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In Harm's Way -- The Paradox of Individuality and Community [1]
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Date: 2025-06-04
I find it extremely annoying when I observe the behavior of others that appears to suggest that they consider themselves to be the center of the universe and therefore entitled to act without restraint or obligation. These folks, seemingly a law unto themselves, apparently care very little about how their actions affect others; oblivious to others, they appear to be ignorant of where their selfhood and individuality end and the world outside them begins.
They seem oblivious to the fact that we live our lives in inextricable connection with other human beings who live and work together in a community and share common cultural elements, norms, values, beliefs, and—more often than not—a public authority. In other words, we live in a society. Those folks whose behavior annoys me are individuals who press up against and frequently exceed the boundaries of the social norms, rules, or laws that make up the social fabric, or the interconnectedness and relationships that give the society coherence. Such are the rule-breakers and line-jumpers, short-cutters and lie-tellers, miscreants and malefactors that pull at the threads in that fabric.
But, I hear you say, there are many areas of social life in which individuals may find themselves to some degree in conflict with society. Divergent beliefs, practices, and values may lead to social alienation or even persecution. Persons whose political ideologies deviate significantly from the dominant societal norms may face social exclusion, censorship, and nowadays, even violence. Activism or dissent against government policies inevitably lead to conflict, as do behaviors or lifestyles that challenge accepted norms. Economic disparities, poverty, unemployment, and class conflict engender tension and social unrest, especially when individuals or groups step up to advocate for redistribution of resources and challenge the inequality inherent in capitalism.
Conflicts between individuals and the larger society fall along racial and ethnic lines, human and civil rights issues, mental health and disability concerns, environmental protection and economic interests, and even in the domain of education; restrictions on academic inquiry, free speech, and censorship cause conflicts between individual intellectual freedom and societal or governmental control. These and a host of other areas highlight the extent to which conflict arises from clashes between individual rights, identities, or beliefs on the one hand, and the values, norms, or power structures of the broader society on the other.
It's not just red light-runners who prioritize personal convenience over public safety that are problematic. There are numerous areas where individuals prioritize personal interests over social welfare and societal needs, leading to fabric thread-pulling conflict. I think of tax-cheaters who evade or avoid paying taxes because they prioritize personal wealth and financial gain over funding public services like education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Or the pollution-practicers who find the convenience of improperly disposing of waste and harmful substances more personally and economically beneficial than ensuring environmental sustainability and the health of others. Or water-stressors whose consumption of water for personal comfort, lifestyle or aesthetics undermines the necessity to conserve water for communal survival and stability. Or the anti-faxxers whose personal freedom and belief system takes priority and endangers public health and increasing the spread of disease. Or the doers of corruption and bribery, or other forms of dishonesty and disruption.
Contemplating my annoyance and the stimuli that give rise to it, I am reminded of the harm principle, exposited by John Stuart Mill in his little volume entitled On Liberty, published in 1859. Arguably, the so-called Golden Rule, common by many names to all the world’s religions, is an example of the principle. Mill sought both to emphasize individual liberty and autonomy and to provide a justification for restricting the freedom of an individual by arguing that people should be free to make their own choices, even if those choices are unpopular or unconventional, as long as they don't infringe on the rights or well-being of others. Mills writes:
[T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise.
This “harm principle” is a cornerstone of liberal social and political thought, clearly suggesting that the state or society can only legitimately interfere with an individual's actions when those actions are likely to cause harm to others or to put them in harm’s way. Another more populist rendering of this principle, as (mistakenly) attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is this: “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.”
Nevertheless, this harm principle raises—and has historically raised—the issue of how to balance individual liberty and the need for social order and the protection of others. Indeed, this has been a central question in philosophy, sociology, and political theory going all the way back to the ancient Greeks and continuing in the present (as illustrated in the question of imposition of covid vaccinations, among other issues). Is it possible to negotiate the tension between individual freedom and societal demands, and if so, what does such a settlement look like?
If you asked Plato for his view, he would unequivocally assert his preference for society over the individual. In books II and IV of The Republic, he argues not only that the state precedes the individual, but that the ideal state is one which dictates individual roles strictly according to society’s needs, thereby subordinating personal autonomy to the stability of society. The meaning and purpose of individuality is acquired through the social system which is superior to individual interests. Plato’s student, Aristotle, on the other hand, had a different view. In Book I of both Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, he placed the emphasis on the individual's pursuit of virtue and personal flourishing within the context of society. For him, society exists to facilitate individual fulfillment, and thus the individual and society reinforce one another. Moreover, as an alternative to Plato's rigid social hierarchy, Aristotle advocated for political systems that encouraged individual agency while safeguarding collective good. This view suggests that neither the individual nor society fully precedes the other, but rather both exist in mutual interdependence.
Influenced by John Locke’s theory of natural rights and Rousseau’s concept of the social contract, the founders of the American republic built on the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment philosophy that emphasized individual liberty as the foundation of society. While individual freedom is the foundation in this view, it is nonetheless constrained by the need for social cooperation and the imposition of mutual responsibilities. Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, and both Madison and Hamilton in their essays in The Federalist Papers, regarded society as an aggregation of autonomous individuals who consent to certain limitations on their freedom in order to achieve common security and stability, making individual rights primary but also bound by mutual obligations.
The relation between the individual and society has flummoxed sociologists ever since the founding of the discipline in the early 19th century. Some influential thinkers echoed Plato and aligned with the preference for society. August Comte and Émile Durkheim, for example, viewed society as a structured organism that took precedence over the individual, who was necessarily a product of society and shaped by social forces.
On the other hand, following the emphasis of Aristotle, Herbert Spencer argued for the individual over society, contending that societies naturally evolve through competitive interactions among autonomous individuals. His evolutionist perspective meant that the individual precedes and shapes society, and collective welfare is secondary to individual liberty and natural selection processes. In a vein similar to Spencer (sans evolutionism), the view of Max Weber was more nuanced in that, while emphasizing the importance of both individual agency and the influence of social structures, he nevertheless also emphasized the role of individuals as active agents who contribute to the construction and shaping of society. A bit of an outlier, Karl Marx did not fit neatly into either category of preference and priority. Rather, he rejected the idea of an isolated individual existing prior to society and viewed individuals as fundamentally shaped by their social and economic contexts. He believed that human beings develop through their interactions and relations with others within the framework of their economic activities.
Thus the early thinkers in the discipline of sociology and social analysis give us contrasting views. Yet in spite of these differences, this cadre of scholars present us with some commonalities. Each of them recognizes inherent tensions between individual autonomy and societal coherence. Theorists privileging the individual, such as Spencer, recognize societal emergence from individual interactions, and those privileging collectivism, like Durkheim and Comte, implicitly concede individuals' significance as society’s fundamental constituents. And all these sociological views reflect the broader cultural and historical contexts and their attendant social problems.
How we balance individual rights and societal welfare in 21st century America remains a challenge. The American political system claims to embody the ideals that prioritize individual autonomy, and yet contemporary debates, especially those dealing with economic inequality and public health, often echo the concerns regarding societal cohesion, collective responsibilities, and structural injustices. Perhaps what is needed, taking a cue from Aristotle and Weber, is a balanced perspective that recognizes mutual interdependence and acknowledges societal structures without ignoring individual freedoms, agency, and creativity.
The Christian tradition has long wrestled with defining the relationship between the individual and society, shaped profoundly by theology, philosophical currents, and historical circumstances. There is, after all, a universe of difference between the sociopolitical and civic worlds of the Roman Empire, the ancient church in the East and West, the medieval church in Europe and the Orthodox Church of the East, the 16th century Reformation, the Enlightenment, and modern America. From its beginning, Christianity has been a rock and a hard place on this question, teetering between emphases on personal salvation and societal order.
In modern western Christianity, particularly from the Enlightenment onward, theological views on the relationship between the individual and society increasingly reflected an emphasis on individual rights, democratic governance, and social reform. Christian social thought in the 19th and 20th centuries, influenced by theologians such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pope Leo XIII, and Reinhold Niebuhr, explored these tensions deeply. Schleiermacher contended that religion was fundamentally personal yet socially mediated through institutions, highlighting individual feeling within communal structures. In his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII affirmed both individual rights and societal obligations and called balanced relationships between labor, capital, and state. In his 1932 book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr engaged the tension between individual morality and societal ethics by criticizing both radical individualism and collectivism, offering instead a Christian realist perspective that emphasized the inescapable ethical ambiguities in human society. In his view, individuals, though fallible, nonetheless possess inherent dignity and freedom but are also inevitably entangled in collective immorality and structural injustices.
