The Development of Individualism
It is important to consider individualism, how it developed and why. It didn't appear overnight; instead it is the result of hundreds of years of evolution. Essentially the values of individualism and societalism are related to the age old question of the individual or the group; which should be dominant? People have been asking this question, fighting this battle, long before we applied the labels of individualism and societalism. Usually it was the group which was dominant; throughout history the group has attempted to control both the actions and the beliefs of the individual. The very idea of people as individuals is a threat to the group, and so the group has always attempted to suppress the individual, and has usually been able to do so.
The first flowering of individual responsibility and freedom was in the Greek City-state of Athens, more than 2,000 years ago. Ancient Athens is also our first historical example of a democracy. This is not a coincidence. Political control is the highest level of control. If people are able to affect some control over the political system, then in essence they are able to control their own lives. If people are not able to control their government, then they lack the ultimate control over their actions; instead their lives are controlled by the people in government.
The Roman Empire also achieved a remarkable degree of individual freedom, drifting in and out of a vaguely representative form of government. It is not surprising that these two cultures produced Classical Greek and Roman art, literature and philosophy, some of the greatest in human history.
With the gradual decline and fall of the Roman Empire, individual freedom and responsibility disappeared, and the group reasserted its control. Now, there are different degrees to which freedom can be lost. It is possible to lose political power, the ultimate power over one's actions, and still retain some degree of control over one's thoughts and beliefs; people still have the freedom to think what they want. However, when control of thinking and beliefs is linked to and reinforced by control of actions, all freedom is stripped from the individual. This was the situation after the fall of the Roman Empire. The church offered its support to the ruling class, which in turn supported the church. The church and the state shared a monopoly on control. An individual who questioned the church was undermining the authority of the ruler, while to question the ruler was to transgress against the order of God. There was almost no individual freedom or responsibility left. To attempt to think for oneself was heresy, punishable by death. Any attempt to control one's own life was considered a sin by the church.
Individualism and individual freedom did not begin to reappear in Europe until the 1400s. The catalyst was the rediscovery of the writings of the Greeks and Romans. The writings of these ancients broke the church's monopoly on thought. Until that time the church had been the only source of rationality. All answers to all questions could only be had from the pope and the church's interpretation of the Bible. But the writings of the Greeks and Romans, and of Aristotle in particular, offered a new source of answers, showed that rationality was not the result of divine inspiration but a part of humanity. Aristotle showed the heights of rationality and logic that the human mind could achieve, proved that people could think for themselves instead of having to look to the church for all answers.
What Aristotle had done was reintroduce the most important requirement of individualism: rationality. To be in control of one's life and free, one has to be able to think for himself or herself. Once people are aware of their ability to think for themselves, and are allowed to do so, they will want to do so. Having been shown the powers of rationality by the Greeks, people could no longer accept the judgment of the church because they wanted to decide for themselves.
At first this movement was entirely within the church, with a group of scholars called the Humanists. But eventually this questioning led to the Reformation, a split in the church itself. Martin Luther essentially started it, founding the Lutheran church; eventually other denominations followed. The Reformation brought rationality and self thought to the society as a whole. People had to choose among the various denominations, decide which church to join. The old, smothering system, in which questioning the church was cause for death, had dissolved.
The Reformation led to the Renaissance, the rebirth of learning. People turned their newfound rationality to the world around them using it to question everything. Not surprisingly, this marked the beginning of one of the most dynamic periods in history. There were advances in science, literature, in philosophic thought, in the arts. All of Western Europe began to progress, as individuals examined every facet of life, attempting to understand it, wondering how it could be improved.
The calcification which had gripped Europe for a thousand years began to slowly melt away. Innovators from every part of society, believing in their ability to grasp the future for themselves, were able to make those possibilities a reality. In doing so, they pulled the culture up with them, leading to the higher level of self- determination which the culture of western Europe enjoys even today.
Next: The Rise of Liberalism