 Individualism, a reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. Introduction by George H. Smith 1. In 1840, in the second volume of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville said that individualism was a word recently coined. Similarly, sixteen years later, in The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Tocqueville wrote, That word individualism was unknown to our ancestors for the good reason that in their days every individual necessarily belonged to a group and no one could regard himself as an isolated unit. As we shall see, individualism originated as a term of opprobrium and it has retained its negative connotations to this day among both conservative and socialist intellectuals whose criticisms have much in common. Because the selections in this anthology are devoted to defenses of individualism in its myriad forms, much of this introduction explains the major criticisms of individualism. For the sake of balance, I have frequently allowed critics to speak for themselves by quoting extensively from their writings. Although it is not uncommon for critics to do less than full justice to the position they oppose, the ideas associated with individualism have been especially liable to this kind of abuse, which sometimes amounts to little more than political hucksterism. A recent example may be found in The Myth of Individualism by Peter L. Calero. Intended as an introduction to sociology, this book introduces students to the notion of individualism by invoking the notorious Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, who between 1978 and 1995 murdered three people and injured 23 others. Why should a vicious serial killer be tagged as a representative of extreme individualism? Calero summarizes his reasons as follows. Kaczynski's extreme commitment to individualism is evident in, one, his intentional avoidance of personal relationships. Two, his deliberate physical separation from others. Three, the belief that he could live out his life completely independent of a larger community. Four, his solitary development of a personal program of social reform. And five, his private strategy to unilaterally impose his ideas through a series of private acts that destroyed the lives of others. According to Calero, freedom of choice and self-determination are virtuous principles, but when selfish individual interests threaten to destroy the common good, the limits of individualism are exposed. Unfortunately, but predictably, Calero is vague when it comes to defining the common good, a catchphrase with many variations that has been used by murderous dictators throughout history. May we therefore say that the common good when pushed to extremes results in the likes of Stalin and Hitler? This comparison would be cheap theatrics, of course, but Calero does not hesitate to use the same tactic when criticizing individualism. In fact, if Theodore Kaczynski had not resorted to violence and murder, if instead he had respected the rights of other people to live their lives as they see fit, a principle that has always been essential to liberal individualism even in its extreme manifestations, then his decision to live as an eccentric hermit would have had no effect whatsoever on the common good. Thus Calero's first four points are irrelevant to the supposedly harmful effects of even the most extreme individualism. Ein Rand, for instance, was an extreme individualist by any standard, but because she vigorously defended the equal rights of individuals to be free from the initiation of physical force, she would not have served Calero's purpose of creating a caricature of individualism, who, after all, will rally to the defense of the unabomber. Two. Calero is not the first critic of individualism, nor will he be the last to equate individualism with physical isolation. Karl Marx made a similar point in his discussion of the isolated individual, supposedly championed by Adam Smith and other classical liberals. The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual and hence also the producing individual appear as independent, as belonging to a greater whole. Only in the eighteenth century in civil society do the various forms of a social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes as external necessity. But the epic which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social from this standpoint general relations. The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society, a rare exception which may occur in a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness, is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other. Elsewhere Marx wrote, Man is not an abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is in the human world, the state, society. Man is not an abstract being and Marx objects to any theory that treats him as such. But this abstract individual differs altogether from the isolated individual to which Marx objected in the passage quoted above. The abstract individual has nothing in common with the isolated individual of Marx and other socialist critics of individualism. Abstract means that particular attributes have been abstracted from real human beings and then integrated to form a single concept. The term isolated however means something quite different. It refers to a person who lives apart from other people like Crusoe on his island. We should not confuse abstraction, a mental process with isolation, a physical state. Liberal individualism contrary to Marxian mythology did not focus on man apart from his social environment. Quite the reverse is true. Man's sociability and social relations have been a central concern of individualists since the 17th century. In the final analysis, every social theory must employ some abstract concept of human beings. When Marx speaks of man, he means not this or that particular man, but man in general. He means not a concrete individual but an abstract individual. Social theorists may disagree with how to construct their theoretical models, but no theorist can dispense with models altogether. Marx made this very point about the notion of production. All epics of production have certain common traits, common characteristics. Production in general is an abstraction but a rational abstraction in so far as it really brings out and fixes the common element and thus saves us repetition. The abstract individual, otherwise known as human nature, is the foundation of social and political philosophy. We cannot generalize without it. We can only refer to particular human beings. We can say Bob did this or Ted did that, but we cannot generalize. The abstract individual allows us to move from the particulars of history to the generalizations of theory. If a critic believes that a particular conception of the individual omits relevant characteristics, then he is objecting to a specific abstraction, not to the process of abstraction as such. In this case, the critic should offer an alternative conception of the abstract individual and argue for its acceptance. 