A Study on American IndividualismI IntroductionIndividualism is the very core of American culture and the main value in America.We can say that individualism has been influencing all the fields of politics,economics and society,even the character of the nation. The self--reliance, Individual freedom, equal competition which are emphasized is different from the concept of individualism in China. Individualism is a western concept, and the origin can be traced back to the period of Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. In the period of immigration and Westward movement, Individualism was intensified. Although over self--centered canbring negative effect, from the whole historical point of view, there is no big social events which violate the stable situation, thisis because the concept of commitment has been in the heart of Americans for a long time.Individualism supplied the nation with a rationalization of its characteristic attitudes,behavior patterns and aspirations. It endowed the past, the present and the future with the perspective of unity and progress. It explained the peculiar social and political organization of the nation—unity in spite of heterogeneity and it pointed toward an ideal social organization in harmony with American experience. Above all, individualism expressed as the universalism and idealism most characteristic of the national consciousness. This concept evolved in contradistinction to socialism, the universal and messianic character of which it shared.Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom have been deemed by Americans not only their choicest, but their peculiar and exclusive possession. Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom have been deemed by Americans not only their choicest, but their peculiar and exclusive possession.Individualism is perhaps the primary concept that, transcending such categories as race, gender, class, age and region, unites Americans across time and space to give coherence to the national experience. From the earliest beginnings of the republic to the post-modernist present, the rights of the individual citizen and his or her place in the scheme of things has been of primary importance to American philosophers, artists, political theorists, theologians and others concerned with articulating national values and principles. Communitarian ideas rise from time to time to challenge individualism, but none have yet been successful in seriously weakening its hold on American culture. Incorporated into American "common-sense thinking," the philosophy ofindividualism becomes in the popular mind the very essence of what being an American means. In this course we will examine with a critical eye the philosophical basis and social consequences of the primacy of the individual in American intellectual, legal, and political traditions.There are five parts of this paper. The first part is the brief introduction of the paper, mainly introduce the important position of American Individualism in American. The second part summarize the Individualism, including origin, development, evolvement and the development fundemental. The third part is the most vital one, in this chapter, this paper talk about the performance of American Individualism in various areas. The fourth part is the evaluation of Individualism and the conclusion of the whole paper.II On the Term——American Individualism2.1Concept of the IndividualismBelief in the primary importance of the individual and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence.Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own interests, whether by society, or any other group or institution.Individualism makes the individual its focus and so it starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation." Natural rights and freedom are the substance of these theories. Classical liberalism (including libertarianism), existentialism and individualist anarchism are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis.It has also been used as a term denoting "The quality of being an individual; individuality" related to possessing "An individual characteristic; a quirk." Individualism is thus also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors as so also with humanist philosophical positions and ethics.Individualism encompasses a value system, a theory of human nature, and a belief in certain political, economic, social, and religious arrangements. According to the individualist, all values are human-centred, the individual is of supreme importance, and all individuals are morally equal. Individualism places great value on self-reliance, on privacy, and on mutual respect. Negatively, itembraces opposition to authority and to all manner of controls over the individual, especially when exercised by the state. As a theory of human nature, individualism holds that the interests of the normal adult are best served by allowing him maximum freedom and responsibility for choosing his objectives and the means for obtaining them. The institutional embodiment of individualism follows from these principles.2.1.1 The Misconception of IndividualismIsolationThe first misconception is that individualism means isolation---being alone, being outside society. This misconception is reflected in the popular images of ―individualism‖, images that stress being isolated, such as those of the lone cowboy, the fearless gumshoe, and the isolated prairie family. Such images can be exciting and heroic, but isolation is not the essence of individualism.In fact, the