I would like to conclude this consideration of the relevance of Louis Dumont's work to the study of religion by giving some attention to the ethical, moral and political questions that have been raised along the way both by this writer and by Dumont's critics.

Readers are by now familiar with the way Dumont argues that our individualist way of thinking produces surprising intellectual “imperialist” consequences. For Dumont, such a disregard for the sensibilities and world views of others amounts to a kind of sin. We arrogantly think that fundamental assumptions about the universality of something as unquestioned as our belief that persons are “individuals” must be true for everyone. On this view, an “individual” is a person endowed with certain “God-given” qualities such as our rights to liberty and equality, and so on. Add to this that such a conception of what it is to be human represents a high point of human development. In the hands of various political or religious powers such assumptions can make huge differences, such as have informed much of the thinking, or so it seems, of the Bush administration and its policies in Iraq.