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The Evolution of Individualism Through Christianity A THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALISM THROUGH CHRISTIANITY A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of The School of Continuing Studies and of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Liberal Studies By Maureen Heath, M.P.A. Georgetown University Washington D.C. April 2018 DEDICATION I would like to thank my husband Dr. Jim Heath, who has been a source of constant motivation and support. He encouraged me to pursue the doctorate and has diligently read and edited multiple iterations of this thesis. I would also like to thank all the members of my committee: Dr. Frank Ambrosio, Dr. Bill O’Brien and especially Dr. JoAnn H. Moran Cruz, who has spent many hours mentoring me and guiding me through this process. ii THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALISM THROUGH CHRISTIANITY Maureen Heath DLS Chair: JoAnn Moran Cruz, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This thesis explores how Christianity and the birth of a Christian worldview affected the evolution of individualism in Western culture as a cultural meme. Applying a biological metaphor, the focus is on how mutations in the cultural genome arose from the advent of Christianity within a Eurocentric context. Utilizing a diachronic examination of selected authors and writings, this thesis explores that cultural evolution and shows the progression to the modern individual. Beginning with Augustine and extending to John Locke, the focus is on writers who are emblematic of a concept that becomes an adaptive trait or cultural meme in the evolutionary process. They include: Augustine exhibiting the inner self, Abelard and Ockham displaying the intentional self, Dante manifesting the responsible self, Pico della Mirandola and the self-made man, Montaigne presenting the subjective self, Luther with the autonomous-self meme, and Locke presenting the natural rights meme. These historical figures did not necessarily invent the concept that was crucial to the adaptation. Rather, due to a confluence of events, timing, and just as in biological evolution, chance, the idea they wrote about reached a critical mass of acceptance and “stuck,” thereby mutating the prevailing social culture from both a historical and linguistic point of view. Finally, the question of whether individualism has now mutated to the point that there is an exaggerated emphasis on it, to the detriment of shared societal bonds and values, is addressed in the conclusions. iii CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ABSTRACT iii CHAPTER 1. PROLOGUE: VALUES AND WORLDVIEWS 1 CHAPTER 2. DEFINING TERMS 23 SELF, PERSON, INDIVIDUAL CHAPTER 3. AUGUSTINE AND THE INNER-SELF MEME 51 CHAPTER 4. ABELARD, HELOISE, AND OCKHAM: 76 THE INTENTIONAL-SELF MEME CHAPTER 5. DANTE: THE RESPONSIBLE-SELF MEME 105 CHAPTER 6. PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA: THE SELF-MADE 132 MAN MEME CHAPTER 7. LUTHER: THE AUTONOMOUS-SELF MEME 161 CHAPTER 8. MONTAIGNE: THE SUBJECTIVE-SELF MEME 194 CHAPTER 9. LOCKE: THE NATURAL RIGHTS MEME 225 CHAPTER 10. EPILOGUE: CONCLUSIONS 257 iv CHAPTER 1 PROLOGUE: VALUES AND WORLDVIEWS The contention of this thesis is that Christian thought has made a unique and indispensable contribution in shaping the Western view of the individual, and the values of human freedom and responsibility. To map the evolution of these individualism traits, a framework of a cultural genome will be employed to examine selected authors and writings emblematic of specific memes.1 Beginning in the late antique era and extending through the Enlightenment era, the memes to be examined include: Augustine exhibiting the inner self, Abelard and Ockham displaying the intentional self, Dante manifesting the responsible self, Pico della Mirandola and the self-made man, Montaigne presenting the subjective self, Luther with the autonomous-self meme, and Locke presenting the natural rights meme. The supposition is not that these historical figures necessarily invented the concepts; but rather, due to a confluence of events, timing, and just as in biological evolution, chance, the idea they wrote about reached a critical mass of acceptance and “stuck,” thereby mutating the prevailing social culture from both a historical and linguistic point of view. 2 In some cases, the total oeuvre of these authors reveals self- contradictions, but the focus of this thesis will be on that one idea or concept that gained a foothold and 1 Cultural evolution is a metaphoric description analogous to the biological processes in genetic evolution, which obeys the laws of natural selection using human forms of communication to provide transmission of memes. The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene ) of mimeme (from ancient Greek μίμημα pronounced mīmēma , "imitated thing"), and was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the dissemination of ideas and cultural phenomena (Dawkins 2006, 192). 2 In modern slang that also uses a biological metaphor, we would say their concept “went viral.” 