements of social Darwinism (i.e. , the survival of the fittest).Rugged individualismextolled by Herbert Hoover during his presidential ravel in 1928was associated with traditional American values such as in the flesh(predicate) immunity,capitalism, and limited government. As James Bryce, British ambassador to the United States (190713), wrote in The American Commonwealth (1888), Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom have been deemed by Americans not only their choicest, but their peculiar and undivided possession. The French aristocrati c political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville (180559) described individualism in call of a kind of moderate selfishness that disposed humans to be concerned only with their own small circle of family and friends. Observing the workings of the American democratic tradition for Democracy in America (183540), Tocqueville wrote that by leaders each citizen to isolate himself from his fellows and to draw apart with his family and friends, individualism sapped the virtues of public spirit, for which polite virtue and association were a suitable remedy.For the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (181897), individualism signified the cult of privacy, which, combined with the growth of self-assertion, had given impulse to the highest individual development that flowered in the European Renaissance. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim (18581917) identified twain types of individualism the utilitarian egoism of the English sociologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer (18201903), who, accor ding to.Durkheim, reduced society to nothing more than a vast apparatus of production and exchange, and the rationalism of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241804), the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121788), and the French Revolutions Declaration of the Rights of gentleman and of the Citizen (1789), which has as its primary dogma the autonomy of reason and as its primary rite the doctrine of free enquiry. The Austrian economist F. A. Hayek (18991992), who favoured market processes and was mistrustful of state intervention, distinguished what he called false from true individualism.False individualism, which was represent mainly by French and other continental European writers, is characterized by an exaggerated belief in the powers of individual reason and the scope of impressive social planning and is a source of modern socialism in contrast, true individualism, whose adherents included John Locke (16321704), Bernard de Mandeville (16701733), David Hume ( 171176), Adam Ferguson (17231816), Adam Smith (172390), and Edmund Burke(172997), well-kept that the spontaneous collaboration of free men often creates things which be great than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend and accepted that individuals must(prenominal) submit to the anonymous and seemingly irrational forces of society. Other aspects of individualism allude to a series of different questions roughly how to conceive the relation in the midst of collectivities and individuals. wizard such question focuses on how facts about the behaviour of groups, about social processes, and about large-scale historical events are to be explained. According to methodological individualism, a view advocated by Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper (190294), any accounting of such a fact last must appeal to, or be stated in terms of, facts about individualsabout their beliefs, desires, and actions. A closely related view, sometimes called ontological individualism , is the thesis that social or historical groups, processes, and events are nothing more than complexes of individuals and individual actions.Methodological individualism precludes explanations that appeal to social factors that cannot in turn be individualistically explained. Examples are Durkheims classic account of differential suicide rates in terms of degrees of social integration and the account of the incidence of protest movements in terms of the structure of political opportunities. Ontological individualism contrasts with various ship canal of seeing institutions and collectivities as reale. g. , the view of corporations or states as agents and the view of bureaucratic roles and rules or status groups as independent of individuals, both restricting and enabling individuals behaviour.Another question that arises in debates over individualism is how objects of worth or value (i. e. , goods) in moral and political life are to be conceived. Some theorists, known as atomists, argue that no such goods are intrinsically common or communal, maintaining instead that there are only individual goods that accrue to individuals. According to this perspective, morality and politics are merely the instruments through which each individual attempts to secure such goods for himself. One example of this view is the conception of political authority as ultimately derived from or justified by a hypothetical contract surrounded by individuals, as in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (15881679).Another is the idea, representative in economics and in other social sciences influenced by economics, that or so social institutions and relationships can best be understood by assumptive that individual behaviour is motivated primarily by self-interest. Individualism with its second base of private enjoyments and control of ones personal environment and its throw of public involvement and communal attachment, has long been lamented and criticized from both the righ t and the left over(p) and from both religious and secular perspectives. Especially notable critiques have been make by advocates of communitarianism, who tend to equate individualism with narcissism and selfishness.Likewise, thinkers in the tradition of republican political thoughtaccording to which power is best controlled by being dividedare disturbed by their perception that individualism deprives the state of the support and active involvement of citizens, thereby impairing democratic institutions. Individualism also has been thought to distinguish modern Western societies from premodern and non-Western ones, such as traditional India and China, where, it is said, the community or the nation is valued above the individual and an individuals role in the political and economic life of his community is largely determined by his membership in a specific class or caste.