individualism

experience never gets sorted out, except by the mind that insists it must be.
---Rebecca Solnit.

Individualism has become something of a bad word nowadays-associated (at least in some circles) with hedonism or the shallow aspirations of the bourgeoisie (bread and circuses), or with a narrow, private self that is oblivious of other people and their well-being and of that of future generations; in short, a myopic, self-centred, "constantly-moving-happiness-machine" who prizes negative liberty above all else-even to the detriment of the conditions that allow that freedom in the first place.

Individualism is, in that sense, not only morally unacceptable, but also doomed to undermine itself as social capital(Putnam) and the public domain (Sennett) are whittled down to size. D. Bell: the cultural contradictions of capitalism, Bauman's liquid modernity, the market vs the republic, the emergence of a psychological, therapeutic 'society', alienation, disenchantment and so on.

When did it begin?

The Renaissance? The Reformation? The Revolution? The Romantic quest?

Always a falling away from Edenic state: tribal unity, Popper would say. Community, Tradition, the Church, norms, the family. The origin always has more value. But from a Muslim perspective there is, I think, no fall and the world is a ladder,a book of signs, a metaphor. In some sense, "all that is ,is holy" (but not the holy) and the aspiration is surely not a negation of the self but a deepening of it. Individualism is not, then, about the self or economic man but in a fuller sense-to use a Christian term- the person, the whole person.

So, here I would say individualism is not, obviously, just about negative liberty or freedom without truth but ,as Sen says, about things we have "reason to value". The hardest thing: proportionality: reasoned pleasure.

And I think we should also talk about the direction of change, of advancing freedoms, rather than the levels of attainment (i.e look at comparisons). My own personal view is that the idea and reality of the individual is of great spiritual and political importance.

Isn't the most important thing to find one's name, to know who I am (not what I am) ? The 'I' is not a fully-formed entity, whose nature or essence is set in stone and articulated by authority, but a searching, wondering mystery that is open to modification in the light of fresh experience, that seeks open vistas, and acknowledges other mysteries...is a broken circle.

Free association, free roaming, free choice of commitments.
--Rebecca Solnit.