The Meanings of "Individualism"
The Meanings of "Individualism"
The Meanings of "Individualism"
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STEVEN LUKES
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de Bonald "man only exists for society and society only educates him
for itself."12 The ideas of the philosophes were, they thought, not
merely false; they were wicked and dangerous. According to Lamennais, they proclaimed the individual as sovereign over himself in the
most absolute sense:
His reason-that is his law, his truth, his justice. To seek to impose on him an
obligation he has not previously imposed on himself by his own thought and
will is to violate the most sacred of his rights .... Hence, no legislation, no
power is possible, and the same doctrine which produces anarchy in men's
minds further produces an irremediable political anarchy, and overturns the
very bases of human society.
Were such principles to prevail, "what could one foresee but troubles,
disorders, calamities without end, and universal dissolution?" Man,
Lamennais argued, "lives only in society" and "institutions, laws, governments draw all their strength from a certain concourse of thoughts
and wills." "What," he asked, "is power without obedience? What
is law without duty?" and he answered:
Individualism which destroys the very idea of obedience and of duty, thereby
destroying both power and law; and what then remains but a terrifying confusion of interests, passions, and diverse opinions?13
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STEVEN LUKES
THE MEANINGS
OF "INDIVIDUALISM"
49
even Proudhon saw society as "a sui generis being" and argued that
"outside the group there are only abstractions and phantoms."20From
the mid-nineteenth century, liberal Protestants and eventually a few
laissez-faire liberals started to call themselves individualists and one
wrote a comprehensive history of "economic and social individualism," incorporating a variety of French thinkers21-yet the tone was
always one of defensive paradox. Few have welcomed the epithet, and
many, from Balzac onwards,22 stressed the opposition between "individualisme," implying anarchy and social atomization, and "individualite," implying personal independence and self-realization. For
the Swiss theologian Alexandre Vinet, these were "two sworn enemies; the first an obstacle and negation of any society; the latter a
principle to which society owes all its savor, life and reality." The
"progress of individualism" meant "the relaxation of social unity because of the increasingly pronounced predominance of egoism," while
the "gradual extinction of individuality" meant "the increasingly
strong inclination for minds ...
known as public opinion or the spirit of the age."23 In general, "individualisme" in French thought points to the sources of social dissolution, though there have been wide divergences concerning the
nature of those sources and of the social order they are held to threaten,
as well as in the historical frameworks within which they are conceptualized.
For some, individualism resides in dangerous ideas, for others it
is social or economic anarchy, a lack of the requisite institutions
and norms, for yet others it is the prevalence of self-interested attitudes
among individuals. For men of the right, from de Maistre to Charles
Maurras, it is all that undermines a traditional, hierarchical social
order. Thus Louis Veuillot, the militant Catholic propagandist, wrote
in 1843 that "France has need of religion" which would bring "harmony, union, patriotism, confidence, morality...":
The evil whichplaguesFranceis not unknown;everyoneagreesin givingit the
samename:individualism.
It is not difficultto see that a country where individualismreigns is no
longerin the normalconditionsof society, since society is the unionof minds
andinterests,andindividualismis divisioncarriedto the infinitedegree.
20p. J. Proudhon, Lettres sur la Philosophie du Progres (1853), Letter I, pts V and
IV, Oeuvres Completes, new ed. (Paris, 1868-76), XX, 39-40, 36.
21A. Schatz, L'Individualisme Economique et Sociale (Paris, 1907). Cf H -L. Follin,
"Quelle est la Veritable Definition de L'Individualisme," Journal des Economistes
(April 15, 1899).
22Swart,art cit., 84.
23Quotedibid., 84-5. Cf. Arieli, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), ch. X.
