Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual.[1][2] Individualists promote the exercise of ones goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance[3] and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group,[3] while opposing external interference upon ones own interests by society or institutions such as the government.[3] Individualism makes the individual its focus[1] and so starts with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation.[4] Liberalism, existentialism and anarchism are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis.[4] Individualism thus involves the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization.[5] It has also been used as a term denoting The quality of being an individual; individuality[3] related to possessing An individual characteristic; a quirk.[3] Individualism is thus also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors[3][6] as so also with humanist philosophical positions and ethics.[7][8] In the English language, the word individualism was first introduced, as a pejorative, by the Owenites in the late 1830s, although it is unclear if they were influenced by Saint-Simonianism or came up with it independently.[9] A more positive use of the term in Britain came to be used with the writings of James Elishama Smith, who was a millenarian and a Christian Israelite. Although an early Owenite socialist, he eventually rejected its collective idea of property, and found in individualism a universalism that allowed for the development of the original genius. Without individualism, Smith argued, individuals cannot amass property to increase ones happiness.[9] William Maccall, another Unitarian preacher, and probably an acquaintance of Smith, came somewhat later, although influenced by John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and German Romanticism, to the same positive conclusions, in his 1847 work Elements of Individualism.[10]
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 15:43:53 +0000
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