There's individualism, and then there's individualism

How a view of human nature distorts a view of political philosophy

I’ve been thinking a lot about individualism for the past year. A year ago I was on sabbatical, writing a book manuscript about the philosophical roots and repercussions of individualist vs. relational views of human nature. The origin of my project has to do with my teaching, but it’s become much more timely in recent years with the direction of politics.

On a first pass, individualism is a moral-social-political philosophy that takes as its starting point the idea that individuals have inviolable moral worth in their own right. The original contrast here, historically speaking, is class membership: people’s moral worth does not depend on whether they’re nobility or peasant, farmer, craftsperson, merchant, etc. Individuals are to be respected regardless of social positioning, on the basis of our rational ability to pursue the good as we see it.

Individualism as political philosophy, individualism as human nature

Already there’s a distinction to be had here, however: there’s individualism as a view of human nature, and individualism as a political philosophy. The former has to do with our understanding of ourselves in an ethico-metaphysical sense, answering the question what does it mean to be human? The latter has to do with how we should arrange our social institutions, answering the question what should have priority in the social sphere, the individual or the group?

The two senses of individualism are related, of course. If your view of human nature is individualistic, holding us to be fundamentally separate, then you’ll tend to gravitate toward a greater priority of the individual in the social sphere. If your view of human nature instead assumes fundamental connectedness, you’ll be more attracted to social-political views that emphasize group membership.

Let’s be careful to understand what that really means, however. In politics, individualism is often contrasted with collectivism, where the emphasis is on the group over the individual. In collectivism, the group (whatever it is—often government, but it could be some other social category such as tribe or ethnicity or religion) is held to have rights and power over individuals and can make demands of them to serve its purposes. Put this way, it makes the group sound coercive and anti-individual (at least to American ears). You become a cog in the machine, not important for yourself, but only in your role as someone contributing to the group. Or so Americans often think.¹

Photo by David Rotimi on Unsplash

Political individualism and the relational view of human nature

As a matter of understanding human nature, however, I don’t think the more relational view necessarily dictates collectivism in the way it’s usually understood in politics. If the emphasis in political individualism is on the fact that everyone is unique² and important in their own right, this does not lead toward right-wing politics without some further assumptions. It does lead to both respect and care, which are pretty widespread values.

A relational view of human nature holds at its core that each person matters in their own right, and for this reason deserves to be both respected and, especially, cared for. This does mean that we have responsibilities to one another because of our connectedness, and that we should enact policies from the starting point that “we’re in this together,” and that people deserve the social support it takes for them to live well with their unique needs and according to their values and interests. As

Elissa Strauss

puts it in When You Care, it “takes us away from seeing humans as a collective of individuals and instead as a collective of relationships” (221). It does not mean that “the group” is the be-all and end-all of our existence without some further assumptions.

So the political individualist claim that everyone matters in their own right is logically neutral between the individualist and relational views of human nature. I contend that it’s the individualist view of human nature that feeds the most prominent, increasingly extreme right-wing, construal of political individualism we’re witnessing in current times.

How individualist and relational views of human nature play out

The individualist view of human nature rests on the assumption that humans are fundamentally separate from one another, individuals with their own interests who are naturally in competition with one another. Self-interest is construed as narrowly self-centered, and its pursuit is understood to be rational. This way of thinking tends to emphasize the values of justice, authority, respect, independence, and impartiality. Freedom consists in being uninhibited, left alone to pursue our own visions and goals (sink or swim). There’s an emphasis on hierarchy and status seeking. Ethical theories based primarily on these values tend to seek clarity, abstraction, lawfulness, and systematization.

I hope it’s obvious how this view of human nature is connected to the currently-prominent interpretation of political individualism. But as I said, I don’t think we have to interpret political individualism through the lens of the individualist view of human nature. Let’s look at what happens when we start from a relational view instead.

The relational view starts from the assumption—first highlighted by the feminist scholars of the early 1980’s who started theorizing about care as an ethical practice—that humans are fundamentally connected to and dependent on one another and the natural world. Orbiting around this core we find ideas like: we need to take care of the animal aspects of ourselves (our bodies, our environment); we are emotional creatures, empathetic and altruistic. Self-interest is more expansive, including of course our narrow interests but also to an extent the interests of those we care most directly for, and even those of the more distant people we rely on in a world of globally distributed labor. This picture of human nature tends to bring out the values of care, love, attentiveness, and attachment. Freedom takes the form of having the opportunities, resources, and support to realize our potential. This orientation is more egalitarian and emphasizes cooperation and interdependence. Ethics grounded in these values tend to accept gray areas and messiness, seeking to understand each situation in its particulars and meet the needs of those involved.

Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash

When grounded in this view of human nature, political individualism looks rather different. There is still emphasis on taking care of individuals; there’s still an aim at human flourishing. But assuming that we all rely on one another in closer and more distant relationships—and in the development of our very selves—calls us to take responsibility for others’ flourshing rather than looking out only for ourselves. We do so because they’re persons with their own moral importance, just as real as our own: the fundamental political individualist tenet.

Because of the ascendancy of the individualist view of human nature, the political ideas that worked so well in eighteenth century to dismantle the hereditary class structure are breaking down in the face of contemporary problems. Inequality still pervades our social world, but now because of the dominance of (human nature) individualism it’s seen as the fault of those who don’t have what it takes to get ahead, not the fault of insufficiently supportive social structures and oppressive institutions and practices (which may not be strictly aristocratic anymore, but which still exist). We face intimidating climate challenges because the individualism that fueled the economic prosperity of the Industrial Revolution is ill equipped to handle collective action problems. These and other social forces that have undermined a sense of community on many levels contribute to growing rates of mental illness.

But in the relational view of human nature we have the resources to reorient ourselves in ways that can address these problems. Attending to these ideas opens up the space to reexamine and shift our answers to the question of how to live together. An ethical outlook that draws heavily on the idea that humans are fundamentally relational holds promise for meaningful progress toward better mental health, more equitable social institutions, stronger communities, and a more harmonious relationship to the planet. But we don’t have to abandon the view that individuals are fundamentally important to get there.

1. I happen to think this is an uncharitable interpretation, but it doesn’t matter for present purposes.

2. In my classes, I like to distinguish between individuality and individualism: individuality is what every teenager is figuring out: who they are, what their unique gifts and interests are, how to be themselves in the world. Individualism is the bigger-picture philosophy under discussion here. I happen to think that our individuality is constituted in significant part by our relationships with others, but the point for now is that you can be your own self no matter how you think of human nature or how to arrange social institutions.