Individualism is a doctrine concerning both the composition of human society and the constitution of sociocultural actors. The term was invented in the 1820s, apparently, in France (Swart 1962). Its first appearance in English dates from the 1835...

Hudson, Winthrop S. Religion in America: An Historical Account of the Development of American Religion Life. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965. Mead, Sidney Earl. The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America. New York:...

Individualism is a modern word. Its first recorded use is in 1840 when it was used in the English translation of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In a later work Tocqueville (1856) noted that Our ancestors had not got the word...

Individualism should not be confused with individuality, difficult though it has been to separate their definition and implication in anthropologists’ work. To attempt this as a starting-point here, individualism pertains to a particular...

Political and social philosophy that emphasizes individual freedom. Modern individualism emerged in Britain with the ideas of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, and the concept was described by Alexis de Tocqueville as fundamental to the American temper....

. In recent philosophy of mind and psychology, this has come to denote a view very similar to INTERNALISM in its main sense, holding that the content of an individual’s thought or experience depends simply on that individual, and does not...

Seeking to maximize the utility of an individual person rather than a collective entity such as society at large or a corporate body. Individualism is often equated with SELF-INTEREST or even selfishness. The individualist value economic and political...

1. Personality traits that distinguish one individual from another. 2. A social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of the individual over the social or the...

For articles with similar names and topics, see Individual (disambiguation). Individualism is a term used to describe a moral, political, or social outlook that stresses human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty....