The Necessity of Individuality and Independent Thought in Our Age

It is very difficult to reflect on the great pre-modern civilizations and find, to the extent of the Enlightenment, a trace of categories such as freedom and the independence of individual thought that are the lifeblood of modernity. Not that freedom and individual thought were meaningless in Greece or Rome, but they did not encompass all members of society. For how can one speak of the independence of individual thought without the “individual” having been formed? Or how does individual freedom find meaning when, as Hegel says, there was no definition of the human being because it could not include the slave or the woman. Thus, the independence of thought and individual freedom essentially manifest under the definition of the modern human being. This individuality, which emerged with the Renaissance, created a situation for members of society to be able to demand the use of their own power or competence to live freely and to liberate themselves from the religious or political constraints of their society. In other words, this individuality was more of a nudge and an awakening[1] for a human being who had just left the Middle Ages behind and was seeking to attain a broad concept of freedom and to decide on their own way of life.

The emergence and expression of this freedom took various forms, but several of these achievements laid the foundations for this new human being. The freedom in Cartesian thinking and the meaning of the subject established a foundation whereby, in general, the understanding of any kind of truth must begin with thinking. But a thinking that serves the I, which is the subject, or the [2]ego cogitans. A few decades earlier, Luther, with Protestantism and the critique of the Church, in another way created a situation for removing the individual from under the authority of ecclesiastical Christianity and provided the possibility of a kind of reform for thinking within the framework of religion. The promotion of individual religion was itself a great step towards recognizing the individual and a kind of freedom. These two currents also led to the formation of a ground for criticizing religious doctrines, especially concerning human freedom. So much so that freedom became the first chapter in the books of thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, and later Rousseau. As a result, Cartesian subjectivism as a codified method for knowing any matter, the critique of the creation of the human being as an attempt to prove the human being as a free creature, the discovery of the laws governing nature and the effort to possess it, and finally the emergence of a socio-political and economic ground for the empowerment of the human being and the understanding of their competence for knowledge and action, created a new meaning of individuality as a concept beyond human essence and gradually positioned individualism, as one of the achievements of modernity, against the prevailing collectivism.

Of course, in the religious context, one must not forget the efforts of figures like Savonarola or Dolcino, who were suppressed earlier with similar demands, so that one day Luther and his counterpart Calvin could become more widespread. The reason for the emergence of these movements under the pretext of freedom was specifically that, under the rule of the Church, not only was thinking meaningless, but fundamentally no choice in the way of life was possible for the individual. Because religious doctrines, the Aristotelian interpretation of nature, and determinism in destiny did not consider the human being of that era as a being separate from nature and the world around them. After the emergence of Protestantism and the importance of individual religion, a favorable ground was created for the development of humanism and its various forms. According to Fromm, the individual freedom that began with Luther’s religious reforms entered the economy and the social sphere with the rise of capitalism. Subsequently, individuality reached its peak with Rousseau’s social contract in the realm of politics, and Fichte’s ego, transcendental subjectivism, Kantian ethics, and Hegelian self-consciousness.

It is now a futile exercise to try to prove the importance of individual freedom in our age, for, as noted, the pillars of modern civilization are built upon it. However, the main subject here is freedom of thought and its link with the concept of individual intellectual independence, which complement one another. Individual independence of thought is an internal [subjective] matter and relates to individual and psychological roots, while being seriously influenced by religious, political, social, or even technological roots that have external manifestations. In other words, although the slogan of the Enlightenment and its leaders was the importance of such independence and autonomy in thinking and, consequently, individual choice, in practice, achieving it after several centuries and the remarkable growth of humanity and the various institutions of human societies (especially European ones) has become a far more difficult and pervasive challenge. In his essay What is Enlightenment?, Kant considered intellectual independence to be the courage to think[3]—that is, when a person can think individually or has the audacity to think.

Today, contrary to Kant's Enlightenment slogan, the lack of individual intellectual independence has increased. Hence, its necessity is felt by us more than ever. The dominance of technology, the bombardment of information, encounters with various religious and political ideologies, and the current of globalization are moving ahead of individual maturity; in other words, the individual has lost the ability to assess matters with individual reason. Moreover, the aforementioned currents unconsciously or consciously impose a certain way of thinking, a subject of thought, and a way of life, making it fundamentally very difficult to express any thought contrary to the ruling hegemony. For this reason, in such a path of homogenization, the very act of proposing a thought is a great challenge, let alone independence of thought.