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STEVEN LUKES
All for each, each for all, that is society;each for himself,and thus each
againstall, that is individualism.24
Similarly, during the Dreyfus Affair, Ferdinand Brunetiere, the
strongly anti-Dreyfusard literary historian, defended the army and the
social order, which he saw as threatened by "individualism" and
"anarchy," and poured scorn on those intellectuals who had presumed
to doubt the justice of Dreyfus's trial. Individualism, he wrote, was
the great sicknessof the presenttime.... Each of us has confidenceonly in
himself, sets himself up as the sovereignjudge of everything... when intellectualismand individualismreach this degree of self-infatuation,one must
expectthemto be or becomenothingotherthananarchy... 25
Among socialists, individualism has typically been contrasted with
an ideal, cooperative social order, variously described as "association," "harmony," "socialism," and "communism"; the term here
refers to the economic doctrine of laissez-faire and to the anarchy,
social atomization, and exploitation produced by industrial capitalism.
Pierre Leroux, aiming at a new humanitarian and libertarian socialism, used it to mean the principle, proclaimed by political economy,
of "everyone for himself, and ... all for riches, nothing for the poor,"
which atomized society and made men into "rapacious wolves" 26; "society," he maintained, "is entering a new era in which the general tendency of the laws will no longer have individualism as its end, but association." 27 For Constantin Pecqueur, "the remedy lies in association
precisely because the abuse springs from individualism" 28 and the
utopian Etienne Cabet wrote that
Two great systems have dividedand polarizedHumanityever since the beginningof the world:that of Individualism(or egoism, or personalinterest),
and that of Communism(or association,or the general interest,or the public interest).9
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THE MEANINGS
OF "INDIVIDUALISM"
51
tantism, the Bourgeoisie, and the Enlightenment, bringing a historically necessary, though false and incomplete, freedom. Its progressive
aspect was a new self-assertion, a new independence of traditional
structures and rejection of Authority in the religious, economic, and
intellectual spheres; but it needed to be transcended and completed,
pointing towards a future age of socialist Fraternity. In Blanc's own
words:
Three great principlesdivide the world and history:Authority, Individualism,andFraternity.
The principleof individualismis that which, taking man out of society,
makes him sole judge of what surroundshim and of himself, gives him a
heightenedsense of his rights without showing him his duties, abandons
him to his own powers,and, for the whole of government,proclaimslaisserfaire.
Individualism,inauguratedby Luther, has developed with an irresistible force, and, dissociated from the religious factor ... it governs
the present;it is the spiritualprincipleof things.
... individualismis important in having achieved a vast progress. To
providebreathing-spaceand scope to humanthought repressedfor so long,
to intoxicateit with pride and audacity;to submitto the judgmentof every
mind the totality of traditions, centuries, their achievements,their beliefs; to place man in an isolation full of anxieties,full of perils, but sometimes also full of majesty, and to enable him to resolve personally,in the
midst of an immensestruggle,in the uproarof a universaldebate,the problem of his happinessand his destiny ...-this is by no means an achievement without grandeur, and it is the achievementof individualism.One
mustthereforespeakof it with respectandas a necessarytransition.31
Again, the disciples of Charles Fourier denied any basic opposition between individualism and socialism,32 while at the end of the century,
Jean Jaures argued that "socialism is the logical completion of individualism,"33a formula echoed by Emile Durkheim, who saw a kind
of centralized guild socialism as a means of "completing, extending,
and organizing individualism."34 For all these socialist thinkers,
individualism signified the autonomy, freedom, and sacredness of the
individual-values which had hitherto taken a negative, oppressive,
and anarchic form but could henceforth only be preserved within a
cooperative and rationally-organized social order.
31Fromhis Histoire de la Revolution Francaise (1846), quoted in R. Koebner, "Zur
Begriffbildungder Kulturgeschichte: II: Zur Geschichte des Begriffs 'Individualismus'
(Jacob Burckhardt, Wilhelm von Humboldt und die franz6sische Soziologie)," Historische Zeitschrift, CXLIX (1934), 269.
32Swart, art. cit., 85.
33J.Jaures, "Socialisme et Liberte," Revue de Paris, XXIII (Dec. 1898), 499.