concept of individualism does not make sense in the absence of other human beings. Individualism is called ―individualism‖ not because it exhorts the individual to seek a life apart from others, but because it asserts that the individual, and not the group, is the primary constituent of society. The belief that individualism means being alone leads people to say that individualism is incompatible with cooperat ion. If one is too much of an ―individualist‖, people say, one cannot ―get along with groups‖, one is not a good ―team player‖. Actually, a person who doesn't listen to others, the person who would rather do things an inefficient way as long as it's ―my way‖, is not being an ―individualist‖---he's being closed minded. A true individualist wants the best for himself, so he seeks out the best, no mater who is the source. To the individualist, the truth is more important than any authority, including himself. Living in society, cooperating with other people---these are tremendous benefits. Individualism does not deny this. But not all arrangements of living and working with other men are beneficial to the individual; the arrangement faced by American slaves is one example. Individualism is a theory of the conditions under which living and working with others is, in fact, beneficial.BalanceAnother widespread misconception about individualism is that it can somehow be mixed with or tempered by collectivism. In this view, neither ―extreme‖ individualism nor ―extreme‖collectivism are correct. Rather, wisdom and truth lie somewhere in the middle. Individualism andcollectivism are contradictory positions---there is no middle ground between them. Collectivism maintains that the group is an entity in its own right, a thing that can act upon people. Individualism denies this. Collectivism sees us being influenced by the group; individualism sees us being influenced by other individuals. Collectivism sees us cooperating with the team; individualism, with other people. Collectivism sees us building on the ideas and achievements of society; individualism, on the ideas and achievements of individuals. These are contradictory positions; it's either-or. To accept the ―balance‖point of view is to accept collectivism. No collectivist has ever said that every single need of every individual must be frustrated for the sake of the society---if so, there wouldn't be any society left to serve. Collectivism is the balance point of view; it is a matter of fine-tuning here and there, constraining individuals when their interests get out of line with the ―good of society‖. Indeed, the main debate between the ―left‖and the ―right‖ today is not a debate over collectivism and individualism---its a debate over two forms of collectivism. The ―left‖ holds that the needs of society lie in the materialistic realm, so they are into regulating that aspect of individual affai rs. The ―right‖ holds that the needs of society lie in the spiritual realm, so they are into regulating the spiritual aspect of individual affairs.2.1.2 The Conception of American IndividualismThe embodiment of American Individualism can be depicted in four aspects, from which we put emphasis on there of them.Self-relianceOne of the most attractive characters of most American people is their self-reliance, which is generally considered as the basic of individual freedom, another essential character of individualism of America. Children in the United States, as long as they are18-year old, have to earn their daily bread by themselves, while senior citizens are also quite used to living alone instead of sharing the same ceiling with their children. No wonder that we may hear people always s ay ‗Thanks, but I can manage it throughout the country in the America.Individual FreedomMuch unlike the Europeans‘ thoughts on ‗freedom‘—just as what Tocqueville went after, an entire free without any strings attached [3]—the equivalent in America seems to be more reasonable, not meaning that one can do anything at will, but entitling people the right ‗to education‘, ‗to work‘, ‗to freedom of thought, conscience and religion‘, ‗to freedom of peacefulassembly and associ ation‘, etc. [4] The basis of all of these rights are ―Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness‖, declared by The Declaration of Independence . Of course, all of these freedoms and rights should be under the control of the States‘ legal system.Personal selectionAmerican people‘s personal selection is particularly embodied in the Presidential Election. Every voter feels absolutely free to vote the prospective President without a single string attached. In a book named The People’s Choice: How the Voter M akes Up His Mind in a Presidential Election, written by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, we found no special factor having a critical influence on which candidate they will vote for but socio-economic status, religious faith, occupation, and age. When educating their children, most American parents encourage their kids to make their own decisions, and this helps greatly during the formation one‘s character especially to self-reliance and confidence.Individual equalityIn general, most Americans are fairly indifferent to the identity of social rank and belong themselves to the middle class. ―We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.