3. Ironically perhaps, key elements in the Marxian criticism of individualism differ little from a popular conservative complaint, though the same point is typically used for different purposes. Consider this comment by Marx. In this individualistic society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the natural bonds, etc., which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomerate. Similarly from Edmund Burke to modern conservatives and neo-conservatives, consider that individualism leads to a destructive social atomism that ignores the social nature of human beings. According to Burke, if people view society as nothing more than a voluntary association for the pursuit of self-interest, while relying upon their private stock of reason to assess the desirability of traditional customs, values, and institutions, then the Commonwealth will eventually crumble away and be disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality. Writing in 1790 during the early stage of the French Revolution, Burke attacked the constituent assembly for abolishing the privileges of the nobility and the Catholic Church. Such measures were an effort to reduce all citizens to one homogenous mass. Whatever their abuses, those orders had served as a strong barrier against the excesses of despotism. Without such intermediate powers to serve as buffers between the individual and the state, the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared on earth might very well arise. To base a legal system on an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles, such as a theory of individual rights, is to pave the way for anarchy, and out of the chaos of anarchy will inevitably emerge popular demand for a despotic leader with absolute power to restore social order. Thus did Burke, according to many of his admirers, foresee that the revolution would end in despotism years before Napoleon's military dictatorship. When Burke expressed his fear of a society consisting of one homogenous mass, he sounded an alarm that has been sounded many times since, down to the present day by conservatives in the European tradition. As the sociologist Robert Nisbet explained, conservative writers have used masses to mean an aggregate discernible less by numbers than its lack of internal social structure integrating tradition and shared moral values. Nisbet continued, one of the effects of the French Revolution's peculiar form of nihilism, Burke thought, was its effective desocializing of human beings, its atomizing of the population by virtue of its destructiveness toward traditional social bonds. The idea of the mass developed and spread widely in the nineteenth century. It is strong in Tocqueville who thought one of the great dangers of democracy was its creation of the mass in the first place, through emphasis upon the majority and through egalitarian values which tended to level populations, and then its increasing dependence on the mass leading to a plebiscitary dictatorship. Burkhart, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard all wrote in apprehension of the coming of mass society and its desocializing effect upon the individual, an effect that would make government a combination of guardian and despot. The fear that a type of soft despotism would emerge out of a mass democratic society was famously expressed by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. Tocqueville's depressing forecast is closely related to his concerns about individualism. Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends. With this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself. Unlike the depraved feeling of egoism which springs from blind instinct, individualism argued Tocqueville is based on misguided judgment and inadequate understanding. In time, however, individualism tends to degenerate into pure egoism because it ignores the civic virtues on which society depends. Individualism is a product of an egalitarian democracy that abolishes intermediate powers and thereby leaves the individual isolated and defenseless against the power of centralized government. This kind of despotism cannot take hold unless society has been fragmented into isolated atoms and because egalitarian democracy promotes the social atomism of individualism, democracy and despotism fatally complete and support each other. It is near the end of democracy in America that we find Tocqueville's chilling vision of the possible future of individualism in an egalitarian democracy. His remarks deserve to be quoted at length. I want to imagine under what new features despotism could present itself to the world. I see an innumerable crowd of similar and equal men who spin around restlessly in order to gain small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each one of them, withdrawn apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others. His children and his particular friends form for him the entire human species as for the remainder of his fellow citizens he is next to them but he does not see them. He touches them without feeling them. He exists only in himself and for himself alone and if he still has a family you can say that at least he no longer has a country. Above those men arises an immense and tutelary power that alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyment and of looking after their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, farsighted and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like it, it had as a goal to prepare men for manhood. But on the contrary it seeks only to fix them irrevocably in childhood. It likes the citizens to enjoy themselves, provided that they think only about enjoying themselves. It works willingly for their happiness but it wants to be the unique agent for it and the soul arbiter. It attends to their security, provides for their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, settles