^^^^ CB: But hasn't there been more individual striving in Christian civilization than in any other ? Christianity has led to the greatest individual striving ever. Christianity is the major religion of capitalism, which has lots of individual striving. Individualism is rife in capitalist Christianity.
Ask Carrol about _Paradise Lost_ and individualism.
There is another view of this.
It is true that all religions that foster subjective morality (through notions of conscience, accountability for actions, retribution, etc.) obviously promote some sort of individualism to one extent or another. It is also true that these sorts of religions mostly come into being at the dawn of class society. But that is not the same as a claim that any one of them is particularly well suited to capitalism. The proof of that point is that once capitalism has been established the role of religion in society tends to diminish; even in the US there is a separation of church and state. And in these more 'developed' countries there tends to be a swing towards oriental religions and philosophies (new age etc.). But Christianity does seem to play an inordinately important role in countries that are in transition to capitalism, the less 'developed' countries.
However, the relationship between religion and development is full of contradictions. Samir Amin claimed in his very interesting book Eurocentrism that is was precisely the weakness of Christianity, particularly after the reformation, that allowed for capitalist development in Europe. The ideological strength of Islam, by contrast, militated against this. Notice the defeat of philosophy in the muslim world after its original blossoming (Ibn Senna, Ibh Rushd, etc.) Then consider this:
“the earliest capitalists lacked any legitimacy in the moral climate in which they at first found themselves, and so needed * as one of the conditions of their being able to flourish and develop * to find some means of legitimating their behaviour. As I have sought to illustrate, one of the most valuable means they found was to appropriate and apply to themselves the normal vocabulary of the Protestant religion * greatly to the horror, in this case, of all sincerely religious Protestants, who naturally found no difficulty in seeing through the trick. But there is no doubt that the trick worked: the vocabulary of Protestantism not only helped to increase the acceptability of capitalism, but arguably helped to channel its development in specific ways * in particular towards an ethic of industriousness.” (Quentin Skinner 1988:118)
So Christianity was not always already fitted out for a role in capitalism in any meaningful way. It had to be defeated in some sense so that it could be adapted. On the question of individualism, one should also be careful. To simply equate individualism with capitalism is wrong in at least two senses: First capitalism is much, much more than simply individualism. And there is no necessary path from one to the other. So to read early modern texts and to find some kind of individualism in them and then to declare the author a capitalist-roader would be a bit silly. Secondly, I question the extent to which capitalism does actually promote individuality. There is nothing wrong that I can see with being an individual. We need a more thoroughgoing individualism where the capacities of each individual can be realized in an individual way. As with many other things we may find that capitalism opened up the way for a certain kind of individualism to emerge and then arrested and stunted it at that point.
Tahir
-------------- next part -------------- All Email originating from UWC is covered by disclaimer http://www.uwc.ac.za/portal/public/portal_services/disclaimer.htm