34E. Durkheim, "Individualism and the Intellectuals" (1898), tr. S. and J. Lukes,
Political Studies, XVII (1969), 29. Cf Lukes, "Durkheim's 'Individualism and the
Intellectuals'," loc. cit.
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STEVEN LUKES
French liberals also spoke of individualism, but they characteristically saw it as a threat to a pluralist social order, with minimum
state intervention and maximum political liberty. Benjamin Constant,
perhaps the most eloquent exponent of classical liberalism, was clearly
groping for the word when he observed that "when all are isolated by
egoism, there is nothing but dust, and at the advent of a storm, nothing but mire."35 It was, however, that aristocratic observer of early
nineteenth-century America, Alexis de Tocqueville, who developed
its most distinctive and influential liberal meaning in France. For
Tocqueville, individualism was the natural product of democracy
("Individualism is of democratic origin and threatens to develop
insofar as conditions are equalized"), involving the apathetic withdrawal of individuals from public life into a private sphere and their
isolation from one another, with a consequent weakening of social
bonds. Such a development, Tocqueville thought, offered dangerous
scope for the unchecked growth of the political power of the state.
More specifically, "individualism"-a "recent expression to which
a new idea has given birth"-was "a deliberate and peaceful sentiment which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of
his fellows and to draw apart with his family and friends," abandoning "the wider society to itself." At first, it "saps only the virtues of
public life; but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all others and
is eventually absorbed into pure egoism." In contrast to aristocratic
society, in which men were "linked closely to something beyond them
and are often disposed to forget themselves" and which "formed of
all the citizens a long chain reaching from the peasant to the king,"
democracy "breaks the chain and sets each link apart," and "the
bond of human affections extends and relaxes." With increasing social mobility, the continuity of the generations is destroyed; as classes
become fused, "their members become indifferent and as if strangers
to one another"; and as individuals become increasingly self-sufficient,
"they become accustomed to considering themselves always in isolation, they freely imagine that their destiny is entirely in their own
hands." Democracy, Tocqueville concluded, "not only makes each
man forget his forefathers, but it conceals from him his descendants
and separates him from his contemporaries; it ceaselessly throws
him back on himself alone and threatens finally to confine him entirely
in the solitude of his own heart."36
Individualism for Tocqueville thus sprang from the lack of intermediary groups to provide a framework for the individual and protec35Quoted in H. Marion, "Individualisme," La Grande Encyclopedie (Paris, n.d.),
Vol. XX.
36A. de Tocqueville, De la Democratie en Amerique (1835) bk. II, pt. II, ch. II,
Oeuvres Completes, ed. J. P. Mayer (Paris, 1951-), I, II, 104-6.
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THE MEANINGS
OF "INDIVIDUALISM"
53
tion against the State. (As for the Americans, they only avoided its
destructive consequences because of their free institutions and active
citizenship: they conquered individualism with liberty.) It was, moreover, a peculiarly modern evil: "Our fathers," Tocqueville wrote, "did
not have the word 'individualism,' which we have coined for our own
use, because in their time there was indeed no individual who did not
belong to a group and who could be considered as absolutely alone."37
No less diverse than these conceptions of the sources and the dangers of individualism have been the historical frameworks within
which French thinkers have placed it. It is variously traced to the
Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Revolution, to
the decline of the aristocracy or the Church or traditional religion, to
the Industrial Revolution, to the growth of capitalism or democracy,
but, as we have seen, there is wide agreement in seeing it as an evil
and a threat to social cohesion. Perhaps the role of "individualisme"
in French thought is partly due to the very success of "individualist"
legislation at the time of the Revolution,38 the elimination of intermediary groups and bodies in the society, and the ensuing political and
administrative centralization of the country. The basis for this had
been laid, as Tocqueville observed, in the municipal and fiscal policies
of the French Kings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
which had systematically prevented the growth of spontaneous, organized activities and informal groupings.39 One can even reasonably postulate that the lack of such activities and groupings is a basic
and distinctive French cultural trait.40
However that may be, the mainstream of French thought, above
all in the nineteenth century, has expressed by "individualisme" what
Durkheim identified by the twin concepts of "anomie" and "egoism"41
-the social, moral, and political isolation of individuals, their dissociation from social purposes and social regulation, the breakdown
of social solidarity. General de Gaulle was using it in its paradigm
French sense when, in his New Year's broadcast to the nation on 31
December 1968, recalling the Evenements of May, he observed:
At the same time, it is necessarythat we surmountthe moral malaise
which-above all among us by reason of our individualism-is inherent in
modern mechanicaland materialistcivilization.Otherwise, the fanatics of
destruction,the doctrinairesof negation,the specialistsin demagogy,will once
more have a good opportunityto exploitbitternessin orderto provokeagita37L'AncienRegime et la Revolution (1856), bk. II, ch. IX, ibid., II, 1, p. 158.
