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Articles

Liberal Individualism & Cultural Decay

Raymond D. Boisvert considers how the first leads to the second.

It goes by various names: ‘liberal individualism’ is as good as any. The theory’s quite straightforward: the basic fact of existence is ‘I am’, so the ‘I’ is the basic unit of ethics, superceding any claims of society. The ‘I’ seeks, above all else, to attain pleasure and avoid pain. Cultural and ethical guidelines which set aspirational standards beyond simple pleasure and pain are viewed as nothing but constraints on the freedom of this ‘I’.

However, because they take on various meanings, labels can be misleading.

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