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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Wilhelm von Humboldt

The birth of qualitative individualism

11 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Foundations of Ethics, German Tradition, Metaphysics, Politics, Self

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, Charles Taylor, Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, modernity, qualitative individualism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Romanticism, Wilhelm von Humboldt

What is remarkable about the ideal of qualitative individualism is that it is so pervasive yet so rarely thought about in depth. To get a bit more of that depth, I would like to examine next the question of where it comes from.

The idea is modern, I think, though like so many modern ideas it has premodern antecedents. A while ago I breezed a little too easily over the differences between qualitative individualism and Aristotle. I said:

Aristotle – not exactly a great friend of modern liberal freedom – thinks of the best politics in terms of allowing each person to fulfill a highest end or telos, all being the best they can be. Some thinkers would consider this teleology a higher and truer kind of freedom than choice alone. But it seems to me that the freedom of choice is a vital part of the freedom to be what you are. Who would know what you’re meant to be better than you yourself?

I missed something there. If it’s so clear that you’re the person who knows best what you’re meant to be, then why would Aristotle have been “not exactly a great friend” of the political freedom of choice lionized by qualitative individualists today? Continue reading →

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