1 more importantly, just as in natural selection, reproduced, causing a progression towards our modern view of individuality. WORLDVIEWS One of the pillars of modernity is the privileging of the individual and the self in society. The modern West, perhaps more than any other culture, has made the debate about individuality, individual freedom, and self-identity central to its collective attempts at self-definition. This debate has been crucially shaped by Christianity, which is inseparable from and yet incommensurable with the contribution of Classical Humanism, so that only through an understanding of their historical interaction and adaptations can we understand the modern notion of individuality. The root of our Eurocentric culture lies in its attempts to define self-identities in relation to shared societal connections, orientations and values, since human beings can only become aware of their individuality within that societal framework. We tend to believe that our decisions are the result of conscious, rational, individual choice, and they are, to an extent, but we are social animals and every decision we make is deeply rooted in a cultural identity and worldview. Our social structure and upbringing provides a construct that encodes our experiences as signs and symbols that mesh with our culture. This social and linguistic web of symbols gives meaning and order to our everyday lives and can be called a worldview (Doran 1995, 1); and this worldview is fundamental to shaping the evolutionary context under study and the forthcoming arguments. Many people are quite unaware that they hold such a worldview and live their lives without any cognizant philosophical framework. But as Charles Taylor says, it is always untrue that they actually do not have a framework they are operating within that structures their lives 2 with important qualitative distinctions in relation to which they literally live and die (Taylor 1989, 21). A basic assertion of this thesis is that while Greek philosophical ideas had a significant influence on early Christianity (particularly the Platonic idea of the immortality of the soul and otherworldliness), the impersonal worldview of the ancient Greco-Roman societies did not display a genuine individualism based on the preeminence of personal values, virtues, or self-expression. 3 To the contrary, the presumption in the ancient culture was that these values could only be realized as part of life within the Greek polis or Roman civitas – a self-sufficient group of human beings united by a common pursuit of the “good” (Berlin 2013, 299, 319). Based on this presumption, this thesis will show how adaptations in the cultural genome arose from the advent of Christianity, with its focus on the inner person initiating the evolutionary adaptation of individualism. 4 An essential premise of this argument is that there are two distinct views of the nature of man in the West. The classical Greco-Roman view, also called the heroic worldview, and the Judeo-Christian worldview. 5 These two views are distinctly different 3 Certainly they displayed unique personality characteristics, as displayed in Homer’s epics and Plato’s dialogues, which set them apart from others in their society; but the self-affirmation of one’s own worth and an awareness of the intrinsic freedom to define their own identity were lacking in ancient society. 4 While the eruption of Christianity triggered a major mutation in the cultural environment that produced a genuinely new conception of the self, the impersonalist worldview, while it became recessive remained active. Starting with the Renaissance, but accelerating in the Enlightenment, it began to reassert a degree of dominance that in turned produced a hybrid of the Medieval Christian conception. 5 Frank Ambrosio uses the metaphors of the hero and the saint to representative memes of the Classical versus Christian worldviews. In the heroic worldview, reality appears as fundamentally shaped by the human struggle, the struggle with forces that are essentially impersonal; the forces of necessity and fate, which are indifferent to human hopes and fears. For the saint, reality is ultimately configured by the bonds of a covenant relationship among persons, human and divine, based on an exchange of promises offered in the mutual hope of lasting and unconditional trust. Saints, by contrast, live for others, accepting 3 and incommensurable; one views the nature of reality through an impersonal and the other through a personal lens. And while medieval Catholics and Renaissance humanists sought to merge the two worldviews into one, they remain largely incommensurable in their metaphysical assumptions, and as a result Western culture has experienced a continuing clash between two opposing views of human nature, which came to a head during the Enlightenment and has continued into the Postmodern era. While we owe much to the Greco-Roman cultural foundation of Europe and the democratic and republican models it fostered, the ancient world embodied an entirely dissimilar worldview that did not embody individual freedoms and rights in any modern sense of the term.
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