Back to the Stone Age IIB
The Pernicious Myth of the Individual
Part and parcel of the counter-factual theory of natural liberty is the myth of the individual. If man were in fact naturally free, it would be because he is his own person, because, as some libertarians say, he owns himself. Pure and utter hogwash that only a self-blinded ideologue could possibly accept.
The term individual is derived from a Medieval Latin word, meaning "undivided being," which is properly applied only to angels. Let us get technical for a moment. In logical and rhetorical (not biological) terms, the members of a group are, each of them, a species within a genus. While we human creatures, made up of body and soul, are species belonging to the human genus, angels are made up of one undivided substance, and every angel is its own genus. In conceiving of men and women as individuals, then, we are implicitly denying the significance of our material existence—our impulses and appetites—and also blinding ourselves to the reality that in being members of the same genus, we human beings are not radically separated from each other. Between a dull-witted and diminutive pygmy and a brilliant and tall Scotsman, there is a common human element that is more significant in some ways than all the distinctions of height, color, and intelligence.
Classical liberals and libertarians will immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and sniff out, from any critique of individualism, some version of collectivism or even socialism.
At this point in a debate or discussion, some unwary conservative will leap in to say that when ordinary people use the term individual they mean no more than "person" or (in America) "guy," as in: "I went into the bar and I met this individual with an interesting background…" In this sense, individual is only hyperurban jargon for person in the same way that "perpetrator" is police jargon for criminal. The decay of precise usage, however, may be less harmless than our unwary conservative thinks. In this case, the misuse and overuse of "individual" is used to perpetuate one of the favorite American myths, that ours is an exceptional nation, founded by "rugged individualists" who left settled communities in Britain and Europe to come to a New World, where they never stopped moving from place to place in search of opportunity and adventure.
A closer look at our colonization and migration patterns reveals a different story: in many cases, towns along the Atlantic seaboard and later in the Middle West were settled by family groups and something like whole villages. Outside of Rockford there were Scottish settlements (Argyll and Caledonia) established by a group of related Lowland families who had been transported to Argyll. Going West, American frontiersmen were less often lone individualists like the mythical Daniel Boone than they were men of family and community, like the real Daniel Boone.
The proper word for a human being, considered in his own right, is "person," and some conservatives such as John Lukacs have preferred to speak of persons. It is a neutral word, that does not specify the human being's relations to his society. Women, children, and slaves are all persons and possessed of human dignity, though it may be quite misleading to speak of them as individuals. Is a newborn or pre-born infant an individual? It hardly seems likely, but if not an individual than in what sense is the infant to be protected? Pro-life advocates will leap in to say that he is a "legal person with rights," but that is transparently absurd. Even a five year old child cannot vote, sit on a jury, make a contract, or sue in court. The confusing misuse of terms encourages a fatal misuse of human persons.
Marxists and libertarians would like us to accept their accounts, in which collectivism and individualism are the only two choices. But, before liberals invented the individual and leftists invented the collective hive, ordinary people and philosophers understood very well that, while human persons were distinct, they inevitably existed in a familial and social context. So long as we permit Marxists and libertarians to delude us with their fantasies, we shall continue the destructive work they begun by classical liberals and continued by Marxists, namely, the dismantling of all our fundamental social institutions from the family to the Church.
In fact, liberals and leftists by and large agree on the significance of the individual. It is true that Marxists place great on the state as the mechanism by which the needs of the individual are satisfied, but both see traditional institutions (marriage, parenthood, the church, etc.) as obstacles to the individual's fulfillment. The goal is more or less the same. When the Marxist state gradually withers away, all that will be left are human individuals pursuing individual happiness.
Let us then try to speak of persons, rather than of individuals. The word "person" does not imply radical independence or complete self-sufficiency. If such creatures as liberal individuals ever existed, they would be entirely powerless, incapable of banding together to resist the growing power of the despotic state. Statists and collectivists understand this reality, which is one of the reasons they make war on the family and the Church, which are independent sources of authority capable of protecting the rights of the members.
