Indivíduo filosofi a conceição soares bbb x thatcher

file:///C:/Users/HOME/OneDrive/Documentos/A%20filosofia%20do%20individualismo.pdf Introduction This paper attempts to examine in some detail the philosophy of individualism, with the aim to explain why this philosophy is so reductionist to entirely explain all complex social phenomena. I argue that our Western world is based, by and large, upon the dominant modern theory of free, equal and autonomous individuals in open and symmetrical competition in a free marketplace of commodities and ideas. Its fundamental assumption is the conception of the individual as an isolated entity separated from its own environment, living as a self -sufficient being. From this conception, what society is, how society works, is exclusively explained in terms of the behaviour of such individuals; ultimately, the individual is the cause and the only constituent of society. This paper is organized around three general assumptions. The first is that some form of individualism – broadly conceived as the view that the individual human being is a maker of the world he/she inhabits – has been a key factor in the philosophy and the life of the West since the Enlightenment. The second assumption is that, since the last century, the individualist order of the modern Western world has met with challenges that have rendered its beliefs and doctrines problematic. Historical developments, social challenges, such as industrialisation, have altered the philosophical foundations in which individual identity and responsibility are conceived. One needs to reflect anew on the status of the individual in our contemporary world. Hence, the third assumption is that the notion of individualism, which has played a central role in the 12 | CONCEIÇÃO SOARES INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL VALUES | VOLUME I | NÚMERO 1 | JUN. 2018 formation of the post -Renaissance world, needs to be examined in the wake of some other perspectives namely by contrasting it with its antonym, the notion of collectivity. I will suggest that methodological individualism, fictive (or abstract) individualism1 and the metaphysics of individualist social philosophy is reductionist. The first is primarily the reductionist claim that all complex social phenomena are ultimately to be explained in terms of the actions of individual agents; the second is akin to the Hobbesian thesis that we come into existence overnight fully formed like mushrooms; according to the third, the only entity that is real and exists in the (social) universe is the individual (human being), all other entities, such as the family or society in general are not real and do not exist, as these ultimately are nothing more than logical constructions out of the individual beings, which alone are real and exist. It would then be obvious why any analysis of collective behavior from an individualist standpoint is necessarily very restrictive. However, although individualism is the dominant social philosophy in modern Western thought, there are also other currents, such as collectivism (to which I shall be making a briefly reference in the course of this paper), which is seen as the rival social philosophy to that of individualism