‖And we can‘t get a more valuable heritage from Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King. Quite different from Europe, the idea of equality in the United States assumed that everyone has equal opportunities rather than social positions. That is to say, each person has equal chance to achieve his success; however, the results of their work vary greatly from person to person. Based on personal equality, individual competition then has evolved into a life attitude throughout the daily life of the American people. In the United States, a fair social competition is protected by both political principles and organizational structures, ensuring an advantageous environment for personal equally competition.2.2 The Origin of American IndividualismThe origin of American individualism can be traced back to the beginning years of its history, when first American immigrants came to the North American continent looking for better life and shaking off the yoke of European feudal tradition and the oppression from all kinds of powerful classes. It is determined that elements of anti-yoke and searching for freedom should be the Ameri can people‘s character. This was the original explanation of American individualism. Concerning this, what American people are always proud of is the Declaration of Independence:―we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.‖2.3 The Development of American IndividualismThis has not always been the state of affairs in America, and we are reminded of just this fact by much of the best scholarship in colonial and early national history in recent years. The crucial role of Protestant Christianity in making the early American social and political ethos has been repeatedly emphasized. For example, the political scientist Barry Alan Shain has made the case that it was not Enlightenment liberalism but a very constrained form of communitarian Reformed Protestantism that best represented the dominant social and political outlook of early America. The political theorist Michael Sandel has argued that, until the twentieth century, America's public philosophy was based largely on the "republican" assumption that the polity had a formative, prescriptive, "soulcraft" function to perform in matters of the economy, the family, church-state relations, personal morality, free speech, constitutional law, privacy, productive labor, and consumption.In retrospect, however, it is hard not to see those earlier perspectives as fatally fragile. Certainly by the middle of the nineteenth century, figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman—romantic American nationalists and prophets of the unconstrained self—were already trumpeting the note that would have the most lasting resonance in the American imagination. It was Emerson who declared famously that a society is a "conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members," and that "nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." And it was Whitman who declared that "the Great Idea" is "the idea of perfect and free individuals," and that "nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is." One could hardly deny that such driving, self-interested ambition was itself a logical corollary to the spirit of unrestrained self-development, although both men would live long enough to be disappointed in the crass materialism that seemed to take hold of American society in the post–Civil War years. So, too, there is the irresistible story of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, the semi-noble, semi-savage boy who lit out for the territory rather than enduring the phony rigors of civilization. Indeed, one sure index of the hold that individualism has had on American thought and expression is the culture'srichness in figures of heroic individuality—and its relative poverty in providing convincing representations of community or social obligation.There have always been a few important countercurrents, however, to this pervasive celebration of individuality. One such current emerged from women writers, both inside and outside the nascent feminist movement. Individualism being a game still reserved largely for males, the fiction and "domestic economy" literature produced by such nineteenth-century writers as the sisters Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe often had a very different tone, emphasizing the satisfactions of settlement, family life, nurture, and human connectedness—all the things that Henry David Thoreau and Huck Finn sought to escape. Such arguments were carried to a high pitch by the southern anti-suffragist Louisa McCord, who urged women to stand at a critical distance from the coarse individualism of the male public world. To be sure, the works of northern feminists such as Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were nothing if not individualistic in tone, testifying to the fact that some women were eager to get in on the game. Various forms of that same tension between equality and difference have persisted into the twenty-first century and continue to color our discussions of individualism and gender.The immense human suffering and social dislocation wrought by industrialization was another stimulus to anti-individualistic thinking. One can see some elements of this critique emerging idiosyncratically in the antebellum years—for example, in the fascinating career of the anti-capitalist Catholic convert Orestes Brownson, who railed against individualism for destroying the grounds of human solidarity; or in the works of pro-slavery apologist George Fitzhugh, who presented slavery as an organic and patriarchal institution, far preferable to the inhumane and predatory institution of "wage slavery." But the best example could be