their estates, divides their inheritances. How can it not remove entirely from them the trouble to think and the difficulty of living? This is how it makes the use of free will less useful and rarer every day. How it encloses the action of the will within a smaller space and little by little steals from each citizen even the use of himself. Equality has prepared men for all these things. It has disposed men to bear them and often even to regard them as a benefit. After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute and uniform rules which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd. It does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them. It rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting. It does not destroy, it prevents birth, it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it innervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid, industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd. Tocqueville did not regard this outcome as inevitable, nor did he long for the establishment of an aristocratic class or other privileged orders in America or for their reinstatement in Europe. The hope for modern democracy lay in an independent judiciary and local liberties, most especially in a free press and other voluntary associations. By merging individual interests into the common interest of an association, citizens may rely on a collective defense against state power, henceforth they are no longer isolated individuals. Americans of all ages, stations in life and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types, religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. Americans combine to give fates, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. If they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. Furthermore, Americans had embraced a theory that mitigated the deleterious effects of individualism, a theory that enabled them to combine their own advantage with that of their fellow citizens. American moralists did not preach the beauty of self-sacrifice, they did not pretend that one must sacrifice himself for his fellows because it is a fine thing to do, but they did believe in the utility of such virtues, that is that a concern for the public good furthers each person's self-interest, rightly understood. So the doctrine of self-interest properly understood is not new, but it is among the Americans of our time that it has come to be universally accepted. It has become popular, one finds it at the root of all actions, it is interwoven in all they say, you hear it as much from the poor as from the rich. It was for these and similar reasons that Tocqueville, who occasionally had favorable things to say about individualism, did not view democratic despotism as the inevitable outcome of American individualism. Tocqueville regarded social determinism as a false and cowardly doctrine that produced feeble men and pusillanimous nations. Humanity is neither entirely free or completely enslaved. Although our social environment sets limits on our actions, within those vast limits man is strong and free and so are peoples. In the final analysis it is up to people themselves whether democratic equality will lead to servitude or freedom, knowledge or barbarism, prosperity or wretchedness. One of the most perceptive criticisms of democracy in America by an American was written by Irish born E. L. Godkin who founded and edited the nation and became known for his fierce opposition to American imperialism. A classic liberal who advocated liberal government, free trade and the gold standard, Godkin agreed with Tocqueville on a number of political issues but he believed that Tocqueville's analysis of American individualism and democracy had been warped by a perspective of a European aristocrat. Although Godkin criticized democracy in America on a number of levels, for one thing he thought that Tocqueville's treatment was overly simplistic, his major criticism was that contrary to Tocqueville, individualism was a cause, not an effect of American democracy. Individualism which ran deep in the American character owed much to the demands of frontier living. With the assistance of steamboats and railways and of immigration from Europe, the pioneering elements in the population, the class devoted to the task of creating new political and social organizations as distinguished from that engaged in perfecting old ones, assumed a great preponderance. It spread itself thinly over a vast area of soil such extraordinary fertility that a very slight amount of toil expended on it affords returns that might have satisfied even the dreams of Spanish aphorists. The result has been very much what we might have concluded a priori that it would be. A society composed at the period of its formation mainly of young men coming from all parts of the world in quest of fortune released from the ordinary restraints of family, church and public opinion, even of the civil law, naturally and inevitably acquires a certain contempt for authority and impatience of it, and individualism among them develops very rapidly. If you place this society thus constituted in the midst of a wilderness where each member of it has to contend tools in hand with nature herself for wealth or even subsistence, the ties which bind him to his fellow will for a while at least be rarely anything stronger than that of simple contiguity. The only mutual obligation which this relation suggests is that of rendering assistance occasionally in overcoming material difficulties, in other words the simplest bond which can unite human beings. Each person is, from the necessity of the case, so absorbed in his own struggle for existence that he has seldom occasion or time for the consideration and cultivation of his social relations. He knows nothing of the antecedents of his neighbors nor they of his. They are not drawn together in all probability by a single memory or association. They have drifted into the same locality it is true under the guidance of a common impulse and this is a selfish one, so that the settler gets into the habit of looking at himself as an individual of contemplating himself and his career separate and apart from his social organization. We do not say that this breeds selfishness far from it, but it breeds individualism. Yehoshua Ariely has nicely contrasted the views of Tocqueville and Godkin. The difference between the views of the two authors lay not only in the causal