Back	Individualism or Collectivism?

Hellenist Stilian Korovilas writes:

The central idea of Hellenism is «political man,» and this idea is the logical consequence of collectivism, because politics is all about the polis, state, community. As a term «politics» means «dealing with the affairs of the polis .» But the polis is the expression of a well ordered and thus free i.e. autonomous collective. Without the polis there is no polites (citizen), no politismos (administration) and no politeia, which is the «condition and rights of a citizen,» the collective «body of citizens» Isegoria (equality in freedom of speech), isonomia (equal application of the laws to all) and isokratia (equality of power) are the collective fundaments on which freedom is based and without which democracy cannot exist, for democracy is nothing more nor less than the self governed society, free of tyranny, heavenly dictators, parties and parliaments.

Hellenism sees man as a social being defined by his relationships to his family, clan, tribe and state, as member of a group, a limb of the political order of his polis. Against this backdrop, individualism isolates man, counteracts his political nature and, more importantly, places all collective needs under the primacy of individual desires, wishes and likes. When individual choices or desires rise above collective necessities, tyranny is not far away. The immaturity of individualism is the very antithesis of Jung’s concept of individuation, which he thought was a natural process «by which individual beings are formed and differentiated.» Its goal is «the development of the individual personality» to «achieve wholeness» . Individualism, on the other hand, is not natural at all. It’s an ideology. Encyclopaedia Britannica defines individualism as a «political and social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual … According to the individualist, all values are human-centred, the individual is of supreme importance, and all individuals are morally equal»

Comments:

U: The ideas of equality in law, power, speech is applied differently and have different effect depending on what kind of individuals compose a society. The more distant they are in style the impossible it gets to form the democracy. Individualism is quite an artificial term - for the individual gets relevance only within a community for which he is useful and which is useful to him.