Individualism

Individualism. To speak of a person as an individual is to conceive of that man or woman as separate, autonomous, and self‐interested, all qualities that distinguish the person from his or her group or family. Individualism refers to the nest of concepts that emphasize this independence of individuals in contrast to the earlier view of each human being as belonging to the overlapping social entities of church, family, craft, and locale.

The word “individualism” appeared for the first time in the 1835 English translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, where he described individualism as a withdrawal from public life by Americans who felt deeply their own self‐sufficiency. Tocqueville's contemporary, the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, viewed personal liberty in a far more positive light, and American transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau explored the dimensions of the individual conscience, giving greater weight to responsibilities than to rights.

Initially seen as a threat to a well‐ordered society, individualism gained acceptance with the commercialization of traditional economies and the spread of participatory politics. Freedom underwent a redefinition as well. Where once people thought of freedom in terms of the group's power of self‐government, during the eighteenth century freedom became linked with individual liberty, competitive opportunity, and free choice.

In the later twentieth century, individualism came to be contrasted with communitarianism, the former ideology stressing that people must stand on their own aided by institutions protecting their free choice, the latter promoting a society of mutually dependent members all willing to subordinate their personal desires to the good of the whole. These contrasting views rested on different conceptions of human nature as well as of human welfare.
See also Conservativism; Laissez‐faire; Social Darwinism; Transcendentalism.

Joyce Appleby