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Individualism
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Individualism is the sentiment of a profound, irreducible antinomy between the individual and society. The individualist is he who, by virtue of his temperament, is predisposed to feel in a particularly acute fashion the ineluctable disharmonies between his intimate being and his social milieu. At the same time, he is a man for whom life has reserved some decisive occasion to remark this disharmony. Whether through brutality, or the continuity of his experiences, for him it has become clear that for the individual society is a perpetual creator of constraints, humiliations and miseries, a kind of continuous generation of human pain. In the name of his own experience and his personal sensation of life the individualist feels he has the right to relegate to the rank of utopia any ideal of a future society where the hoped-for harmony between the individual and society will be established. Far from the development of society diminishing evil, it does nothing but intensify it by rendering the life of the individual more complicated, more laborious and more difficult in the middle of the thousand gears of an increasingly tyrannical social mechanism.
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Individualism is a term used to describe a moral, political, or social outlook that stresses human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty. Individualists promote the exercise of individual goals and desires. They oppose most external interference with an individual's choices - whether by society, the state, or any other group or institution. Individualism is therefore opposed to holism, collectivism, fascism, democracy, communism, communalism, statism, totalitarianism, and communitarianism, which stress that communal, group, societal, racial, or national goals should take priority over individual goals. Individualism is ... opposed to the view that tradition, religion, or any other form of external moral standard should be used to limit an individual's choice of actions.
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Individualism has negative connotations in certain societies and environments where it is associated with selfishness. For example, individualism is highly frowned upon in Japan where self-interested behavior is traditionally regarded as a kind of betrayal of those to whom one has obligations (e.g. family and firm). The absence of universal health care in the United States, which traces back to a belief in individual (rather than societal) responsibility, is widely criticised in Europe and other countries where universal health care (usually funded through general taxation) is seen as protecting individuals from the vagaries of health problems. Health care in the United States is provided through private insurance. Some people who cannot afford health insurance in the United States are eligible for Medicaid, a government-sponsored program.
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Individualism has a controversial relationship with egoism (selfishness). While some individualists are egoists, they usually do not argue that selfishness is inherently good. Rather, some argue that individuals are not duty-bound to any socially-imposed morality and that individuals should be free to choose to be selfish (or to choose any other lifestyle) if they so desire. Others still, such as Ayn Rand, argue against moral relativism and argue selfishness is a virtue.
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"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 polticial organization of the nation--unity in spite of heterogeniety~~and it pointed toward aan ideal social organization in harmony with American experience. Above all, individualism expressed sathe 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."
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Individualism in qualitative methodology takes the form of treating individual subjects as self-contained individuals who create their own meanings and behaviors. Researchers focus on recording and reporting individuals' subjective accounts. They do not attempt to understand an individual's subjectivity as influenced by other people and conditions. (see entry on subjectivism).
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Individualism