found in one of the most widely read books of the nineteenth century, Edward Bellamy's 1888 fantasy Looking Backward, an effort to imagine a perfected postindustrial Boston, reconstituted as a socialist cooperative commonwealth in the year 2000. Bellamy openly reviled individualism, proposing in its place a post-Christian "religion of solidarity," which would radically de-emphasize the self, and instead emphasize social bonds over individual liberty (and traditional Christian doctrine).The popularity of Bellamy's book showed that there was a market hungry for such ideas, and many of the most "progressive" forces of the day—ranging from the cooperation-minded Knights of Labor, the theological advocates of a modernist "social gospel," to Progressive reformers suchas Herbert Croly, Jane Addams, and John Dewey—unreservedly admired and emulated its spirit. Indeed, the Progressive movement itself, at least in some of its manifestations, advanced a new corporate ideal that sought to downplay individualism and instead to defend and preserve "the public interest" in the face of industrial capital's power. In the hands of a sophisticated thinker like Dewey, a case was made that the values of community and individuality, far from being in opposition, are mutually supporting and mutually sustaining, particularly in an age dominated by large industrial combinations, immense asymmetries of wealth and power, and vast impersonal networks of communication. It was pointless, in their view, to restore the small-scale community of days past. Economic and social forces had rendered such community, with its personal bonds and face-to-face business transactions, impossible. The task ahead was the creation of something new, which Dewey called "The Great Community," a systematically reconstituted social order that, it was hoped, would adapt the best features of the old community forms to the inexorable realities of the new economy and society, and thereby preserve the possibility of a healthy form of individuality as well.2.3.1 The Evolvement of American IndividualismThe cultural changes of the 1990s (including multiculturalism, the advances of feminism, a growing rejection of moral relativism, new forms of spiritual self-expressiveness and greater attentiveness to children and childcare) can only be understood in the context of how the revolution in social values that took the nation by storm in the 1960s and 1970s has subsequently evolved.The transformation in values from the mid-sixties to the late-seventies confronts Americans with one of the sharpest discontinuities in Americans‘history as a culture. Observers have attached a variety of names to the changes. Journalist Tom Wolfe famously labeled the period as the "me generation". More academically, Ron Inglehart referred to the new values as "post-materialist" and documented their spread from the United States to the other industrialized democracies. A label for the new ethos that I and others prefer is "expressive individualism."It is not a crisp sound-bite, but it has the virtue of precision: the value changes revolve around the twin issues of the roles that "expressiveness" and "individualism" are to play in people‘s lives. The new ethos gave priority to the expressive side of life even at the expense of economic benefits. By the end of the 1970s, the majority of Americans had decided that self-expressiveness was tooimportant for artists and writers to monopolize: everyone should have the opportunity to develop their own inner potential for self-expression.A belief in individualism is, of course, as old as the nation itself. But prior to the 1960s, American individualism focused mainly on the political domain -- freedom to speak their minds, to pursue their own religious beliefs, to live where we chose to live. In the 1950s we were a nation of political individualists but social conformists. The 1960s ushered in a radical extension of individualism, broadening it from the political domain to personal life styles.By the 1980s the ethos of expressive individualism had grown into a national preoccupation. Now, in the late 1990s, after more than three decades of radical experimentation, Americans find a new conception of individualism evolving.2.3.2 The Understanding of Individualism Development Fundamentalwe have to admit that basic to any understanding of the development of the American individualism is the process of the industrialization, urbanization and modernization.Generally considering, the Industrial Revolution started in the late 1800‘s, which appeared to be a gradually accelerating procedure for mass production instead of a dramatic transformation. In the first half of the seventeenth century or even earlier in Europe, the idea of a market-orientated production had already sunk deep into people‘s minds. In the order the newly established industrial system, the manufacturing process had been decomposed into several tiny sections without much manual labor as before. This great transformation, according to Karl Max, finally made the industrial worker be severely alienated in Germany, Max used the word ―entaeusser‖ instead—which he thought was based both on wage labor and industrialism, causing by the products and themselves in the acts of production.The second trend providing fertile soils to individualism is urbanization. Roughly speaking, the definition of urbanization is a process in which the proportion of popularity in cities has been constantly incr easing. As an immigrant country, the United States‘ procedure of urbanization