Individual independence of thought is condemned to have an opposing counterpart. That is, the manifestation of independence of thought emerges in contradiction—a contradiction, of course, where both thoughts are the result of traversing a rational path and individual wisdom. The realization of such independence requires at least two actions. Two actions that must each be the result of individual self-consciousness. Thus, a dynamic society means the existence of freedom for a plurality of thought and, consequently, the clash of ideas. In such a society, the self-consciousness of one individual with the self-consciousness of another, and the action of one individual with the action of another, will lead to the natural emergence of individuality and individual independence of thought. By 'another,' I mean the thought of another—a thought that may well be something other than what we think—so that plurality of thought finds meaning. This means acknowledging that intellectual similarity and a single methodology in any matter will be contrary to the realization of this independence. So, unity in plurality is the unity of unities and pluralities, each having an independent existence for itself.

Independence of thought can be examined from two aspects. First, its nature and necessity in our age, and second, how to actualize it. As noted, independence of thought is a subjective and individual matter. Thus, it first finds meaning in relation to an object and subsequently in relation to another subject or other individuals. In this article, I will address the meaning of independence of thought and individual self-consciousness, and I will subsequently seek to show that, contrary to common perception, the main obstacle to individual independence of thought is not general currents and factors.

It is obvious that when independence is spoken of, it occurs to the individual's mind to ask: independence of thought with regard to what object and in relation to whom is being proposed? Since thought itself is a product of the individual's mind, its independence is also a subjective matter. In the opinion of John Stuart Mill, the [subjective] world of each individual is that part of it with which he is in connection.[4] In my view, this is the principle governing our lives. If thinkers today believe that the current human crisis is a lack of thinking, questioning, and individual independence of thought, they must first answer the question of in which aspect of an individual's life and in relation to whom this individual independence generally exists. For this purpose, I will first aim here to understand the mechanism of this independence, and since the elaboration of this matter does not fit within the confines of this text, I will present a summary of this idea here.

Independence of Thought: The Private Sphere and the Public Sphere

Depending on the society in which one lives, an individual is connected to a network of individuals [others], and connection implies a broad meaning of intellectual action and reaction between the individual and these people. In other words, within society, the individual is influenced by and influences a specific network of individuals. Therefore, it must be noted that whenever any type of thought or independence is discussed, what is meant is this specific network of individuals, not all members of society. That is, I can be Iranian, yet the macro-society of Iran may not be my mental world—not only at a particular time but throughout my entire life. In other words, my relationship as a citizen with millions of other individuals is merely a potential relationship, and this does not imply that in my mind, every idea or question is posed in relation to the vast mass of people in society. Hence, individual independence in society always finds meaning in relation to this specific network.

These individuals who constitute each person's mental world do not remain in a static mold, and consequently, the quality and quantity of these networks change within the structure of the individual's mind. Thus, for this reason, there exists a determinate bond between the individual's mind and others, which is fundamentally either potential or actual. I shall call this network the realm here. Therefore, the realm is, firstly, a mental concept. Secondly, regardless of any matter, it pertains to all individuals. Thirdly, it is qualitative in its nature and quantitative in its content. To clarify the matter, I emphasize that, for example, inquiry about any matter is posed in relation to this mental realm; consequently, the independence of individual thought, by virtue of this explanation, is also relative to this realm.

Now, in the midst of this, a rupture emerges. Meaning that for each individual, this mental realm can be divided into two parts. First, what I here call the "specific realm," which refers to the individual's mental world and the bond and connection they establish between themselves and others within it, as previously mentioned, and specific with an emphasis on that part of this realm with which each individual is specifically engaged in intellectual exchange. This specific realm can be family, or one's associates, or even the members of a group, party, and any similar circle. That is, as stated, its quantitative meaning is broad and is not identical among all individuals, but its nature exists for every individual. The specific realm does not have a static concept and can take shape at any moment through the actualization of a relationship. For example, an event or an intellectual, social, or even sports current can engage individuals who probably did not know each other and had a potential relationship; that is, the individual encounters other people and another idea, and this relationship can no longer remain potential. Consequently, due to the creation of this intellectual bond in the individual's mind, they move from the general realm (which I will refer to later) into the specific realm of their mind.

I raise this shift from the general to the specific realm here in order to show how the individual must distinguish the independence of their individual thought between these two realms and must know which of these two realms exposes the individual more to all that in today's world constitutes the absence of thought, inquiry, and the loss of individual independence of thought. The point is that the individual's thought and action in one of these two realms are under the direct influence of, and also influence, others, which is not the case in the other realm.

Such a mechanism can also be seen abundantly in the political arena. Individuals with different backgrounds, for the election or support of a certain person or ideology, in many cases, without any prior commonality, come together under one banner and simply turn into a mass where individual thought no longer has any meaning whatsoever, and the individual's thought becomes what the collective wants. Unaware that if there are benefits or harms in such currents, it signifies that very shift from the general to the specific realm. The more noteworthy point here is that the individual, with the passage of time and changing circumstances, realizes that those individuals and those ideas that at one moment became part of their specific realm and, due to the actualized relationship, led the individual to follow that dominant emergent thought, had no relation whatsoever to their true self, and there, their individual independence was lost.