38R. R. Palmer, "Man and Citizen: Applications of Individualism in the French
Revolution," Essays in Political Theory (Ithaca, N.Y., 1948).
39L'AncienRegime et la Revolution, bk. II, chs. 3, 6, 9, 12.
40M.Crozier, The BureaucraticPhenomenon (London, 1964), esp. ch. 8.
41Suicide(1897), trans. J. A. Spaulding and G. Simpson (Glencoe, Ill., 1951).
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STEVEN LUKES
tion, while their sterility, which they have the derisory insolence to call revolution, can lead to nothing else than the dissolution of everything into nothingness, or else to the loss of everything under the grinding oppression of totalitarianism.42
THE MEANINGS
OF "INDIVIDUALISM"
55
ferentiated individuals"; the new, German, individualism was "the individualism of difference, with the deepening of individuality to the
point of the individual's incomparability, to which he is 'called' both
in his nature and in his achievement." The individual became "this
specific, irreplaceable, given individual" and was "called or destined
to realize his own incomparable image." The "new individualism,"
Simmel wrote, "might be called qualitative, in contrast with the quantitative individualism of the eighteenth century. Or it might be labeled
the individualism of uniqueness (Einzigkeit) as against that of singleness (Einzelheit). At any rate, Romanticism was perhaps the broadest
channel through which it reached the consciousness of the nineteenth
century. Goethe had created its artistic, and Schleiermacher its metaphysical basis: Romanticism supplied its sentimental experiential
foundation."45
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THE MEANINGS
57
OF "INDIVIDUALISM"
52Loc.cit., 82.
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its life."53 Here one can see that individualism does not, as with the
French, endanger social solidarity; it is its supreme realization.
(iii) Burckhardt. A striking and influential synthesis of French
and German meanings of "individualism" is to be found (appropriately
enough) in the work of the Swiss historian, Jacob Burckhardt. A central theme of Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in
Italy54was the growth of "individualism." Summing up the "principal
features in the Italian character of that time," Burckhardt maintained
that its "fundamental vice ... was at the same time a condition of its
greatness, namely, excessive individualism."55 The second part of
the work is entitled "The Development of the Individual" and, in general, Burckhardt treated the Italians of the Renaissance as a people
"who have emerged from the half-conscious life of the race and become
themselves individuals."56
Schematically, one can say that Burckhardt's use of "individualism" combines the notion of the aggressive self-assertion of individuals
freed from an externally given framework of authority (as found in
Louis Blanc) and that of the individual's withdrawal from society into
a private existence (as in Tocqueville) with the early Romantic idea,
most clearly expressed by Humboldt, of the full and harmonious development of the individual personality, seen as representing humanity
and pointing towards its highest cultural development. The Italian of
the Renaissance was for Burckhardt "the firstborn among the sons of
modern Europe"57in virtue of the autonomy of his morality, his cultivation of privacy, and the individuality of his character.