appeared to be more complex but manifest. People from Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as from Asia and Africa, have been voluntarily poured into the Big Melting Po t. The final product was ―a multitude of separate corporations‖. During the progression, social differentiation then arose and people were not so liable to be connected together by loyal,trusts, or somewhat of this kind as before. A new era has come, in which contracts replacing handshakes have become so general to keep the relationship between people.Another factor helping to accelerate the development of individualism is modernization, which is characterized as hundreds, even thousands of technologies and inventions having been putted into service. So we draw the conclusion that the Industrial Revolution liberated people from their farmland, enabled them to seek their fortune in cities, and provided them with a grate deal of newly invented articles which met their self-needs varying from one person to another. Here we pay little attention to academic theories, though some of which actually had great influence on the trend of individualism in America, such as Social Darwinism sponsored by Herbert Spencer, Corporative Individualism by Herbert Croly. And also, Religious Individualism, Christian Individualism, Atom Individualism, etc. had all played remarkably prominent roles in shaping the whole concept of Individualism as well.III The Performance of American Individualism in Various Areas3.1 The Performance in PoliticsPolitical individualism in its most common, though not its only meaning—is a fundamental belief in the protection of the rights of the individual against the incursions of the state and of political power. However, there are many dimensions of individualism and it is possible to be an ‗individualist‘ in several different fields. In general usage, an ‗individualist‘ denotes a person with a distinctive or unusual personal style, who stands out from the mass. In metaphysics or ontology individualism is a belief that the universe consists fundamentally of individual particulars, separable entities. The opponents of individualism in this sense are holists or monists. The typical holist belief is that the relations (usually systematic relations in some sense) between entities have a more fundamental existence than the entities themselves.Within the Christian religion individualism is closely associated with Protestantism and the belief in the human capacity for personal contact with God rather than the necessity of instruction through a hierarchy. ‗Economic individualism‘ is usually taken to refer to a faith in the capacity of individual action and ambition, working through the market, to create wealth and to bring about progress. Political individualism, as defined above, is a more ambiguous idea.The central question about individualism per se concerns the connections between these different dimensions. To what extent are they associated and what is the form of the association?Margaret Thatcher is often quoted as saying, ‗There is no such thing as society, but only individuals‘, an overtly ontological statement which is ethically and politically suggestive. She actually added the words ‗and families‘, which two words can be taken as the thin end of a more collectivist philosophical wedge. The connections between many of these dimensions is not logical entailment: there is no contradiction in being a philosophical monist, yet believing that individual initiative is the chief engine of economic progress or that persons possess rights which should be protected from the power of the state. But a desire for ideological consistency creates an association between the different dimensions of individualism.There is also an important paradox at the heart of individualism. John Stuart Mill offers one of the most morally appealing images of the individualist society, in which people are unconstrained by conformity and are able to advance civilization by the freest possible development of their own ideas and forms of expression. But how is this individualist society to be achieved? The society which most clearly embodies a belief in economic individualism in its norms and institutions, and the protection of individual rights in its constitution, is the United States. But the United States has often been criticized for its tendency to homogenize people, products, and places, and to require conformity from individuals. In the field of education, it has often been remarked that the withdrawal of authoritarian requirements for conformity in schools is often replaced by a more effective pressure for social conformity which arises from the pupils themselves. Many people believe that the ‗totalitarian‘ Soviet Union produced greater individual artists and political thinkers than many more free societies. In extremis, the paradox implies that an element of despotism is required to produce the full flowering of the individual, that authoritarian political structures can serve to protect individuals from social and economic pressures to conform.3.2 The Performance in EconomicThe doctrine of economic individualism holds that each individual should be allowed autonomy in making his or her own economic decisions as opposed to those decisions being made by the state, or the community, for him or her.Classical liberalismClassical liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the 19th century in England, Western Europe, and the Americas. It followed earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to。
