50 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
50 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
Review of "'Individualism' in the Mid-Nineteenth Century", by Koenrad W. Swart
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from _The Journal of the History of Ideas_, v.23 no.1 (1962), pp.77-90.
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Koenrad Swart states his thesis early on when he states: "The term
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'individualism' with its perplexing varieties of meanings is responsible
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for many inconclusive debates in the history of ideas." He goes on
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to identify three "highly dissimilar clusters of ideas": individualism
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as 1) the idealistic doctrines with egaitarian implications, such as the
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"rights of man" made popular by/in the French Revolution; 2) the anti-statist
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utilitarian doctrine of _laissez faire_, economic liberalism; and 3) the
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aristorcratic cult if individuality, Romantic individualism, such as put
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forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Fredrich Schlegel. This contingent
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was at odds especially with the egalitarian aspect of what had been termed
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individualism up to that time (c.1830), and stressed the diversity and
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inequality of talents and abilities. On the other hand, many thinkers
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at this time considered individualism, including _laissez faire_
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capitalism, to be the logical outgrowth of the ideas which spawned the
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French Revolution, pointing out that the founding fathers of this
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revolution were inspired more by self-interest than love of humanity.
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Individualism as a positive term made its first strides toward acceptance
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in England in the work of William McCall, whose _Principles of Individualism_
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gained a fairly wide readership; one of his early enthusiasts was George
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Eliot. McCall was apparently infulenced by J.S. Mill and Carlyle, but
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above all, by the German Romantic ideas by authors discussed above, and,
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although Swart does not explicitly say so, it would seem that Max Stirner
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may have figured into it as well; McCall's book was published in 1847,
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two years after Stirner's book _Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum_.
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Many of the writers, especially in Germany, stressed the long
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history of German independence as a widespread cultural trait; their
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love of freedom could be traced to the old Germanic tribes which had
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successfully resisted Roman domination and which later insinuated itself
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into medieval institutions such as the feudal system after the Germanic
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invasion of Roman territories. This love of liberty was considered
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a strong cultural trait until German unification in the 1870's, with
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the rise of Prussianism.
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The individualist tendency is seen by Swart as culminating with the
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thought of the Young Hegelians, in particular Max Stirner, in rejecting
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the claims of society upon the individual, in the 1840's.
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An interesting contrast between the individualism of _laissez faire_
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capitalism and what was termed "infinite individualism" was developed
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by Karl Bruggemann in 1842 in which he asserted that this infinite
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individualism was based in a German infinite self-confidence to be
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personally free in morals and truth.
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Individualism gained a lasting impetus in the publication of Jacob
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Burckhardt's _Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy_ in 1860.
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>From this moment on the term was a force to be reckoned with in
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the ongoing battle of ideas still being waged today.
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David Westling
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