Disentangling Individualism: Toward a Heuristic Tool for Cultural Analyses of Evaluations of Self and Society

Abstract

Individualism belongs to the core of Western evaluative logic. This paper aims to determine what exactly now constitutes individualism as an often used cultural discourse and, more importantly, how its content varies depending on different semantic constellations. A systematic classification of different possible individualistic types of evaluation is proposed, which can eventually serve as a heuristic tool for further cultural analysis. The paper starts with identifying two essential meaning dimensions of freedom/control: (1) a self-dimension and (2) a society-dimension. Second, it explores how combinations of these different dimensions of meaning yield four different ‘semantic fields’, which all fall under the general heading of individualism, namely liberal, egalitarian, radical, and subjective individualism. These different types are described based on illustrations stemming from political, cultural, and philosophical domains.