The individualist fantasy grows out of the delusion of natural liberty, but it is a conservative insight to detect these sorts of errors. The atheist conservative David Hume was a great lover of political liberty and for that reason set out to refute the myth of the social contract and natural liberties. He put his argument into a nutshell with the simple statement that "man born into a family is compelled to sustain society." In the liberals' imaginary state of nature, which is only approximated in periods of great crisis, man would truly be (in the Latin proverb) wolf to man, and the strongest, most violent, and least scrupulous wolf would rule and exploit the rest, until he was displaced by an even stronger, more violent, and less scrupulous rival. In the 19th century George Fitzhugh, a political theorist combating the spread of liberalism, argued that a society based on liberty and equality would end up subjecting the weak and the moral to exploitation by the powerful and ruthless. He also realized that the response would not be the restoration of the old social order but a socialist revolution.
Man is by nature a corporate being who belongs to a family, a tribe, or a religious brotherhood. It is only within a society, especially in a civilized society, that family members, kinsmen, neighbors, and co-religionists can cooperate in protecting each other from the depredations of thugs, gang-leaders and the would-be petty tyrants who administer the organs of the modern state.
Why does any of this matter, someone might ask? Is this all not just a debate over the language of political theory? Let us look at an example, which can clarify the difference between the true conservative and the Liberals who call themselves conservative. Suppose a Cincinnati art gallery outraged local sentiment by installing an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's homoerotic photographs, and suppose further that the local sheriff shot down the exhibit as indecent. The leftist response would be to sue in the Federal courts for the protection of the gallery-owner's individual rights on the grounds of the First Amendment. If the leftists were more candid, they would admit that they had small use for traditional marriage or morality, which they condemned as "homophobic."
Classical Liberals, Libertarians, and self-styled conservatives, while they might disapprove of the photographs, would generally defend the owner's individual right to self-expression, typically citing Voltaire's famous statement, "I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Is anyone so stupid as to believe such nonsense? Let's put a little meat on the bare bones of Voltaire's rhetoric.
I am a Jew and while I disagree with the Nazi Party's plan to exterminate my people, I will defend to the death their right to argue for genocide.
Or…
I am a parent who wants to protect my child from evil, but while I disagree with child-pornographers, I will defend to the death their right to create and advocate kiddy porn, so long as no real children are exploited.
The conservative would look at the issue from two perspectives, the one moral and the other political. Understanding the natural law, he will have no sympathy for Gay Rights or its propagandists. Turning to the Constitution, he will note, first, that the First Amendment was written to limit or deny the power of the Federal Government in matters of religion and political speech. He would also note that this government is called a "federal," because it is a league of sovereign or semi-sovereign states in which each state was supposed to be able to manage its own affairs. The 10th amendment was drafted, specifically, to prevent the federal government from dictating either to the state of Ohio or to a city chartered by that state. If he is of a philosophical bent, he will recognize that the federal principles of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights go back to an understanding of local government and the principle of subsidiarity rooted both in the Old Testament and in the writings of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Althusius. Case dismissed.
Then, the argument is not merely theoretical but touches on a topic of vital interest to most Americans. It concerns both questions of marriage and the family and basic morality and the rights of states, counties, and cities to manage their affairs without dictates from Washington or unfunded federal mandates.
The division between the conservative and the libertarian positions opened upon in a debate we sponsored on whether one was ever justified in summoning the federal authorities to intervene in a local dispute, as in, for example, the Cincinnati case. I do not remember all the details, except that Murray Rothbard and I were on one side, and Justin Raimondo and—I think—Walter Block on the other. Many libertarians were aghast that Rothbard should take the conservative position, but that is because they failed to appreciate Rothbard's conservative instincts. As the debate progressed, and we made the argument that civil libertarians were a primary cause of the growth in state power, Justin—Rothbard's most loyal follower—broke down and conceded our point, "I can't help it," he confessed, "you guys are right." I date the beginning of Justin's continuous growth in sanity to that event.
