Staring out from the page, his perfectly proportioned, toned body emanates the perfection of God’s image: man. Leonardo da Vinci’s The Vitruvian Man (1490) epitomized Renaissance Humanism and the rejection of the Gothic tradition of placing man in the shadows of God, positioning the white, able-bodied, European man at the centre of the universe, at the center of God’s universe. The human became a microcosm for the Macrocosm: mans’ proportions mirrored the mathematical perfection of the cosmos, nature, and time. However, while Humanism may have embraced and encouraged the notion of the human as the pinnacle of Creation, individualism went a step further and placed the autonomous, independent human – the individual – above that of the human; the human required a body and a mind, the individual required an objective body and mind. It was this notion of the objective body and mind, the idea of the individual, that gave strife to those who sought to define and in turn be defined as individuals, fuelling the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and the individual agency of Mary Wollstonecraft who sought to extend the realms of ‘liberal individualism’ to women, highlighting the inconsistencies and contradictions of the freedom theorists of the Enlightenment. Therefore, despite being conceived in the 1830s, individualism and ultimately the idea of the individual made the history of Europe, without which the Reformation and the Enlightenment would not have been possible. The idea of the individual is European history.
In a recent book, The Christian Roots of Individualism, Maureen P. Heath discussed at length the role of Martin Luther in the rise of individualist Christianity. Luther’s conviction against the Catholic Church’s uses of indulgences, intermediary forces such as priests, bishops, and ultimately the Pope, between humans and God, and his development of the Humanist idea of sola scriptura (by scripture alone), have left a lasting impression on the evolution of the autonomous individual. Thus it could be inferred that Luther and his advocation for the human to become autonomous was the core principle of the Reformation and the other concerns such as the idolisation of the Saints were secondary to the core of the idea of the individual. However, while Martin Luther was indeed a pivotal force, if not the force, of the Reformation it was not Luther alone who introduced the ‘self’ as the key figure in religious experience and the relationship between humans and God, ultimately leading to the Reformation, a point in which Heath perhaps does not touch upon in great detail. St Augustine in his Confessions, Book X vehemently advocated for God to be realized within the self, first and foremost. Religion and God were deeply connected to the self in St Augustine’s mind: ‘I the inner, knew them; I, the mind, through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and it answered me, ‘I am not He, but He made me.’’. The notion that God was to be found within, that God was the essence of humanness fuelled religious debates and the questioning of the role of the Church leading to Lutheran thought and the birth of the Protestant Church. Furthermore, individual faith developed by Luther and Calvin became ever more important leading up to the Reformation with the emphasis on the search for eternal salvation becoming paramount. The role of the individual developed further as the Church under Protestantism could no longer be relied upon for the deliverance of sin – in Luther’s mind one was either born damned or saved and nothing the Church did could change one’s fate. Thus, individual actions and in particular faith, sola fide (by faith alone), became the dominant forces in the eras during and post-Reformation. Luther and the Reformation, without necessarily knowing it, were catalysts in the development of individualism and the progression of individual autonomy. The Reformation while on the surface a response to the corruption of the Catholic Church, beneath a thin veil is a movement that hollowed out a space for the individual, a space which has only grown with time. Humanism introduced the self, the Reformation was a movement of the self, of the
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Faust, Lines 592 - 593
While the Reformation was a movement concerned with the inner self – the implicit individual – the Enlightenment approached the role of the individual head-on and explicitly. The lines from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, a narration of the life of the modern individual, written during the Enlightenment, epitomizes the transition between the Reformation and the Enlightenment, where the individual became of paramount importance to the functioning of not only the self but of 18th Century society and beyond. The Enlightenment saw the individual evolve from the singular to the systemic where society became a collection of individuals. The Enlightenment echoed and adapted the Lutheran application of sola scriptura, the practice of relying on the original religious scripture and seeing and interpreting the text for oneself. ‘Cartesian doubt’ (sourcing information firsthand and doubting everything to achieve an individual understanding) ensured the development of a concrete set of definitive rules, contrary to relying on others for second-hand information, rather the information was sourced independently without bias or interference. The consolidation of knowledge enabled the individual in the Enlightenment to become a figure who embodied and exercised rationality and imagination. The willingness and the desire to be defined as a rational and in turn an individual drove the process of Enlightenment and in turn fortified the individual as the defining figure of the Enlightenment. Yet, despite the prevalence of the individual within the Enlightenment, the idea and its power also faced several setbacks in a changing society. Mauro Magatti and Monica Martinelli have suggested that the Church and the dependency on the Church were becoming increasingly catechized, giving way to new modes of dependence in the form of ‘institutional apparatus’ such as ‘the state and the market, intertwined with science and technology’. The Enlightenment saw mass upheaval not only in select groups but how people interacted with one another and the elites due to changing socioeconomic dynamics. While Magatti and Martinelli make excellent points, they miss perhaps the crucial development of the 18th Century: the public sphere, an idea developed by Jürgen Habermas, without which individualism in the 18th Century would not have thrived. The public sphere allowed anyone (de jure) to define themselves through what they said, not who they were – one could make themselves. In de facto this ‘equal opportunity’ was often not practiced. Although 18th-century society became increasingly enmeshed, the opportunities to define and be defined as an individual outweigh the shortcomings of individualism elsewhere. Enlightenment was the process of becoming an individual.
The French Revolution in 1789 saw the individual develop from an abstract status to a judicial identity of sorts. The enshrining of the individual in law drove fierce debates about who was considered an individual and who was not. Women were not considered individuals. Individualism shifted from being a position in which one could become by acting with autonomy and rationality, into something in which one was born: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, 1789, Article I, ‘Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility.’ Furthermore, at the start of the 18th Century the term ‘individual’ was associated with terms such as ‘system’, ‘composition’, and ‘essence’, associations no doubt remnant of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century, however, towards the end of the 1700s in the 1790s, the term ‘individual’ became associated with terms such as ‘legislative’ and ‘tribunals’. The individual became a citizen, anyone not deemed an individual, not free, was excluded from legal rights. In respect, the law defined the individual as autonomous and independent – the capacity to make a life for oneself, to be free, to become an individual fuelled the ‘feminism’ of Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft recognized that women’s presupposed ‘inadequacies’ were not products of their nature but rather consequences of their present conditions; women’s lack of autonomy and independence were imposed upon them by a society that valued their silence, appearance, and frivolity. Women were suppressed individuals, ‘Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so, for the improvements must be mutual…’. Wollstonecraft recognized that having been taught not to engage in rationality or imagination women were conceived not to be capable of the former and latter, given an equal opportunity such ‘lacking’ would be resolved. If one is taught they are not worthy of freedom one believes they are not worthy of freedom. The individual for Wollstonecraft was an act of individual autonomy and once women acted with autonomy they too could be representatives of the individual. Thus it can be observed that without the concept of the individual Wollstonecraft would not have become an agent of individualism.
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