The Christian Roots of Individualism
The modern West has made the focus on individuality, individual freedom, and self-identity central to its self-definition, and these concepts have been crucially shaped by Christianity. This book surveys how the birth of the Christian worldview affected t
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The Christian Roots of Individualism
Maureen P. Heath
The Christian Roots of Individualism
Maureen P. Heath Fairfax, VA, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-30088-3 ISBN 978-3-030-30089-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30089-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Jim, who encouraged me onto this intellectual trek.
Foreword
Maureen Heath has written, in accessible and often compelling prose, a detailed analysis of the evolving concept of individualism within the western, liberal tradition, beginning with its late antique Christian roots and concluding with our modern American tensions between a more secular sense of individual autonomy amid societal and political concerns, between the flourishing of the individual and the common good. As she puts it, today we use social media instead of social commitment (see Chapter 10). Heath uses a cultural evolutionary perspective, a kind of cultural genetics explained in her first chapter, to explore the cumulative meanings or memes that propagate around the idea of individualism over the centuries, grounded, as it is in her telling, in Christianity. It is not too extreme to suggest that her analysis places Christianity front and center in the rise of individualism, at the root of the western liberal understanding of individuals as autonomous moral agents. Heath offers a thoughtful distillation of the ways in which individual thinkers, both men and women, responded to their cultural and religious time and place with the introduction of memes such as individual responsibility, the ethics of
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