In terms of the genealogy of these ideas, I think theology is very relevant here, as guys like John Milbank and Brad Gregory have shown. That's one of the ironies of liberalism, the source of its anthropology comes, at least in its origins, from one of the "forbidden sources" of justification. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But Fukuyama does a good job of illustrating how theology was just another important strand of the eventual pragmatic synthesis. Anthropology hardly denies the role religion plays in organising human societies. Although early liberal philosophy certainly argued that humans ought to be in charge of their own affairs and that the lead could be taken from natural science rather than supernatural tradition.

Then in terms of how history has gone, the Anglican Church has turned itself into another social services NGO. Part of the new establishment under “the third way” turn meant to soften the ravages of Thatcher and Reagan’s strident neoliberalism.

We should worry less about what our social institutions say they are and look at more what they actually do.

In earlier posts in this thread, you pointed out the key role of the Christian church in the development of individualism in the West. I was intrigued by this idea and here is what I found on the subject.

It seems that individualism is based on the idea of ​​"individual salvation" and individual responsibility before God. From the information I found, it follows that in the pre-Christian era this idea existed, but in a rather rudimentary form: the main emphasis in Judaism was on the collective salvation of the people of Israel.

Collective identity was dominant: a Jew thinks of himself as part of Israel as the people of the Covenant. Salvation is the liberation of the people (from Egypt, Babylon, the future messianic era).

However, already in the prophetic literature (for example, in Ezekiel, Isaiah) there are notes of personal responsibility: "The soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). Here is a hint that each person is personally responsible for his actions. Thus, the idea of ​​personal responsibility and even personal salvation was already present in Judaism, but it was not central.

Christianity has somewhat revised this approach. The focus shifts to a personal relationship with God, not to the law of Moses or belonging to Israel:

1. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6)
2. Salvation through faith, not through ritual observance of the law:
"Your faith has saved you" (Luke 7:50)
3. The principle of internal conversion - a change of mind and heart:
"The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21)
4. The promise of eternal life to everyone, regardless of nationality, gender, status and past (for example, the parable of the prodigal son, or the conversation with the thief on the cross)

Christianity makes individual salvation the central element of its message.

Christian ideas fit perfectly into the Roman paradigm. Along with the Judeo-Christian tradition, Western consciousness was powerfully influenced by antiquity.
Roman law was the first to develop the concept of persona — a legal entity, an individual as a bearer of rights and obligations.
These ideas merged with Christianity, creating a synergy: Christianity provided a metaphysical justification for the value of the individual (created in the image and likeness of God, has an immortal soul), and Greco-Roman thought provided tools for self-knowledge and social realization of this individuality (logic, law, ethics).

Further, Christian philosophy only develops and strengthens this idea, which could not but influence the social structure and the way of thinking of pre-modern contemporaries:

1. Augustine emphasizes the inner man, introspection, grace that changes personality.
2. Thomas Aquinas, and later - Protestant ethics (for example, Max Weber) - all this reveals the personal moral and spiritual autonomy of man.
3. Luther strengthens the theme of personal faith against church intermediaries.

Now you do not even have to belong to a church or go there. You do not need to belong to some people or be chosen by God. You yourself can communicate with God, and your salvation depends on your righteousness. The Protestant ethic not only strengthened personal faith, but also sanctified individual labor and accumulation as signs of divine election. Capitalism, at its core, is a system that rewards individual initiative, risk, and responsibility. The entrepreneur is the economic equivalent of the existential hero, who creates his own destiny (and his own capital).

Further, all this is transformed into individual human rights, freedom of conscience (after all, if you are not righteous, this is your problem), pluralism of opinions - it becomes a consistent development. At the same time, the idea of ​​God as the source of everything is being debunked, as it has been replaced by faith in science.
"I don't care what John thinks, because it's his own business. I don't care how he runs the household or raises his children, because he's responsible for it himself." And the crown of all this is Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre and Camus. Existentialism - as personal responsibility to oneself for one's own actions in the absence of a common meaning or common responsibility.

