The Alternatives and Their Limits

Abstract

The previous chapter was concerned with the limitations of individualism. Epistemological individualism was seen as providing a partial and inadequate account of the foundations of thought. It is deficient as a descriptive theory, even though its evaluative expression as the ideal of autonomy in belief, the view that individual people should approach received opinions with scepticism, and accept nothing the grounds for which they have not investigated and assessed for themselves, was recognised as a salutary corrective, in all times and societies, to the universal tendency for orthodoxies and vested interests to become established. Normative individualism, the view that ultimate value belongs only to individual people, not to social groups or institutions as such, was accepted on the very general level of moral theory, but was seen to be problematical in practice as a dominant component of a society’s ideology. There is a strong tendency for it to take the egoistic rather than the altruistic form, and to contribute to the perpetuation of a society based on competitive acquisition, with little sense of community and little compassion.