INDIVIDUALISM IN THE RIGHT KEY

Abstract

Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: I'll do as please at everybody else's expense. An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man - his own and those of others.An individualist is a man who says: I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. will not rule nor be ruled. will not be a master nor a slave. will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.Ayn RandIndividualism is the view, put briefly, that human are identifiable as a distinct species in the natural world and have as at least one of their central attributes the capacity to be unique rational individuals. Whatever else, then, is central about being a human being, it includes that each one, unless crucially debilitated, has the capacity to govern his or her life by means of the individually initiated process of thought, of conceptual In my book, Classical Individualism (Routledge, 1998) the title calls attention to the type of individualism regard sound, one that develops from ancient moral thought and stresses the fact that the individual in question is one with a human nature. This kind of individualism contrasts with the kind associated with the political thought of Thomas Hobbes and his followers. (The best source for appreciating the difference is David L. Norton's Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (Princeton University Press, 1976).Furthermore, excelling as such an individual human being is the central, proper goal of each person's life. A just political community, in turn, is one that renders it possible for this purpose to be pursued by all (or as many as is realistically possible).As the novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand put the point - following similar observations by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas - adult persons are beings of volitional consciousness. This involves, among other things, the crucial capacity to choose to embark upon - to initiate - a process of (thoughtful) action.If we are the type of entity that can be a causal agent, the initiator of its behavior, this serves as a crucial basis for individuation: different human will be able to and would actually choose to exercise their conscious capacities and direct their ensuing actions differently. Putting it more simply, if we have free will, our diverse ways of exercising it can make us unique. So even if there were nothing else unique about different persons, their free will could introduce an essential individuality into their lives. (This is something that will have a major impact on the social sciences, on psychology and psychotherapy, and, of course, on ethics and morality.)Yet different people are also uniquely configured, as it were, as human beings; thus they can face different yet equally vital tasks in their lives. Our fingerprints, voices, shapes, ages, locations, talents, and, most of all, choices are all individuating features, so we are all unique. This is the crux of the individualist thesis. Nonetheless, since we are all such individuals, we constitute one species with a definite nature possessed by each member. This may seem paradoxical: one of the defining attributes of the human (kind of) being is the distinctive potential for individuality, based on both diversity and personal choice.The position has certain implications that are very close to what is usually thought to follow from a somewhat different, often labeled radical, individualism. These implications are the existence of the libertarian political ideas and ideals of individual rights to life, liberty, and property. We might call the earlier version of individual atomistic or quantitative, while the latter classical.Atomistic or radica l individualism is distinct. It is usually linked to Thomas Hobbes and his nominalist and moral-subjectivist followers. Its most basic, ontological thesis is that human are numerically separate bare particulars. …