All this is the story of someone escaping responsibility to someone else. What I wrote above - no one is responsible for anything. The question arises: What is the next stage of liberation? Maybe now is the time to free ourselves from the need to be? After all, we are already free from everything else, including any identity, social connections, aren't we? This is exactly where I see one of those very pillars of liberalism that I spoke about earlier.

Of course, all this is too reductionist: you can't just look at Christianity as the source of everything. All the changes in public consciousness did not happen in a vacuum, but under the influence of many other things, as you noted in your comments. But this idea seemed too beautiful to me to just keep it to myself =)

Christianity makes individual salvation the central element of its message. Further, Christian philosophy only develops and strengthens this idea, which could not but influence the social structure and the way of thinking of pre-modern contemporaries: — Astorre

Yes. Christianity was a new social technology. It could break the old world with its tribal kinship structure by shifting hierarchical allegiance from an ancestral genealogy to a transcendent ream. With the church then clipping the ticket as the middleman handling this transaction.

So in some ways it might have seemed like a thoroughly selfless project. But also historians like Fukuyama provide the evidence of how the church became a paying concern as it could shift tribal people from ancestor worship to god worship, and ancestral tribute to church tribute.

Liberation from tribal structure was a significant step in social development. But now the freed individual became part of the new super-clan of the church.

Here we are in particular tracking how this panned out in the Western European context as the Roman Church became divided into its Byzantine and Germanic tribal wings. And how this evolved into a feudalist system some 1000 years after Christianity got going.

From my paraphrasing of Fukuyama:

Christianity turned into its own land ownership and statehood game. Kings of tribes became kings of the common folk, as defined by a church system. Church became an administrative arm dealing with the soul of this corporate body.

The Christian church was different from Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in that its popes sought to impose new property and marriage laws on old tribal structures. Pope Urban II in 1000s said don’t expect church to ratify old custom as its way was the truth of god.

Christianity cemented English moves towards impersonal law. The kings became the dispensers of court justice. And then the kings themselves were subject to the rule of law under the normative influence of there being a Church and God to say all mortals are law bound. The Church closed the systems in terms of norms of justice and egalitariaism. The same rules constrained, no matter what their personal contingencies.

The Western way emerged from a strong church that claimed the mind and gave the state the body. Then this individualisation evolved its own freedom from church constraint, especially with the scientific revolution and Protestant reformation.

The Catholic Church’s attention to legal codes was important in transforming into modern states. Church came up with Justinian code to reconnect to Greek and Rome rationality, and also Canon law to tidy up its own historic mish mash. So a new institution of legal practice and scholarship emerged.

It also created modern bureaucracy, reinventing Qin China's separation of office from office-holder. Justice dispensed by functionaries of the state. Technical competence and education could start to matter. Chancery staff set a model of civilian rule that kings then adopted

One could go into much more detail. But Fukuyama's point is that the Church itself was plugged into the Greek and Roman philosophy that underwrote a move from traditional clan social structure to a plan for society based on a rational understanding of how to create a social complexity that was able to scale. Western Europe was the ideal Petrie dish for this experiment as it was naturally chopped up into a collection of equal sized kingdoms that were both in sovereign competition and yet united under a general Papal rule. It was a dynamic situation and growing in complexity as it had embraced this more pure form of systems architecture.

A key difference in Europe was that it was politically fragmented into many states, but had a strong church. Europe had its Justinian code as a result of a scholarly attempt to create unity of textual views. Law became a specialised subject at universities, as well as a practice. And it had its concordat of Worms to establish separation of church and state as institutions.

So it took everything to the next level with a sharper and more explicit abstraction. It was about rules not just for some society, but a rational society in general.

Graeber notes likewise how the Church fostered the rationality that paved the way for the full-blown social engineering of the Enlightenment. And the curious way that the tribal habit of mind had to be first broken by identifying the rational with the divine before it came back down to Earth and was allowed to organise human affairs just in being the practice of reason.