relationship between individualism and democracy, but in Godkin's emphatic statement that individualism was a fundamental character trait of the American. It expressed itself in self-reliance, abundant energy of action, ideals of unrestrained individual freedom, the capacity for organization and daring enterprise and the belief in a free competitive economy. As against Tocqueville's view that its free institutions and enlightened self-interest had defeated individualism in America, Godkin concluded that both rested on the vigor of American individualism. Godkin's evaluation revealed the degree to which Americans had accepted the concept of individualism as a basic character trait of their society in the years since Tocqueville's analysis. Four. The word individualism may have been coined during the 1820s by the French theocrat and anti-revolutionary Joseph de Maistre, who assailed the diversity of religious and political opinions that had supplanted the relative uniformity of pre-revolutionary France. According to Maistre, this absolute individualism, this infinite fragmentation of doctrines, was dangerous because it had shattered the religious consensus essential to peace and social harmony. Europe had lost its moral bearings because there was too much liberty in Europe and not enough religion. The ultimate cause of this disaster was the Protestant Reformation and its defensive freedom of conscience, a teaching that had resulted in a deep and frightening division of minds. Only the restoration of the Catholic Church to its position of authority backed by an absolute monarchy could remedy the disastrous effects of political Protestantism. Nine years later the theocrat Hugh Felicité de Lamané issued a similar warning. The same individualism that causes anarchy among minds will inevitably produce political anarchy and thereby overturn the very basis of human society. This individualism, according to Lamané, is power without obedience and law without duty. A similar critic of individualism, Louis Gabriel Ambrose de Bonald, was able to implement some of his policies while working for government during the Bourbon Restoration. In 1827 Charles X put Bonald a convinced opponent of freedom of the press in charge of censorship. More important than these posts, however, was his role as a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1815 to 1823. There he helped to lead the ultra-royalist party and enjoyed his greatest success with the repeal of legal divorce in December 1815. He was also the guiding spirit behind other ultra-royalist policies, such as the attempt to restore trade guilds and the practice of primogeniture and entail for landed property. In 1843 the militant Catholic conservative Louis Vouillot put his objections to individualism this way. The evil which plagues France is not unknown. Everyone agrees in giving it the same name. Individualism. It is not difficult to see that a country where individualism reigns is not long in the normal condition of society, since society is the union of minds and interests, and individualism is division carried to the infinite degree. All for each, each for all. That is society. Each for himself and thus each against all. That is individualism. The following passage by Philippe Benetton captures the essential ideas of the early conservative critics of individualism. To the myth of autonomy, counter-revolutionary thought, responds that the man of the radical version of modernity, the perfectly autonomous man, is a fiction. The French counter-revolutionaries after Aristotle, St. Thomas and Burke, ceaselessly insisted with arguments difficult to refute upon the social dimension of human existence. Man does not make himself by himself. He receives from others his relatives his contemporaries past generations much more than he gives. Man does not live alone. He has a deep fundamental need for others because he is a being constituted by his relations. He who would exercise autonomous judgment in fact relies upon a thousand things he takes on the authority of others. That the earth is round. That Napoleon existed. That his parents are his parents and so on. He who would attempt to live in an individualistic manner leaves behind him ties that matter, particularly those of the heart. Full and complete autonomy is a dream and a pernicious one at that. Modern individualism loosens social ties which are ties of attachment in favour of contractual and utilitarian relations. Solid attachments are those which are created in the midst of communities, whether they be familial, religious, local, political or professional communities. A good society cannot be reduced to a collection of individuals. A key aspect of this perspective, Benetton points out, was the rejection of the sovereignty of the individual with the affirmation of the rights of conscience. Liberty of conscience, which many Catholic conservatives blamed on the Protestant Reformation and later the Enlightenment, had brought about the fragmentation of religious doctrines and this in turn had destroyed the uniformity of belief on which social order depends. Religious diversity was followed by a diversity of political opinions including radical ideas about individual rights and government by consent and from there it was a short logical step to the revolutionary upheavals of 18th century Europe. Only a restoration of religious and political authorities, a system in which ordinary people defer to their superiors, can counteract the corrosive individualism of modern times. The term individualism was also used in the mid-1820s by the disciples of Saint Simon. For the Saint Simonians, as for their contemporaries, individualism was a term of a probrium, one that characterized the Enlightenment's stress on political liberalism, freedom of conscience, individual rights and the pursuit of economic self-interest. According to the Saint Simonians, the Enlightenment defenders of individualism in reviving the egoism of Epicurus and the Stoics and in upholding the right of individual judgment had denied the legitimacy of any authoritative organization that sought to direct the moral interests of humanity. This passage from the chief manifesto of the Saint Simonians is typical. The last organic period offers a valuable subject for observation in the works of those barbaric times before feudalism was firmly established. At that time there existed a spirit of individualism and of egoism similar to that dominating our industrialists