Individuality or individualism?

• Main Author: Reynolds, Joseph
• Published: University of Edinburgh 2006
• Subjects: 300.1
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.653158

The thesis suggests that there are two discourses of the individual within the culture of modernity and in social philosophy and political theory: <i>individualism</i> and <i>individuality</i>. These are entirely <i>different</i>, but throughout modernity individuality has been submerged by, or conflated with, the dominant discourse of individualism. An aim of the thesis is to attempt to clarify the submerged discourse of <i>individuality</i> by identifying, and constructing or reconstructing, some of its key features. In doing this it uses liberal-individualism as a contrast concept, and thereby implicitly identifies corresponding differences, limits, or omissions in the latter. The core features of individuality (and, in brackets, of individualism) identified and discussed in successive Chapters are: Comprehensive inviolability (Limited Inviolability); Self-Deteermination (Agency); The Possibility of Autonomy Self-Realization and Authenticity (Personal Autonomy); Internal Goods and Being (External Goods and Having); The Ethical and Moral Self (Moral Minimalism); Communalism (Gesellschaft). In the case of each feature, an attempt is made to clarify ways in which it diverges from liberal-individualism.