The Individual

Extract from Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies; An Introduction

In the modern world the concept of the individual is so familiar that its political significance is often overlooked. In the feudal period there was little idea of individuals having their own interests or possessing personal and unique identities. Rather people were seen as members of the social groups to which they belonged: their family, village, local community or social class.

Their lives and identities were largely determined by the character of these groups in a process that changed little from one generation to the next. However, as feudalism was displaced by increasingly market-orientated societies, individuals were confronted by a broader range of choices and social possibilities. They were encouraged, perhaps for the first time, to think for themselves, and to think of themselves in personal terms. A serf, for example, whose family may always have lived and worked on the same piece of land, became a ‘free man’ and acquired some ability to choose who to work for, or maybe the opportunity to leave the land altogether and look for work in the growing towns or cities.

As the certainties of feudal life broke down a new intellectual climate emerged. Rational and scientific explanations gradually displaced traditional religious theories, and society was increasingly understood from the viewpoint of the human individual. Individuals were thought to possess personal and distinctive qualities: each was of special value. This was evident in the growth of natural rights theories in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These suggested that individuals were invested with a set of God-given, natural rights, defined by John Locke as ‘life, liberty and property’. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) expressed a similar belief in the dignity and equal worth of human beings in his conception of individuals as ‘ends in themselves’ and not merely as means for the achievement of the ends of others. However, emphasizing the importance of the individual has two, contrasting implications.

First, it draws attention to the uniqueness of each human being: individuals are primarily defined by inner qualities and attributes specific to themselves. Second, they nevertheless share the same status in that they are all, first and foremost, individuals. Many of the tensions within liberal ideology can, indeed, be traced back to these rival ideas of uniqueness and equality.

A belief in the primacy of the individual is the characteristic theme of liberal ideology, but it has influenced liberal thought in different ways. It has led some liberals to view society as simply a collection of individuals, each seeking to satisfy his or her own needs and interests. Such a view has been called atomistic, in that it conceives of individuals as ‘isolated atoms’ within society; indeed it can lead to the belief that ‘society’ itself does not exist, but is merely a collection of self-sufficient individuals. Such extreme individualism is based upon the assumption that the individual is egotistical, essentially self-seeking and largely self-reliant. C. B. Macpherson (1973) characterized early liberalism as ‘possessive individualism’ because, he argued, it regarded the individual as ‘the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them’. In contrast, later liberals have held a more optimistic view of human nature, and have been more prepared to believe that individuals possess a social responsibility for one another, especially for those who are unable to look after themselves. Whether human nature is conceived of as being egoistical or altruistic, liberals are united in their desire to create a society in which each person is capable of developing and flourishing to the fullness of his or her potential.