today. The principle of competition, of liberty, reigned not only among the warriors of different countries, but within the same country among the warriors of different provinces, cantons, towns and castles. In our time too, the principle of competition of liberty and of war exists among the merchants and manufacturers of the same country. It exists between province and province, between town and town between factory and factory, and we may add between shop and shop. Having covered some traditional objections to individualism we shall now turn to some historical reflections by important historians of individualism. As before and in keeping with the spirit of this reader, I shall quote at length in many cases rather than paraphrase. I do this in the hope that students and others unfamiliar with the secondary literature will be motivated to consult the originals. Of course this topic is so complex and the literature so vast that I can only discuss a handful of the historical accounts and those in a cursory manner. I shall begin as many historians do with the classic book by the Swiss historian Jakob Burkhart, the Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860. Although widely admired as the pioneering work in its field, this book has also been severely criticized. It is not my purpose either to defend or criticize Burkhart's famous thesis about the origins of individuality. Rather, after sketching his thesis, I briefly consider some problems with the notion of individuality which differs substantially from sundry types of individualism. In the chapter titled The Development of the Individual, Jakob Burkhart wrote, In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness, that which was turned within as that which was turned without, lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and childish pre-possession through which the world and history were seen as clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation, only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air, an objective treatment and consideration of the state and of all things of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis. Man became a spiritual individual and recognized himself as such. In far earlier times we can hear and there detect a development of free personality. But at the close of the 13th century Italy began to swarm with individuality. The ban laid upon human personality was dissolved and a thousand figures meet us each in its own special shape and dress. The Italians of the 14th century knew little of false modesty in any shape. Not one of them was afraid of singularity, of being and seeming unlike his neighbors. Burkhart attributed this awakening and heightened sense of individuality to the political circumstances of Italy. Specifically the despotism of the various city-states fostered in the highest degree the individuality not only of the tyrant or condottier himself but also of the men whom he protected or used as his tools, the secretary, minister, poet and companion. Petty tyrants came and went in quick succession so those in power learned to enjoy themselves while they could seeking to obtain the greatest satisfaction from a possibly very brief period of power and influence and this typically involved the flaunting of one's individuality. Even those Italians who were barred from the corridors of power did not find political servitude a barrier to individuality. For political impotence does not hinder the different tendencies and manifestations of private life from thriving in the fullest vigor and variety. The considerable individual freedom of the city-states along with a church that did not severely interfere with municipal governments undoubtedly favored the growth of individual thought. Indeed when despotism made participation in civic life impossible many people became indifferent to politics and pursued the pleasures of private life instead. When reading a classic work in history or in any other field we may be tempted to let key words wash over us without examining them closely. This is especially true with cultural histories of the sort that Burkhart wrote which the ambiguities and imprecisions of subjective perceptions and preferences are in the nature of the beast. That Burkhart one of the most accomplished historians of his time was well aware of this problem is evident from his description of his great book as an essay in the strictest sense. To each eye he wrote the outlines of a given civilization present a different picture and the same studies which have served for this work might easily in other hands not only receive a wholly different treatment and application but lead also to essentially different conclusions. With this proviso let us consider Burkhart's conception of individuality. This concept is obviously not related to political or economic individualism because individuality as Burkhart used the term grew from systems of petty despotism throughout Italy. As he noted in an earlier chapter 14th century Florence was the scene of the richest development of human individuality while for the despots no other individuality could be suffered to live and thrive but their own and that of their nearest dependence. Individuality for Burkhart signifies focused attention on the inner self and a positive evaluation of the unique features of one's personality. When Burkhart wrote a development of free personality and a dissolution of the ban laid upon human personality he was referring to an atmosphere of cultural liberalism in which exhibitions of personal differences and eccentricities were not only tolerated but actually prized. This kind of individuality however may amount to nothing more than vain egotism. Even the most superficial and boring petty despot in Renaissance Italy could prance about and display his individuality in this sense secure in the knowledge that his power and wealth would shield him from overt public ridicule. Far more important and this really is the substance of Burkhart's book was the profound individualism not mere individuality exhibited in Renaissance art and literature. A serious problem with any historical work that deals with an age and culture different from our own is that we cannot fully understand and appreciate the subjective world of the proverbial common man. In many instances we must settle for records of what the literate class believed more specifically those members of that class with sufficient time and resources to record