Michael Mitchell: Archive

One's political philosophy logically depends on one's moral philosophy. Egoism leads to individualism. Altruism leads to collectivism.

If we're being 1000% precise, however, individualism and collectivism are not political philosophies. They're categories of political philosophies, the conceptualization of which is an extraordinary human accomplishment in itself actually, because they're really aren't any socially established or even any philosophically delineated -- planned out, written down, labeled -- individualistic political philosophies.

Utilitarianism, for example, is a collectivist political philosophy. Democracy, too, though we don't use the concept in that context any more, the context of unlimited majority rule, where it's the guiding principle determining every decision a social system codifies.

So what exactly does the term "individualism" categorize? We have several political philosophies in the "collectivist" category, which implement altruism as the dominant moral philosophy -- because it is and has been since before civilization even began -- but none that implement egoism, and for a similar reason. Most people simply haven't fully conceptualized it because altruism is the dominant moral philosophy.

This is why the public debate is so confusing and increasingly volatile. We sense its grave importance but we can't explain the causes of the resulting emotions. All of the words haven't been strictly defined because the concepts haven't been fully formed and the reality hasn't been effectively realized because it's impossible to visualize a social system that functions consistently with principles we reject, much less actually build one together -- but we've inconsistently lived in such a system for centuries: capitalism.

That's what the term "individualism" refers to...