When in the next chapter, I take up foreign policy, I shall tell the tale of how Rothbard and I became first allies and then friends. What we formed was a running debate between serious libertarians (Ralph Raico, Ron Hamowy, Hans Hermann Hoppe, David Gordon, and Justin among others) and steadfast conservatives (Sam Francis, Clyde Wilson, Chris Kopff, Joe Sobran). The two wings of the coalition were divided on any number of issues, but they were united in their opposition to the increase of state power and in their refusal to sell out their principles to curry favor with politicians or mercenary Washington think tanks like Cato and Heritage. Naturally, this coalition only increased the contempt the Washington "professionals" had for both groups. Ed Crane of Cato accused Rothbard and Rockwell of selling out to the moralizing right and failing to defend "sexual diversity." They responded by dubbing him, "Sexual Diversity Eddy" or just S.D. Crane.
When it came to forming coalitions, front groups, and movements, Murray was an old stager, and in dealing with him I sometimes was reminded of some of the old lefties I used to know, but Murray was cautious. He had been burned once too often by weaklings. Jerome Tucille tells the story of how Rothbard managed to alienate nearly all his allies in the Libertarian Party until he finally had only himself and Tucille. With me, by contrast, he did everything to avoid a rupture to the point that he tried to avoid conversations on basic issues. We're a coalition, not a movement, he used to explain, and we can be free to disagree.
Our most fundamental disagreement was on individual rights, which Rothbard made the centerpiece of his moral and political philosophy. His famous rule of non-aggression was rooted in the classical liberal notion of rights. When I told him that rights were a philosophical fantasy and the social contract a myth, he bristled. One day, over a little gin, he concluded that for him rights were a means to securing the protection of liberty, and he acknowledged that I accomplished the same object by insisting on natural duties that arise from one's position in life, what Bradley referred to in a brilliant if condescending essay on "My Station and Its Duties." A mother's duty to her children, a father's duty to his family, a neighbor's duty to his community should not be invaded by higher levels of social organization such as a state or federal government. What do we call such invasions, I was asked. The answer is simple: tyranny. It was on this understanding that Murray and I found ourselves on the same side of this and many other debates with his disciples and colleagues.
The myth of the naturally free individual, while it appeals to the American love of liberty, is actually subversive of all the liberties we have enjoyed. For conservatives—and morally serious libertarians--to invoke such language "in a good cause" is to begin the process of going over to the enemy.
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Bravo, Dr. Fleming! This goes a good way in explaining, while I was a middle-school teacher, lo, these many years ago, I felt so uncomfortable when my leftist colleagues spoke of "children's rights."
You said, (in referring to Bradley) "A mother's duty to her children, a father's duty to his family, a neighbor's duty to his community should not be invaded by higher levels of social organization such as a state or federal government. What do we call such invasions, I was asked. The answer is simple: tyranny."
I remember thinking that it's not so much that kids have rights, but that adults have responsibilities, but it amounts to the same thing pretty much as you said above.
I suppose most of us have sided with the individualist view of things, utterly abhorring the seeming utter contempt for persons that we perceive in Eastern cultures; this while ignoring the great evil done by the radical individualism found in much of the West ("My rights, and my rights at your expense!). A far better model is the true community of the Church, the Body of Christ, where the person is valued in all dignity, but whose very uniqueness is to be martialed for God's glory and the edification of that greater community.
Thank you!
I will paraphrase my father's metaphor which had earthy elements which are not appropriate for the Internet. He was throughout his life adamant that if "rights" existed at all they were the cool shade cast by the tree of obligation, duty and responsibility which carried with them the requisite authority and the means to carry out that authority. He warned me, an adolescent quite intent on cutting down the tree which held me in place and equally and stupidly intent on putting the shade of rights in my pocket and going and doing what I wanted, that to cut down the tree was to destroy the shade and to set oneself in the boiling sun, in which I would become disoriented, dehydrated and ultimately die.
My old pastor, Moses Eli Mercer, told us boys whom he tutored in things Christian, that while we would all have different callings (vocations), that He who called us had the same purpose for all of His human creatures: to glorify Him, to edify His Church, to honor our parents, to be faithful to our eventual spouses, to nurture our eventual children, to give hospitality to our kith and to our kin as well as to strangers and to love our enemies, sometimes as in the case of Robert E. Lee, for example, having to kill them while loving them. There is no room for Rousseau's would-be Promethean and autonomous individual in the the created order into which we have been place and of which Brother Mose made us aware.
"In the 19th century George Fitzhugh, a political theorist combating the spread of liberalism, argued that a society based on liberty and equality would end up subjecting the weak and the moral to exploitation by the powerful and ruthless. He also realized that the response would not be the restoration of the old social order but a socialist revolution."
As Dr. Fleming has pointed out somewhere else this is true at both ends of life--- the weak and the vulnerable are often young but also aged, persons with diminished mental capacity, the lame veteran of war, the lonely widow, the middle aged teacher dying of cancer. In my life I have seen what certainly seems like an increase in this type of exploitation. A friend of mine was robbed in his own home by a pharmacy delivery gang as he lay dying of cancer; the gang would exchange confidential information about patients receiving pain medication, rob them, and then sell the drugs for additional profit. We all know veterans who were once heros before becoming forgotten nuisances as parapalegics. Financial scams on the elderly, the smell of neglect in most homes for the aged, the growing impatience with the presence of children, and all the the rest. What a sterile and precisely stupid and selfish people we have become by embracing the more abstract forms of rights, obligations and charity.
This (both this post and the whole series) is very enlightening. Fuzzy notions in my head of things that I have suspected being right or wrong are being brought into stark relief with sources of light I had never considered. The definition of individual is simply something I had never thought I needed to think about.
I had two related questions.
First – I am discovering that real (and not virtual) social structure and community simply does not exist in many places in the modern world. Where I live developed only after the advent of cars and other modern contrivances. Geographically it is simply not even built to support a community. There is no town square. No arcade. No public haunts. Just various stores linked by miles of black asphalt traversed by incompetent drivers racing at irresponsible speeds. Most folks socialize through their children’s activities, but not participating in the public school debacle cuts back on much of that. And that community which is present must be weighed against the harm it can do – i.e. join the soccer club and you have to, unfortunately, deal with the kids on the soccer team (and sometimes their parents).
Even my Church is no longer a community. I do not attend what would be called the local parish for liturgical reasons. For some time I have attended a parish with the Old Rite of Mass, but it’s about an hour away, and the people there form a nice community for about 2 and half hours every Sunday but then promptly take to the four corners of two states for the rest of the week. The nearby church that recently starting offering the Latin Mass does so at an absurd hour in the afternoon and treats Latin Mass enthusiasts as second-hand parishoners. (A niggling complaint – it is frustrating trying to celebrate the season of Advent in a church building celebrating Christmas about 4 weeks too early).
I understand and don’t dispute the importance of family, but what is a conservative to do in the world we find ourselves in? Hunt for communities outside of the home? Try to create communities where none exist? Seek artificial community in the virtual world? Participate in much less than ideal communities where common threads of thoughts, values, and culture are evaporating at an increasing rate?
Second – this is really more of a curiosity than a question. I had been told that the classical definition of a person, as per Boethius, was “an individual being of a rational substance.” Was I told wrong? Or is "individual" here a liberal translation of the original text?
The first problem with the phrase "individual being of a rational substance" is that it is a misleading translation of a Latin translation, substantia individua rationalis naturae, of Greek terms, where every word has a precise meaning. Substance, for example, translates Boethius' natura, while being translates his substantia, which translates the Greek hypostasis, which was used in the definition of the Trinity as consisting of three "persons." The common English translation of the phrase on the Creed as "one in being" is so misleading as to verge on heresy. It is vitally important to understand that in fact Boethius was discussing the persons of the Trinity and not human beings. I have not sufficiently studied Boethius' philosophical works to know if he would have applied this definition--not universally accepted, by the way--to a human person. The word individua is also difficult, since primarily it should still mean undivided. As for the persons of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, everyone would accept the statement that they are undivided, as for God the Son as the eternal second person of the Trinity, I imagine most Christians would say the same. To argue that Christ has two separate natures was the Nestorian heresy.
I don't have time--leaving for the UK tomorrow--to read Boethius' De Trinitate and I am reluctant to follow modern authorities without having scrutinized the original text. Suffice it to say at this point, though, that your English translation is misleading to the point of encouraging false conclusions, that it is doubtful that translating individua as individual is helpful, that probably Boethius' discussion of the Trinity is not relevant to our view of human beings.
I believe that nowhere in the voluminous record of the American Founders, not even in the Declaration of Independence properly understood, will be found any use of "individual" in the bad sense that Dr. Fleming has so well explicated.
I agree that this is not directly related to the topic at hand. I only mentioned it because I had heard it used in a Pro-Life argument (specifically to counter the murder of people in a so-called vegetative state) by a fairly sound philosophy and theology professor. The definition had stuck in my head ever since. I think it is another case of the loss of precision of language and that "individual" was intended to be something like "guy" as in the above example. It's a long way from Trinitarian theology, whatever the case.
I can't think of an instance that could be used to challenge Prof. Wilson's statement. Implicit in Tom Paine's simplification of Locke is some notion of the hedonist individual, but he is not an American Founder. Jefferson's Declaration uses dangerous language, but we know too much of the real Jefferson, a patriotic Virginian, rooted deeply in the lives of his family and his people, to reduce him to the narrow dimensions of a philosophical tradition he mostly accepted, like so many others, without serious study. I have a basic principle, which is not to blame people for errors that are typical of their time or tradition or to praise them for virtues that were widely shared by others at the time. Where Jefferson is off-base, it is because nearly everyone else suffered from the same illusions. Where he is original, he is distinctive.
Although we are all marginally unique, (even identical twins can't have identical experience nor in fact do they have the same fingerprints), the group is all and any individuality we may have to express and perhaps enjoy doing so, is thanks to the group. So thanks group and thanks Dr. Fleming for your article today.
The justification one hears kicked around alot today to always expand individual freedoms (or license) is "in order to form a more perfect union." I have never thought about it much and actually believe most of such references are pure idolatry when not adulterated idolatry, but I have enough respect for men like Tom Fleming and Clyde Wison to at least wonder what the phrase might have meant upon the lips of virtous men.
kicked around alot today to always expand individual freedoms (or license)
If you have a strong stomach and a good case of your beverage of choice on hand, may I suggest that most Mad TV sketches are fairly perspicacious send-ups of the raunchy license that the modern cult of "liberty" and the "individual" has wreaked upon us.
I understand and don’t dispute the importance of family, but what is a conservative to do in the world we find ourselves in? Hunt for communities outside of the home? Try to create communities where none exist? Seek artificial community in the virtual world? Participate in much less than ideal communities where common threads of thoughts, values, and culture are evaporating at an increasing rate?
You just do what you can do. I put a strike through the last two propositions, not in an absolute sense, but rather in terms of what is on average gainful and worth one's time. But even the communities that are "less than ideal" can be hiding things that you wouldn't ever have dreamed of.
Human beings aren't meant to be alone. Anyhow... if you need to bounce ideas on that matter, you know where to find me...
I want to emphasize to Vince and Robert that I have no wish here to play the theologian. As a philologist I can give some insights into the origin of concepts expressed in words. Where I think abstract and systematic theology lets us down a bit is in ignoring context and history. Arguments and sentences are ripped out of context and shoe-horned into receptacles which are a bit like bullet molds. I do not at all disagree with the traditional applications the Church has made of this bricolage but dogmatic judgments are not relevant to this simplistic attempt to discover a foundation for conservative moral and political thought. At another time I'd be happy to enter into a debate on many such topics but in these pieces I am loosely sketching the first draft of an overall and comprehensive outline of conservative thought and I do appreciate your forbearance. I also appreciate all the polite queries that permit me to rectify mistakes and clarify ambiguities.
Dr. Fleming,
I apologize for throwing things off. The line from Boethius was taught to me exactly as described - ripped completely from context. I did not even know it was centered in a discussion of the Trinity because the context it was taught to me was solely with regard to human persons. Thank you for your patience with my ill-formed education.
Dr. Fleming,
"I have no wish here to play the theologian."
Neither do I. But if it should ever happen, I would prefer the reader embrace your positions in theology rather than mine. I am an Okie and an amateur Catholic whereas you are a Southerner by birth and professional by training and occupoation. Also I can be a damned nuisance at times, whereas you are more often than not a gentleman.
In conceiving of men and women as individuals, then, we are implicitly denying the significance of our material existence—our impulses and appetites—and also blinding ourselves to the reality that in being members of the same genus, we human beings are not radically separated from each other.
Thank you, Dr Fleming. This insight alone is enough to change one's whole perspective.
I always felt a slight tinge of discomfort in the back of my mind whenever I heard someone - usually an ideologue - talk of 'individuals', and 'individual rights', etc.. There just seemed to be something not quite right about it.
Speak of everybody as 'individuals' and where do community and society, tradition and culture, even civilisation, disappear to? Wherever they go, the 'individual', or rather all of them are left alone and helpless, prostrate and forced to grovel before Leviathan. The world becomes a dungeon with a fearsome master.
The idea that only angels can be 'individual' by nature, whereas humans cannot be, seems spiritually sound, since humans are constantly faced with internal division, and are forced to deal (or fail to deal) with conflicting thoughts, contradictory beliefs and ideas, emotions that come and go and can change according to circumstance. How can one be 'individual' with such a multiplicity inside? Humans are truly divided creatures. Yet they are also dependent on the collective. The 'individual' cannot exist in that mode of existence. 'Person' really does seem to fit far better, and somehow sounds more human, rather more sympathetic and less cold and isolated, certainly less egoistic.
Sorry about the italics.
Suddenly I feel like a fool. Maybe this will fix it.
Mr. Wilson, you say, "Speak of everybody as 'individuals' and where do community and society, tradition and culture, even civilisation, disappear to? Wherever they go, the 'individual', or rather all of them are left alone and helpless, prostrate and forced to grovel before Leviathan. The world becomes a dungeon with a fearsome master. "
I find this very helpful, deftly summing up my own misgivings about the deified individual. Thanks, even with the italices!
Wait . . . does this mean that the Lone Ranger is NOT the Fabulous Individual I've been lead to believe?
Sorry - couldn't resist.
Mr. Wilson, not to overlook your very well said and helpful comments, but this incident with the italics was the highlight of my day!
"How can one be 'individual' with such a multiplicity inside? Humans are truly divided creatures. Yet they are also dependent on the collective. The 'individual' cannot exist in that mode of existence. 'Person' really does seem to fit far better, and somehow sounds more human, rather more sympathetic and less cold and isolated, certainly less egoistic."
If it "sounds" more human, it is because the concept of legal personhood is closely related to the three persons of the Trinity, and therefore more directly taps into what we are and where we come from (in Whose image we are made). These days, of course, attempts are made every which way to dissociate personhood from the Christian Divine, though they seem only to give us over into inappropriate "individualistic" frames of reference.
Hopefully the italics will end now.
Thank you, Mr Smith and Mr Cornell, though I still feel like a fool.
Thank you as well, Mr Moses, for giving us the reason why personhood sounds more human, and thus giving us a little deeper insight.
Sorry, I've tried several times, but I can't get the italics to end. I've tried the 'end italics' code in several places, but can't get it to work.One last time now.If it doesn't work this time, then I don't know what to do.
Mr. Wilson,
Stop worrying – Be happy! I (and I'm sure everyone else) will continue reading your comments regardless. I have the opposite problem – can't get this thing to make italics no matter what I do.
Tell ya what. From my days as an alley mechanic, I've got an idea. Let's saw our compooters in half; you send me yours, I'll send you mine, we'll solder them together – problem solved!
Well, we see now where the problem lies.
Mr Jacobi, If we were to solder the two computers together, we can't use my keyboard. It's worn out, and that provides me with a plausible excuse for the italics mistake. At least that's my story.
Has anyone read American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard? Is it worth reading?