their thoughts in writing or in some form of art. Nevertheless we do what we can and our chief resource here is introspection. This is where we may encounter a problem with Burkhart's claim that during the Middle Ages man was conscious of himself only through some general category. Is this credible? Are we to believe that the typical person in the Middle Ages had no sense of his own distinctive personality or of the personalities of others? The relevant point here as indicated previously would seem to be that only in some historical circumstances have individualizing characteristics been socially valued as much as or more than one's membership in a particular social class or group. The following remarks by Aaron Gurovich are illuminating in this regard. Regarding the thesis of Colin Morris that the discovery of the individual may be traced to the 12th century, Gurovich writes, it would be wrong to confuse interest in the inner landscape of the individual, the discovery of self, with the discovery of the individual. While stressing the seriousness of intention in discussion of ethical problems, Abelard and other authors of the 12th century at the same time felt a need to classify various estates and vocations. They write of individuals as types or models. Likeness was a fundamental theological category in the 12th century and the self-modification of the individual took place in a context defined by models, Christ, the apostles, the patriarchs, the saints, and the church. No mention was made at that period of anything like a personal lifestyle. It was not until the following century that the individual and the group began to grow apart. The objections of Gurovich and other scholars not withstanding the classic book by Colin Morris, the discovery of the individual, 1050 to 1200, remains one of the most interesting historical treatments of individualism ever written. According to Morris, modern individualism emerged during the 12th century Renaissance, not as Burkhardt claimed, from the later and better known Italian Renaissance. The 12th century witnessed a new respect for man and human possibilities. There is a rapid rise in individualism and humanism in the years from about 1080 to 1150. The following passage gives us a sense of Morris's perspective. This book will not be concerned with the origins of political individualism, but with individualism at a more directly personal level, with that respect for individual human beings, their character and opinion, which has been instilled in us by our cultural tradition and with its implications for personal relationships and beliefs. The hard core of this individualism lies in the psychological experience of a clear distinction between my being and that of other people. The significance of this experience is greatly increased by our belief in the value of human beings in themselves. Humanism may not be the same thing as individualism, but they are at least first cousins for a respect for the dignity of man is naturally accompanied by a respect for individual men. Europe has developed literary forms specially devoted to the exploration of the individual and his relationships, such as biography, autobiography and the novel. Forms which are unknown or relatively undeveloped in other cultures. There has been western literature a strong element of self-discovery expressed in highly personal lyric poetry or in the stress of personal experience in religion. This inwardness or acute self-awareness has been a distinctive feature of western man. Unlike many accounts that stress the secular aspects of individualism, Morris maintains that Christianity contributed a great deal to its rise. It is at once obvious that the western view of the value of the individual owes a great deal to Christianity. A sense of individual identity and value is implicit in a belief in a God who has called each man by name, who has sought him out as a shepherd seeks his lost sheep. Self-awareness and a serious concern within her character is encouraged by the conviction that the believer must lay himself open to God and be remade by the Holy Spirit. From the beginning Christianity showed itself to be an interior religion. It also contains a strong element of respect for humanity. Its central belief that God became man for man's salvation is itself an affirmation of human dignity which could hardly be surpassed and its principal ethical precept is that a man must love others as he loves himself. The value of the individual and the dignity of man are both written large in the pages of the Scriptures. It is understandable that in the centuries before eleven hundred these convictions had made only a limited impact upon the primitive society of western Europe. It depended largely upon tradition and therefore could give little scope to the individual and as we shall see later social conditions were not such as to encourage a high view of human dignity. Yet even in these unfavorable circumstances the Church had maintained at least a silent witness to the humanist elements in the Gospel. Ultimately a Christian origin can be found for many of the elements of the European concept of the self. Six. We have divided the selections for this reader into six categories individuality, social individualism, moral individualism, political individualism, religious individualism and economic individualism. The criteria for some of those categories such as political and religious individualism are fairly clear whereas the boundaries of other categories such as social and moral individualism are indistinct. Even more troublesome is the problem of how some of the selections should be classified. The opening sections by Humboldt and Mill for instance cover so much ground that they could have been placed in any of the first three categories. So if there is logic in placing them under individuality it is a fuzzy logic indeed. Frankly the deciding factor in some cases was the desire for balance among the sections. The brief introductions to the selections may help define our reasoning. One subject that we do not cover is methodological individualism. Those with interest in this controversial and rather technical topic may wish to read my treatment in Chapter 10, Methodological Individualism of My Book, The System of Liberty, Themes in the History of Classic Liberalism, published by Cambridge University Press in 2013. This has been Individualism Reader edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster.