1.1 Introduction
In this chapter I explore atomistic and holistic conceptions of the individual , while arguing for the superiority of the holistic position. An atomistic conception holds that the individual is logically prior to and independent of the communities of which they are members. This independence means that whatever relations the individual has to a community , those relations are accidental rather than essential to the individual being the individual he or she is; there may be a causal interaction through which the individual may grow and develop in relation to their community , but that community is in no way constitutive of the individual.
By contrast, the holistic position holds that the community is prior to the individual and the individual is dependent on that community for being the individual he or she is, or at least that the individual and the community must arise together.1 This dependence is not one of accidental but rather of essential relations holding between individual and community ; it is not simply that the individual grows and develops through their causal interactions with their community ; rather, the community is constitutive of the individual being what they are, and apart from that community the individual could never be.2 To avoid a simple confusion, the holistic position does not claim that we cease to exist as biologically human beings apart from communities , only that those features of what we consider fully human subjects cease to be possible apart from communities .3
Each of the above come with their own apparent tensions. If one focuses on the holistic account of individuals, one tends to worry that the individual as we commonly think of him gets lost somewhere,4 that community is entitled to encroach more and more on each individual, demanding conformity to the whole and the diminishing of genuine difference, uniqueness, spontaneity, in short: individuality. Another worry is that this is a recipe for political despotism, that the individual can rightfully be subordinated to social ends without limit, since the individual’s ends are the community’s ends.5 Furthermore, this might be thought to stifle progress : if individuals in all their reason and value are constitutively determined by the communities they are a part of, then by what standard do we critically develop those communities ?
If one focuses on the atomistic account, different tensions seem to arise, though they are harder to express concisely and lack the same prima facie force as those faced by the holistic account. More effort needs to be put in to showing that these tensions are real and problematic. These tensions will come out more fully throughout this chapter and those to follow, but I will indicate them here in a preliminary way. To put the point very generally, atomistic thinkers are faced with the need to explain what might be called the ‘higher’ aspects of human life on the basis of prior individuals coming together in a mere collection. If we are individuals with beliefs, values and ends apart from social relations , from where derives our sense of obligation to something greater than our immediate selves, to our social environment or humanity at large? If there is nothing apart from me which can at the same time place obligations on me, how do I ever recognise the need to develop my character, including my faculties, my range and quality of desire, my virtues? What about the sense we might have that the social world opens up possibilities of existence for us which are essential to our fully realising ourselves? There seems to be something right to the idea that we are, in a strong sense, social beings.
I think the atomistic tensions are irresolvable while the holistic tensions are entirely resolvable. I will use J.S. Mill as a representative figure of atomism and F.H. Bradley as a representative figure of holism. While I draw quite heavily on the works of Mill and Bradley, my aim here is not to justify an interpretation of either. I want rather to use my interpretation of each as a representation of the atomistic and holistic outlooks, and it is these general outlooks that primarily interest me.
In discussing Mill’s defence of liberty, Richard Norman says:
Mill, in all his works, was nothing if not an honest writer, sensitive to the complexities and difficulties of his subject-matter, and On Liberty, by its very inconsistencies and contradictions , vividly expresses the tensions within the concept of ‘freedom ’ and the conflicting traditions of philosophical thought dealing with the concept .6
While Norman is here focusing on Mill’s treatment of the concept of ‘freedom ’, this serves as an excellent assessment of much of Mill’s philosophy. To Mill’s credit he was well aware of those features of human nature for which atomists might be accused of failing to find room, and the subsequent tensions which his position might be held to contain. He was also concerned to resolve those tensions. He was committed both to Bentham’s atomistic utilitarianism as an ethical framework and also acutely aware of certain features of human nature that Bentham was blind to, and as such he saw Bentham’s philosophy as fundamentally correct but incomplete and was eager to show how that framework could accommodate those features of human nature .7 Writing on Bentham , Mill says:
He was a man both of remarkable endowments for philosophy, and of remarkable deficiencies for it: fitted, beyond almost any man, for drawing from his premises, conclusions not only correct, but sufficiently precise and specific to be practical: but whose general conception of human nature and life, furnished him with an unusually slender stock of premises.8The truths which are not Bentham’s , which his philosophy takes no account of, are many and important; but his non-recognition of them does not put them out of existence; they are still with us, and it is a comparatively easy task that is reserved for us, to harmonize those truths with his.9
Thus, in being committed to the atomistic philosophy of utilitarianism and in recognising those facts of human nature discussed above, Mill is aware of the tensions which concern me. In trying to resolve those tensions by reconciling those facts of human nature with his utilitarianism , he is useful in showing how difficult it is for atomists to accomplish this task, for he ends up in inconsistencies that he cannot escape. In short, despite Mill’s claim that it is a ‘comparatively easy task’ to perform this reconciliation, I wish to argue that it is in fact impossible. The only way to make sense of those facts of human nature —which Mill so rightly elaborates—without inconsistency, is to adopt a holistic understanding of the individual, by seeing the individual as essentially related to social communities , as trying to realise themselves as part of a wider social whole .
While this chapter offers its own independent arguments, drawn out of the opposition between Mill and Bradley’s conflicting ideas about the nature of the individual and the individual’s relation to society, it is in the main serving as a first glance at the general issues which concern me. The notion of the human individual as an essentially social being, and the failure of atomistic approaches within philosophy to account for the full range of what we consider properly human features of individuals, receives fuller and more sustained argument in later chapters. In particular , I say more about the tensions faced by holistic accounts in later chapters.10
I will first of all deal with Mill’s notion of ‘higher pleasures ’ and the inconsistencies involved in his account. I will then deal with Mill’s notion of the flourishing individual being made possible simply through a maximisation of negative freedom and the inconsistencies this account faces. Finally, I will develop Bradley’s notion that our end is self-realisation within a social whole and suggest that this avoids the inconsistencies Mill gets caught up in while also managing to make sense of ...