"The individual," Burckhardt wrote,
firstinwardlycasts off the authorityof a State which,as a fact, is in mostcases
tyrannicaland illegitimate,and what he thinks and does is now, rightly or
wrongly,called treason.The sight of victoriousegotism in others drives him
to defend his own right by his own arm.... In face of all objectivefacts, of
laws and restraintsof whateverkind, he retainsthe feelingof his own sovereignty,and in each single instanceforms his decisionindependently,according
as honor or interest,passionor calculation,revengeor renunciation,gain the
upperhandin his ownmind.58
As to privacy, Burckhardt wrote of "the different tendencies and manifestations of private life ... thriving in the fullest vigour and variety" and cited "Agnolo Pandolfini (d. 1446), whose work on domestic economy is the first complete programme of a developed private
life." "The private man," he argued, "indifferent to politics, and busied
partly with serious pursuits, partly with the interests of a dilettante,
53T.Mann, Betrachtungeneines Unpolitischen (Berlin, 1918), 267.
54(1860)tr. S.G.C. Middlemore (London, 1955). Cf Koebner, art. cit.
55Ibid.,279.
56Ibid.,200.
57Ibid.,80.
58Ibid.,279.
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THE MEANINGS
59
OF "INDIVIDUALISM"
seems to have been first fully formed in these despotisms of the fourteenth century."59 Finally, he identified the "impulse to the highest
individual development" and saw Italy at the close of the thirteenth
century as beginning to "swarm with individuality; the ban upon human personality was dissolved; and a thousand figures meet us each in
his own special shape and dress." Dante, "through the wealth of individuality which he set forth," was "the most national herald of his
time"; much of Burckhardt's book treats of "this unfolding of the
treasures of human nature in literature and art." An acute and practised eye could trace
the increase in the number of complete men during the fifteenth century.
Whether they had before them as a conscious object the harmoniousdevelopmentof their spiritualand materialexistence,is hardto say, but several
of them attainedit, so far as is consistentwith the imperfectionof all that is
earthly.60
It is worth adding that for Burckhardt this growth of individualism was, as for so many philosophers of history, no accident but a
"historical necessity." Transmitted by Italian culture, and infusing
the other nations of Europe, it
has constitutedsince then the higheratmospherewhichthey breathe.In itself
it is neither good nor bad, but necessary;within it has grown up a modern
standard of good and evil-a sense of moral responsibility-which is essentiallydifferentfromthat whichwas familiarto the MiddleAges.61
(iv) America. It was in the United States that "individualism"
primarily came to celebrate capitalism and liberal democracy. It became a symbolic catchword of immense ideological significance,
expressing all that has at various times been implied in the philosophy
of natural rights, the belief in free enterprise, and the American
Dream. It expressed, in fact, the operative ideals of nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century America (and indeed continues to play a major
ideological role), advancing a set of universal claims seen as incompatible with the parallel claims of the socialism and communism of
the Old World. It referred, not to the sources of social dissolution or
the painful transition to a future harmonious social order, nor to the
cultivation of uniqueness or the organic community, but rather to the
actual or imminent realization of the final stage of human progress in
a spontaneously cohesive society of equal individual rights, limited
government, laissez-faire,
60Ibid.,81-4.
61lbid.,279.
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STEVEN LUKES
This abrupt change in the evaluative significance of the term is strikingly illustrated in one of the earliest American discussions of Tocqueville's Democracy in America by a Transcendentalist writer in the
Boston Quarterly Review. The writer, inaccurately but significantly,
expounded Tocqueville's concept of individualism as expressing "that
strong confidence in self, or reliance upon one's own exertion and resources" and as "the strife of all our citizens for wealth and distinction
of their own, and their contempt of reflected honors." "Individualism," he continued, "has its immutable laws ...
which ...