Another outlier, and a bit of an extremist on the matter in the western Christian tradition, is the 19th century Danish philosopher-theologian, Søren Kierkegaard who placed singular emphasis on the subjectivity of the solitary individual. For him, society often represented a threat to authentic individual existence, potentially undermining personal responsibility, authenticity, and the genuine religious life. He argued passionately against the idea that the individual could be reduced to or fully absorbed within social collectives, cultural expectations, or institutionalized religion. In his view, authentic Christianity is inherently individualistic in a profoundly existential-spiritual way, and this view led him to criticize and disdain institutional Christianity, social conformity, and public religiosity. In an “in the world but not of the world” sort of way, he believed that true individual self-discovery and faith required a degree of detachment from societal pressures, allowing for deeper self-reflection and engagement with existential questions. However, this was not a call for complete isolation: an authentic and passionate religious life was both inward and actively engaged with the world, fulfilling responsibilities and demonstrating love to one's neighbor.
So, which comes first and holds preeminence—the individual or society? Individual agency or societal structure? Individual freedom or collective welfare? In a modern technological society like the United States, where individual freedom frequently collides with collective welfare, the concern to establish a viable balance between individual autonomy and societal interests becomes not only a philosophical or sociopolitical exercise but also an urgent, practical necessity.
Balancing individual freedom with societal welfare requires an understanding of structure and agency. Technological advancements such as social media, the internet, and digital platforms provide unprecedented opportunities for individual expression, communication, and action, enabling personal autonomy and voice and expanding individual agency beyond previous historical constraints. However, technology also amplifies risks to collective welfare, such as misinformation, polarization, and privacy infringements.
Yes, individuals actively shape society, but societal structures also influence individual behaviors, so writes Anthony Giddens in his 1984 book, The Constitution of Society. Modern technological contexts illustrate this reciprocity vividly; individuals shape technological usage, social norms, and policy debates, but at the same time technology structures individuals’ habits, relations, interactions, and life chances. The techno-revolution has certainly heightened the stakes of balancing individual and societal interests. Indeed, freedom of expression, information dissemination, and individual privacy stand as sacrosanct in American culture, but societal concerns such as public safety, national security, public health, and social cohesion require certain limitations and regulations (poster child: the COVID-19 pandemic and mask wearing/vaccination vs. social welfare/public health).
The advancement of technology in American society requires ethical considerations that explicitly balance individual freedoms and societal welfare. We are deep into the discovery and implementation of new technologies like artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and digital surveillance systems, and altogether these demand robust ethical frameworks grounded in human rights, dignity, and collective well-being. We would do well to develop ethical technology and cultivate an ethics of technology that utilize proactive anticipation of potential societal harms and active engagement of citizens and stakeholders in governance processes. Fortunately, the number of researchers and scholars engaging in this exploration and development is increasing (e.g., Luciano Florid, Nick Bostrom, Margaret Boden, Barbara Grosz, and Kate Thompson, Louis Major, Jason Lodge, Sara Hennessy, and Mutlu Cukurova.
Liberal democratic theory indicates that individual freedoms and rights form the cornerstone of modern democratic societies, and for the U.S., this is foundationally enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. On the other hand, moral and philosophical discourse also emphasizes the necessity of collective responsibilities—individual rights are contingent upon responsible social behavior and acknowledgment of communal welfare. Here again, Mill’s construal of the “harm principle” can be instructive: a nuanced balance is suggested by the contention that individual freedom should only be curtailed to prevent harm to others.
A balance would allow people to love whom they want, enjoy public spaces and create beautiful places, buy what they need and sell to anybody, practice their religion without fear or favor or force, speak kindly of others in disagreement with generosity in the acknowledgement of their difference and worth, accord to all the enjoyment of privileges and protections and render encouragement and support in commending their obligations, and commit to fostering and realizing, for one and all, the common good, the conditions necessary that make it possible for others to thrive and achieve wellbeing.
The historical debate between the primacy of individuals or society ultimately underscores the complexity of human social existence. Neither the individual nor society entirely precedes or overrides the other; rather, both constitute reciprocal forces dynamically shaping modern human life. Navigating the complex interplay between individual autonomy and societal interests undoubtedly will involve respecting individual rights while acknowledging collective responsibilities, fostering informed public engagement, ensuring transparency, establishing robust regulatory frameworks, and embedding ethical imperatives within technological advancements. Achieving and maintaining this equilibrium represents a continual societal endeavor, one that demands ongoing vigilance, dialogue, and adaptation as society itself evolves alongside technological innovation.
In the meantime, we would do well to respect and assure the freedom of others and put them not into harm’s way.
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