Individualism and “the West”'

In this book, I am going to diagnose the condition of the modern West in terms of the opposition between two ideas that are basic to our intellectual and cultural heritage. However, each of these ideas has a degenerate form. Therefore, there are four axes along which the intellectual trajectory of the modern West can be charted. Ideologically speaking, the West – and each one of us citizens of the West – can be pulled in four different directions. The previous chapter introduced the first pair of axes, constituted by objectivism and its degenerate form, fundamentalism. This chapter introduces the other axes. The first of these is provided by the idea known as individualism. The second is made up of its degenerate form: relativism.

Part of the foundation of Western thought, and by extension Western social and political institutions, is provided by Plato's objectivism. Moral values – at least, our most important moral values – exist objectively, and independently of our beliefs, opinions, attitudes and practices. However, objectivism has a natural tendency to degenerate into something superficially similar but, in reality, very different – indeed, not only different but opposing: fundamentalism. Objectivism has a natural tendency to degenerate into fundamentalism because human beings have a natural tendency to be lazy and grasping. Fundamentalism comes about when we take the conclusions supplied by objectivism, and its method of rational enquiry underwritten by logical argument and unbiased gathering of evidence, and forget how we arrive at these conclusions.