when al-
lowed to operate without let or hindrance ... must in the end assimilate
the species, and evolve all the glorious phenomena of original and
eternal order;-that order which exists in man himself, and alone
vivifies and sustains him."63
"Individualism" had, by the end of the Civil War, acquired an important place in the vocabulary of American ideology. Indeed, even
those who criticized American society, from New England Transcendentalists to the Single Taxers and the Populists, often did so in the
name of individualism. The term acquired differing layers of meaning
under the successive influences of New England Puritanism, the Jeffersonian tradition, and natural rights philosophy; Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and evangelicalism; the need of the North to develop
an ideological defence against the challenge of the South; the immensely popular evolutionary and laissez-faire ideas of Herbert
Spencer and the growth of Social Darwinism; and the permanent and
62"The Course of Civilization," United States Magazine and Democratic Review,
6 (1839), 208ff, 211, quoted in Arieli, op. cit., 191-2.
63"Catholicism,"Boston Quarterly Review (1841), 320ff, quoted in Arieli, op. cit.,
199.
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STEVEN LUKES
operating in an unbounded
velopment was the result of INDIVIDUALISM;
THE MEANINGS
OF "INDIVIDUALISM"
63
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STEVEN LUKES
As to the German sense, this can be seen in the writings of the Unitarian minister William McCall, claimed as a precursor in expounding
"the doctrine of Individuality" (along with Humboldt, the German
Romantics, Goethe, and Josiah Warren) by John Stuart Mill.80
McCall, who was influenced by German Romanticism, wrote declamatory books and pamphlets, such as Elements of Individualism (1847)
and Outlines of Individualism (1853), in which he preached the gospel
of a new way of life dominated by the "Principle of Individualism,"
which he hoped England would be the first country to adopt.
Among indigenous uses, the term's reference to nonconformity
is evident in the condemnation by Gladstone, who for a time advocated
a single state religion, of "our individualism in religion"81 and in
Matthew Arnold's contrast between the Catholics' ecclesiastical
conception of the Eucharist and its origin "as Jesus founded it" where
"it is the consecration of absolute individualism."82The term's reference to the English character can be seen in Samuel Smiles, that
ardent moralist on behalf of the Manchester School of political economy. "The spirit of self-help," he wrote, "as exhibited in the energetic
action of individuals, has in all times been a marked feature of the
English character"; even "the humblest person, who sets before his
fellows an example of industry, sobriety, and upright honesty of purpose
in life, has a present as well as a future influence upon the well-being
of his country." It was this "energetic individualism which produces
the most powerful effects upon the life and action of others, and really
constitutes the best practical education."83
It was as a central term in the vocabulary of English liberalism
that "individualism" came to be mainly used in the latter half of the
nineteenth century, in contrast with "socialism," "communism,"
and, especially, "collectivism." Thus the Pall Mall Gazette in 1888
spoke of holding "the scales between individualists and Socialists"84
and the Times in 1896 of "the individualists" holding "their own against
the encroachments of the State."85 Though scarcely used by the political economists and the Benthamites, and though, as we have seen,
Mill used it in a different and negative sense, "individualism" came to
be embraced by the whole spectrum of English liberals, from those
advocating the most extreme laissez-faire to those supporting quite extensive state intervention.
Among the former was Herbert Spencer, concerned to assist the
80Mill'sAutobiography (1873) (New York, 1960), 179.
81W. E. Gladstone, Church Principles Considered in their Results (London, 1840),
98, quoted in O.E.D.
82M.Arnold, Literature and Dogma (1873), (London, 1876), 312, quoted in O.E.D.
83S.Smiles, Self Help (1859), (London, 1958), 38, 39.
s530 Jan. 1896, quoted in O.E.D.
8410 Sept. 1888, quoted in O.E.D.
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THE MEANINGS
OF "INDIVIDUALISM"
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STEVEN LUKES
"Individualism" has, in this sense, been widely used to mean the absence or minimum of state intervention in the economic and other
spheres, and has usually been associated, both by its adherents and
its opponents, with classical, or negative liberalism.
Balliol College, Oxford.
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