Individualism and collectivism

Thesaurus of political reality is acquainted with various misconceptions. Knowingly and partly with keen purposefulness politics very rarely lacks any aspiration for ensuring their legitimacy. With scientific rigor they are presented to be organics of deficient social life, cherished and cultivated as indispensable for human existence. Obviously, hidden Machiavellianism of theory has a considerable share in this.

The image of collision between the ideas of individualism and that of collectivism is the foremost misconception of our times. Both positions have their ardent adepts and faithful advocates, ideological coordinates and ethical rationalities. An abyss between their points of view is deepened not only by diverging incentives and worldviews but before these by predetermined authority of having the monopoly on so called natural order of things. Critical examination of the later is the primary task of political philosophy today.

After witnessing the realization of Nietzschean prophecy - Nihilism, uncanniest of all guests entering the door, the question concerning the tension between individualism and collectivism became even more significant. This is so, not because of the standardized passion in any possible manner to enhance the difference between the two and all the more so not in order to identify the one with another, but because of the very particular aim, to trace the necessary commonalities between them.

Living in the times of decayed Platonism, with false copies methodically authorizing the reality, traditionally formalized dispositions are ubiquitously altered. The fact is that only unbearably retrograde will negate the living potentialities dispersed all around the couch of psychoanalyzed Being and at the same time, merely a foolish will not see the possible dangers inhabiting the same place. So, how to think the transforming concepts of individualism and of collectivism in this atmosphere of change? Fairly enough, these two are far from being labeled as some of the random concepts. Will it be an over exaggeration to say that the proportion between them will largely determine the architecture of times yet to come?

In conventional understanding individualism is confronted by collectivism. The virtue of freedom is diligently attributed to the domain of individualism, while the principle of equality is appropriated by the axiomatics of collectivism. Not by sudden circumstances, the word equality frightens flamboyant proprietors of freedom, whilst devoted collectivists are haunted by the doubting sense of restlessness whenever they give an ear to eulogy of freedom. Because of historically petrified resonations of thought individualist in every possible image of collectivism intuits the prerequisite for worrying homogenization – Collectivist on the other hand, equipped with armature of moral insights, with ultimate easiness detects arbitrariness and selfishness in any feasible individualistic act of expression. In fact these two are a way closer to each other than it might appear at first glance - Just a small portion of Aristotelian sophrosyne is needed for thought.

Speaking in the broad terms, democratically figured geometry of society is a permanent search for the symmetries between freedom and equality. Within political life freedom (with its sibling-concept of liberty) speaks the language of individualism and only of individualism. Collective practices are operators for equality. Freedom is the pure object of intellection; Equality - experiential product of collective sensation. The question is, in the times of realized Nietzchean prophecy of devaluation of all values, how to interest the individual mind with necessities of collective action?

Sooner or later empirical reality of politics by its objectivities will demand the dynamic interestedness into collective actions. Not in order to erase the productive effects of individualism but to expand its social limits, to democratize the most adequate affect of thought to be individuated. The point is once and for all to get rid of the most malevolent contradictions of political reflexology, that of individualism versus collectivism and to replace it with the formula - Individualism and collectivism.