An important Medieval Europe innovation was the 1200s idea of the corporation as effectively a legal person. Graeber p304 says Pope Innocent IV in 1250 established in canon law that monasteries, universities, churches, municipalities and guilds could be corporate bodies. This agreed with Platonic approach of Aquinas where angels were ideas made concrete. Every angel represents a species.

So a turn of mind that in scholastic fashion could treat abstractions as solid organising realities. Intellectual bodies in Ernst Kantorowicz words. Europe was able to accept institutions into the human framework of legal and economic protections.

It started with church bodies, then intellectual bodies, and finally cities and trades. Eventually economic entities could own property and rule their own homes. This recognition of individuality as scalefree interest groups was central in creating a liberal and democratic Europe. If it wasn't hurting others, why not let an interest group pursue its own goals?

Graeber notes that corporations thus started as permissive and cooperative ideals. Allowing localised self-regulating community. But then turned into competitive commercial and mercantile enterprises like the East India Company.

Of course, all this is too reductionist: you can't just look at Christianity as the source of everything. All the changes in public consciousness did not happen in a vacuum, but under the influence of many other things, as you noted in your comments. — Astorre

Yep. The history is intricate. What the Church believed about souls or values wasn't really what mattered. Much more important was that it created a strata of society that could foster a rationality that could begin to organise the existing tribal clan structures into a more modern story of free and equal individuals acting in the context of an abstracted framework of law.

A better idea could take root and flourish. Although that better idea was always a balancing act in that it wasn't just about the free and equal individual. It was just as much about a framework of constitutional constraints to place clearly marked boundaries on that freedom and equality.

The question arises: What is the next stage of liberation? Maybe now is the time to free ourselves from the need to be? After all, we are already free from everything else, including any identity, social connections, aren't we? This is exactly where I see one of those very pillars of liberalism that I spoke about earlier. — Astorre

And there we certainly differ. Absolute freedom makes no sense. To have meaning, freedom has to exist within a context of constraint.

You can't have a good game of tennis if no one is following any agreed set of rules. Sure, you can always call for more freedom. But then what are you going to do with it? And when do you remember ceasing to care what others might do with their freedoms if this unlimited freedom to do just whatever is being handed around equally?

So what is the next stage of liberation? A lot of people seem to think it would be nice to get back to smaller and tighter communities. Another form of liberation might be to aim to become more worldly – to be able to move through all sorts of communities and find it easy to fit in with those other ways.

Life makes more sense to me if you see individualism and collectivism as a spectrum of possibilities. Fitting in or striking out are just two kinds of opposing behaviour that we can meaningfully employ. Neither binds us. We can make choices and learn from where they take us.

The question arises: What is the next stage of liberation? Maybe now is the time to free ourselves from the need to be? After all, we are already free from everything else, including any identity, social connections, aren't we? This is exactly where I see one of those very pillars of liberalism that I spoke about earlier.
— Astorre

And there we certainly differ. Absolute freedom makes no sense. To have meaning, freedom has to exist within a context of constraint. — apokrisis

I formulated this question in order to emphasize the absurdity to which we have reached in freeing ourselves from everything.

:up:

All this is the story of someone escaping responsibility to someone else. What I wrote above - no one is responsible for anything. The question arises: What is the next stage of liberation? Maybe now is the time to free ourselves from the need to be? After all, we are already free from everything else, including any identity, social connections, aren't we? This is exactly where I see one of those very pillars of liberalism that I spoke about earlier. — Astorre

I don't really understand what you mean by this. I think you correctly identify the role of Protestantism in the formation of individualism, and the role of Christianity in grounding the value of the person. And also that these are very much one of the 'pillars of liberalism'. The founding philosophers of liberalism generally had a commitment to the social contract in the form of reciprocal rights and duties (although today the rights seem to be exaggerated and duties deprecated.) All of this was developed against an implicitly Christian background, from which the idea of social equality originated (as opposed to the rigid social hierarchies of the preceeding cultures). Furthermore that the ideal of progress was a version of the Eschaton transposed into a secular register. But the human condition, as such, was never envisioned to be complete or capable of fulfilment in the original Christian sense. So while liberalism grew out of that soil, it lost its connection to it in some fundamental way with the decline of faith.

