What Individualism Is Not

Addressing Popular Misconceptions

It’s been a little over a year since I wrote my series of articles against Carl R. Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.¹ Since then, I’ve grown to how much anti-individualism has infested Reformed Evangelical churches. I’ve noted that many criticisms of “individualism” are really criticisms of other problems that are most noticeable in individual behaviors. This article will address a few of those. We need to be clear about what it is we are for and what we are against, and not lazily repeat what we hear others saying.

Let us think for ourselves.

—h.

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Individualism is not Emotivism

Common criticisms of individualism are, in fact, criticisms of a collectivism informed emotivism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, emotivism is

…an ethical theory that regards ethical and value judgments as expressions of feeling or attitude and prescriptions of action, rather than assertions or reports of anything.

While the individual speaks of his personal needs and desires, he is referring to himself as an individual member of a group. This is not individualism, but collectivism expressed by an individual member of the group. As a member of an “oppressed” group, the individual views his emotional states as corresponding to his group identity.

One can be a collectivist and go on and on about his personal experiences, and how he needs to be addressed in accordance with his oppression and marginalized status. There is nothing contradictory about this, in fact the opposite is true.

Emotivism is Not Individualistic

While the emotivist’s emotional states serve as his criterion of value, the fact of the matter is that his emotions are not reigned in by his individual intellect and will. Instead, he is the passive recipient of his emotional states; he will not subject his emotional states to rational scrutiny, but follow their lead. Individualism entails the rational and volitional evaluation and acceptance or rejection of one’s immediate emotional states. This is precisely the process in which emotivism does not engage. Rather than subject the emotional states one has to rational reflection, reason is subordinated to immediate feeling/emotion, and values are determined on an ad hoc basis.²

Emotivism cannot, therefore, be individualistic. It can be expressed by individuals, but those individuals are not functioning as individualists. The individualist recognizes that his passions are to be reigned in by reason.

This is good and Scriptural.

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty,
And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.³

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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.⁴

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But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. ⁵

In all instances, reason informed by the truth is to lead the individual’s way, not his emotions.

Individualism is Not Libertinism

What makes individualism a problem for identity politics is the fact that it rests upon several metaphysical ideas that are contrary to the entirety of postmodern philosophy. Firstly, it assumes that there exist substantial individuals. In other words, individualism rests upon the belief that individuals constituting a group are not the products of their groups, but are whole in and of themselves. This is because, secondly, individualism assumes that things have discernible, unchanging, essential identities. If things have discernible, unchanging, and essential identities, then it follows that action taken by the individual are either in conformity to his nature, or against his nature.

Libertinism, on the contrary, rejects all moral authorities whatsoever. This is only possible if one accepts the contradictory claim that humans are the kinds of creatures who do not have an essential identity and, therefore, do not have a corresponding set of behaviors that can be objectively deemed good or bad. One cannot be a libertine and an individualist; one cannot be an individualist and a libertine. These are two philosophical views which are at odds with one another.

Individualism is Not Irrationalism

The idea that individualism entails irrationalism probably finds its highest expression in the writings of the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. Seeing the Hegelian philosophy of his day take over Denmark, a philosophy which was presented by Hegel and his successors as the end-all-be-all “worldview,” Kierkegaard gave emphasis to ruptures in seemingly unbreakable chains of causation and inference (according to Hegel’s systematic philosophy). These ruptures arose from individual choices men made which set them at odds with the collective. For Hegel, the collective was the embodiment of reason; thus, for Kierkegaard, the true individual had to break from the collective by means of un-reason.

Whether or not Kierkegaard was truly an irrationalist is a question that is still debated by scholars. But given the influence he had on later Existentialist philosophers like Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, the answer is somewhat irrelevant. These later thinkers didn’t stop to ask if Kierkegaard was using a polemical/ironic form of argumentation to dismantle Hegelianism; rather, they fully embraced the association of irrationalism with individualism, and spread their teaching that the two are necessarily interconnected.

Individualism, however, is incompatible with irrationalism. Given that the individual has a nature, it follows that logical structure precedes him and grounds the thoughts and choices, as well as the analysis of them, in reason. This was opposed by atheist existentialist philosophers who contended that “Existence precedes essence,”⁶ a slogan that attempted to free the individual from logical and causal constraints. The problem is, however, that in order for existence to precede essence it has to be something with a definite identity. The slogan, in other words, is self-contradictory.

Irrationalism, then, cannot be identified with true individualism. Your thinking and acting is not free from the causal constraints put in order by God at the moment of creation. No human thought or action is ever beyond reason. Even irrationality is, in truth, a second order epistemological phenomenon that rests upon a logical foundation.⁷ The individual who eschews being rational is not an individualist, but a fool. Individualism rests upon the assumption that things exist, have discernible essences, and act in accordance with their natures.

Concluding Remarks

There is a prevalent misunderstanding of individualism that identifies it as a brand of emotivist, libertine, irrational philosophy of self-indulgence. There is a less crass version of this that sees individualism as doing what one wills, regardless of what reason dictates. These are, sadly, shared by many who now want to raise their voice in opposition to collectivist movements attacking political and religious liberties. These people fail to understand that if one wants to live by what his emotions dictate and refuses to be analyzed and judged according to any objective standard he is not an individualist.

—h.

1. If you haven’t the series, and would like to, you can start here —

2. “Ad hoc” means to this. “Ad hoc fallacy, or ad hoc rescue, occurs when someone comes up with a rationale or explanation to dismiss the counter-evidence to their claim in a bid to protect it.” (Source)

3. Prov 16:32.

4. Gal 5:22-24. (emphasis added)

5. 2 Pet 1:5-7. (emphasis added)

6. See https://philosophybreak.com/articles/existence-precedes-essence-what-sartre-really-meant/.

7. I hope to delve into this at another time.