Individualism comes in at least 10 modes: ontological, logical, semantic, epistemological, methodological, axiological, praxiological, ethical, historical, and political. These modes are bound together. For example, ontological indi- vidualism motivates the thesis that relations are n-tuples of individuals, as well as radical reductionism and libertarianism. The flaws and merits of all ten sides of the individualist decagon are noted. So are those of its holist counterpart. It is argued that systemism has all the virtues and none of the defects of individual- ism and holism. One such virtue is the ability to recognize that individualism is a system rather than an unstructured bag of opinions—which raises the question whether thorough and consistent individualism is at all possible.
One of libertarianism’s basic philosophical errors is its hyper-individualism. This is also a primary philosophical and practical problem for capitalism, not to mention any number of commonplace values and practices.
Look at any number of problems individuals or societies face and with a bit of thought you’ll be able to see how they break along the individualist/systemism continuum, and how in many cases these problems are problems at all because of their relative bias toward individualism. For instance, the idea that alcohol abuse is only an individual problem, which is to say a problem of individual free will and choice, and not also a problem of child development, parenting, social stress levels, economic inequality, past traumatic events, etc.--in other words, systems problems--is clearly false.
I’ve seen two studies that sought to measure systems thinking competence, and both found that this higher order cognitive skill is in general low in society. It would therefore stand to reason that if we can’t deal with problems on a systems level, even when those problems exist in actuality at that level, then we’re necessarily creating problems for ourselves.
Anyway, my point in posting this paper is to draw attention to a philosophical angle that might be useful if you’re debating libertarians or defenders of capitalism. You might be debating issues that might be clarified or even resolved if the errors, strengths and weaknesses of individualism were better understood.
