Modern individualisms and Christian schism: why what we miss is important

Abstract

The history of Western modernity can be briefly outlined as a history characterized by the progressive emerging of individual freedom. The consequent dynamism in cultural and socio-economic terms defines modernity as an age of great institutional change. Forms and rhythms of this change take different shapes according to the different worlds of the Christian Europe. The schism occurring between the Catholic Church and the Reformed Churches plays an important role for this aim. From many points of view, modernity cannot be understood apart from such event and from its, expected or not, consequences as well as from the characterization that the individual got from it. The West still stands in that schism. The hypothesis discussed in this contribution is that each of the two modern paths—starting, on the one side, from the Reformation and, on the other, from the Counter-Reformation—and relative models of socio-economic development characterized by the religious schism are interdependent. Moreover, they need to face a challenge that so far has been partly or not at all investigated: the anthropological challenge, beyond the reductionism suggested and reinforced by the schismatic modernity.