Individualism

This book is an original critique of contemporary liberal theories of justice, focusing on the problem of how to relate the personal point of view of the individual to the impartial perspective of justice. Moore's examination of prominent contemporary arguments for liberal justice reveals that individualist theories are subject to two serious difficulties: the motivation problem and the integrity problem. Individualists cannot explain why the individual should be motivated to act in accordance with the dictates of liberal justice, and--related to this--offer radically incoherent accounts of the person. Revisionist attempts to ground liberalism in contextual and perfectionist terms offer more defensible foundations, but Moore argues that such theories do not support liberal political principles. She concludes by sketching a historical and concrete approach to political and ethical theorizing which reformulates the relation between self-interest and morality, and is not subject to the problems that beset liberal individualist theories of justice. Her book advances the debate between communitarians and liberals about the kind of moral foundation which a liberal society requires.

In the fifty years following the Revolution, America's population nearly quadrupled, its boundaries expanded, industrialization took root in the Northeast, new modes of transportation flourished, state banks proliferated and offered easy credit to eager entrepreneurs, and Americans found themselves in the midst of an accelerating age of individualism, equality, and self-reliance. To the Jacksonian generation, it seemed as if their world had changed practically overnight. The Politics of Individualism looks at the political manifestations of these staggering social transformations. During the 1830s and 1840s, Americans were consumed by politics and party loyalties were fierce. Here, Kohl draws on the political rhetoric found in speeches, newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets to place the Democrats and the Whigs in a solid social and psychological context. He contends that the political division between these two parties reflected the division between Americans unsettled by the new individualistic social order and those whose character allowed them to strive more confidently within it. Democrats, says Kohl, were more "tradition-directed," bound to others in more personal ways; Whigs, on the other hand, were more "inner-directed" and embraced the impersonal, self-interested relationships of a market society. By examining this fascinating dialogue of parties, Kohl brings us bright new insight into the politics and people of Jacksonian America.

In this major study, a team of leading European scholars explores ways in which the concept of the individual developed in various areas of political and social life. The story concerns the changing nature of individual identity, community interest and corporate groups, as they were gradually redefined by common western European experiences of universal Catholicism, feudalism, civic republicanism and absolutism, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, commerce and capitalism. As European societies evolved into increasingly centralized national states, there emerged a range of religious and secular discourses which expressed the autonomy of individual agents not only as political subjects but also as private selves.

Colin Bird mounts a powerful and original challenge to the traditional view that the ideas associated with the liberal political tradition--the meaning of political freedom, the notion of inviolable human rights, the idea of privacy--cohere around an "individualist" conception of the relation among individuals, society and the state. He argues that by taking this conception for granted, theorists have exaggerated the unity and integrity of liberal political ideals, and limited our perception of the issues they raise.

As the saying goes, "Enough about me, let's talk about you: what do you think of me?" Hence the pursuit of attention is alive and well. Even the OED reveals a modern coinage to reflect the chase in our technological age: "ego-surfing"--searching the internet for occurrences of your own name. What is the cause of this obsessive need for others' recognition? In The Pursuit of Attention, Derber contends that it is a general lack of social support in America that causes people to compete so hungrily, and he shows how individuals will often employ numerous techniques to turn the course of a conversation towards themselves. The book illustrates and explains this "conversational narcissism" in sample dialogues that will sound disturbingly familiar to everyone. Drawing from research on face-to-face interactions in households, restaurants, workplaces, classrooms, and therapy groups, Derber demonstrates that gender and class, as well as wealth, occupation and education, affect one's success in getting attention. The originality of his arguments lies in his ability to vivdly translate the social and economic forces of contemporary American capitalism into the ordinary experience of individuals, and, as C. Wright Mills put it, to connect private troubles with public issues. First published twenty years ago, The Pursuit of Attention has been revised and updated for this edition and includes a new preface and afterword. The preface focuses on changes in the manifestations of attention-seeking and the hyperindividualistic changes in the economy and culture that are driving these transformations. In his view, individualism has actually accelerated in intense ways over the last twenty years. With the advent of the internet, greater and more immediate possibilities for attention are now available. Personal websites with images and information to attract anonymous viewers are common occurrences, and as people's attachments to marriage and work loosen, there exists a higher sense of being alone, and thus self-absorbed. Finally, the internalization of economic rules of self-interest breeds a psychological readiness to act egotistically even in the most intimate arenas in personal life. In response to this, the afterword focuses on solutions: how to restructure the economy and culture to humanize ourselves and increase the capacity for empathy and attention-giving.

This work provides readers with a thorough treatment of liberal doctrine, both in its political theory and economic policy dimensions. It covers coverage of Spencer, Sumner, Mises, Nozick and Rawls as well as Hayek and Mill.

Examining, in the widest sense, the changes in political philosophy that have occurred in Western capitalist states since the 1980s, this book focuses on the introduction of neo-liberal principles in the combined area of social and education policy.