So what next stage of liberation could there be, if not some version of the utilitarian ethos of the 'greatest good for the greatest number'? I think the obvious issue is the need to culture to transition from an economy of abundance to one of scarcity, as that is what the world is facing. We can't sustain the levels of consumption of goods and energy that the West has grown used to. Already we overshoot the Earth's capacity to sustain the consumption of resources which outstrips the natural regenerative capacity of the planet on an earlier date each year (see Earth Overshoot Day). So what kind of economic or political system would recognise or validate frugality and conservation rather than conspicuous consumption? That doesn't look a lot like 'freedom' in the economic sense, which is the freedom to pursue and fulfil one's desires.

Actually a pioneering political economist comes to mind, E F Schumacher, who published the trendsetting Small is Beautiful book in 1973, one of the early influential books in sustainable economics. Schumacher argued in his chapter on Buddhist Economics that economics should serve people rather than the other way around. The Buddhist model prioritizes well-being, meaningful work, simplicity, and ecological balance over the Western fixation on growth, profit, and consumption. He frames this not as a religious doctrine but as a reminder that economics is always rooted in values, and that the Western “science” of economics has its own unexamined metaphysics—one that Buddhist economics can help illuminate and counterbalance (although it must be noted, he developed this concept whilst an economic adviser in Burma, which has hardly gone on to become an exemplar for any kind of development.)

Nevertheless, the broader point stands: that Western capitalism has prioritised material abundance and consumption as the hallmark of progress, and it's a model that is not sustainable in the face of the scarcities that are threatening global well-being. So maybe the kind of liberation that needs to be sought, is the liberation from endless consumption - which does sound rather Buddhist.

As I noted above, the question "what should we free ourselves from now?" was a kind of logical reductio ad absurdum.

In fact, recently discussing the topic of outdoor practices, I thought about the fact that a contemporary has to intentionally leave his comfort zone in order to feel alive again.

It turns out that our desire for safety and comfort has led us to a place from which it is worth running. And I fully support your idea, only in a slightly broader sense: in order to feel alive, some need is needed, some dissatisfaction, some aspiration. Otherwise, what is the point of striving for inaction, as in Buddhism, if we do nothing anyway?

So I began to plan a trip to nature, and options immediately appeared in my head to go to the mountains or to equipped gazebos on the river bank. But why not go to the steppe under the scorching sun with sand in your face and snakes? It turns out that the mind itself chooses the safest and most comfortable option.

But where is the authenticity then?

The thing is that perhaps philosophers will not have to invent anything themselves, since the current overconsumption and population growth will reformat everything in the most optimal way, so that we will not even notice it.

I believe there are likely many examples in history of people happily (at first) giving up their freedoms. It seems like a pretty human thing to do.

Are we truly entering an era of multipolarity? If so, what are the philosophical consequences of a world without a dominant cultural “center”? — Astorre

Empirically, what appears to emerge is a brutal new puritanism, political correctness taken to extremes.

Is the West prepared to coexist with ideological and civilizational alternatives that do not necessarily aspire to Western liberalism?

Of course not. It already doesn't coexist with alternatives, it wants to rule over the entire world.

I once witnessed a girl who was a guest asking a local girl why she wore a hijab, explaining that it infringed on her rights, her freedom to express herself. To which the second girl replied that this was her way of expressing herself. — Astorre

And in the "free and liberal and advanced West" a woman is told she is "not expressing herself" if she isn't wearing makeup, high heels etc.

What if the dictatorships of the global south are what the inhabitants of the global south want?

Perhaps they don't want a "dictatorship" in the sense of actually calling it that way; but they probably want someone strong and capable in the leadership position.

Somehow quite pessimistic

100% The alternative is taking actual responsibility instead of pointing the finger of blame at those who 'made' you do it. We all do it to some degree. The problems arise when we do it so often we stop realising we are doing it.

/.../
Further, all this is transformed into individual human rights, freedom of conscience (after all, if you are not righteous, this is your problem), pluralism of opinions - it becomes a consistent development. At the same time, the idea of ​​God as the source of everything is being debunked, as it has been replaced by faith in science.
"I don't care what John thinks, because it's his own business. I don't care how he runs the household or raises his children, because he's responsible for it himself." And the crown of all this is Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre and Camus. Existentialism - as personal responsibility to oneself for one's own actions in the absence of a common meaning or common responsibility.

All this is the story of someone escaping responsibility to someone else. What I wrote above - no one is responsible for anything. The question arises: What is the next stage of liberation? Maybe now is the time to free ourselves from the need to be? After all, we are already free from everything else, including any identity, social connections, aren't we? This is exactly where I see one of those very pillars of liberalism that I spoke about earlier. — Astorre

There are several types of individualism, but it seems you're only talking about expansive individualism, or entitled individualism, or narcissistic individualism.
But there is also defensive individualism -- born out of a painful recognition that one is left to one's own devices, alone and abandoned by others. Like they say, "The heavens are high up, the tzar is far away, so one just has to see to it that one helps oneself."

I haven't encountered a classification of types of individualism. Please share links for further study. This would be very useful for me.

Your idea of ​​"defensive" individualism as a response to loneliness sounds compelling and adds nuance. However, I don't think it contradicts my paradigm, but rather complements it. In my analysis, I focused on individualism as an ideology and cultural foundation (from Christian salvation to liberalism), rather than as a personal reaction.

At the same time, let's try to connect these levels. For example, the "defensive" type is possible precisely in societies where individualism is already ingrained: in a primitive community or collectivist culture, self-isolation would lead to exile or death, but in a liberal world (where "I don't care what John does"), it becomes a rational survival strategy. Thus, even defensive individualism rests on the same foundation—freedom from collective obligations.

Are there examples of defensive individualism within traditional or collectivist societies? Yes, I think there are, and it's not uncommon. For example, hermitism—both individual and group. Other examples (but they're more about moral individualism) include Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn in the USSR. The former was a prominent enough scientist to be subjected to harsh repression, while the latter was exiled from the USSR.

My theory (individualism as a product of Christianity and liberalism) isn't refuted by these examples, but it is qualified: individualism in collectivist societies is rare and requires specific conditions. This makes it the exception rather than the rule, which confirms the idea of ​​a "foundation" in liberal societies where individualism is systemically supported.

In general, developed countries' propaganda toward their geopolitical rivals is based, among other things, on the idea of ​​conveying to citizens beliefs about personal uniqueness, inimitability, and individuality. For example, Voice of America and Radio Liberty, US-funded broadcasters, broadcast programs emphasizing individual rights, freedom of speech, and personal success. For example, they told stories of "independent" Americans who achieved success without state control, contrasting this with the Soviet system, where "everyone is responsible for everyone else." This sowed the seeds of rebellion: "Why should I depend on the collective when I can be independent?" Such broadcasts reached millions of listeners in the USSR, contributing to the rise of dissidents like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn.
Today, a similar tactic is being used against China and Russia, where the emphasis on individualism is being used to criticize authoritarian systems. Propaganda focuses on "personal uniqueness" as a universal value to provoke internal conflict: "Why should I be responsible for the affairs of the state or the collective?"

But this process is two-way: rivals also use propaganda: China and Russia promote collectivism as a "defense against Western individualistic decadence." The narrative of "personal unhappiness" is also characteristic of their approaches. Collectivist propaganda directly attacks individualism as selfishness.

The situation seems acute, and instead of embracing the best in each other, everything is gradually returning to a "clash of systems," albeit in a different form. I don't like this. The idea of ​​this topic was, among other things, an attempt to find ideological compromises. However, I must admit, my naive attempts always fall on the rocks of economic interests.