Second, on the other hand, within the individual’s mind there exists a world that, given the coordinates of our age and the dominance of technology and communications, is no longer confined to specific geographical boundaries and, in my view, possesses a universal character—that is, it encompasses all individuals regardless of culture or race—and can be called the “public realm.” This realm also exists potentially for every individual but can never become actual and still remain within the public realm. For this reason, its principal difference from the private realm is that, in order to be influenced by this realm, the individual no longer necessarily has direct contact with other people and can easily be affected by it without mediation, such that his individual thought no longer belongs to him. Although in this realm the individual encounters a broader spectrum of people, ideologies, and systems, here individuals lose their intellectual independence more immediately, without being aware of it. “Immediately” here means that something is accepted by the individual as self-evident without sufficient knowledge. In other words, when an individual lodges thoughts in his mind through things heard from the media or his observations of global political and cultural events, without possessing the ability to evaluate and understand them, his way of life and his choices are unconsciously influenced by that received data, all of which are products of his public realm.

Now, with a little reflection, the reader realizes that in the private realm the individual can have a two-way relationship. He can choose and preserve his individual independence, or place it at the service of another. In the public realm, however, the individual has only a one-way relationship and can only receive the information and thought of another, because he is a part within the whole. Independence of thought is not immunity to influence from one’s surroundings or necessarily physical isolation. Independence means autonomy in thinking in relation to one’s private individual realm, or the capacity to confront any matter with an independent individual system of thought. In simple terms, it means having a scale for measuring every matter, internalizing it, and then putting it into practice. This independence is the distinctive characteristic of the modern individual, and should it become actual, the individual becomes self-aware. If the reader accepts the distinction drawn, he must now ask himself in what concepts the psychological root of this independence lies. That is, possessing what kind of scale can strengthen this independence? My answer here is having an understanding of truth and responsibility. These two concepts will compel the individual to possess a kind of mental structure that is tied to his individuality and thought, and which has undergone transformation in our age.

Independence of Thought: Truth and Responsibility

The philosophical concept of the independence of thought is manifested in the individual’s encounter with truth—a truth that may reside with another or exist as an object to be discovered. Thinking is solely and exclusively an individual matter; for this reason, the understanding of truth is also individual. Thus, ultimately, every object must take shape in the individual’s mind and must not be transferred to the individual without mediation from another, regardless of which realm it originates from. The principal achievement of modernity is the capacity for independent individual thought and freedom of choice. Now, in any society, the individual can choose freely and be effective only when he is able first to actualize its prerequisite, namely the independence of his own thought, and then to preserve it. Preserving it depends on each individual’s truth-centeredness. That is, every individual must consider his own understanding of truth to be preferable. This is the precondition for any conception of truth. It will compel the individual to know that he can find a truth within himself, and even if a truth is presented to us by another, it must be accepted with the individual’s own understanding and consciously.

Now, in this era, truth has taken on a different meaning. Truth has become a relative and transient concept, and its value lies in its use[5]. Truth changes from moment to moment because today's way of life has deprived the individual of the capacity to think. Truth has become meaningless because the acceleration of time rules over the individual, forcing them to adopt ideas from others [systems] in order to seize time; for this reason, the value and role of truth for each individual has become far more diminished than in previous epochs. It is therefore obvious that with such an approach to truth—which has acquired an external aspect and is constantly changing—the individual has no reason to reflect upon truth.

Truth must be separate from the existing values around us. That is, truth must be unattainable. The dimension of truth that matters is the one that provokes the individual to think. Consequently, when individuals separate truth from reality or from what is, they will realize that truth is the desirable state and not the existing state. This inquiry is the basis for understanding truth and possessing independence of thought. If the individual accepts this, then intellectual independence finds a direct relationship with the non-acceptance of the existing state as something that hinders the continuity of thought. An individual who seeks truth as described above knows that, in order to preserve their independence, they must not accept everything they receive and are fed from a particular sphere.

This type of truth brings responsibility with it. A responsibility that the individual first finds toward their own individuality and freedom of thought, and subsequently toward the other within their own particular sphere. Therefore, independence of thought is our individual responsibility toward ourselves, or in other words, toward truth. This responsibility means expressing what the individual themselves thinks and what is the product of their self-awareness. It is here that the greatest practical challenge confronts the individual. The individual must be able not to flee from the masses within their particular sphere, but rather to try to express their own thought and, through individual self-awareness, strive to improve and elevate it.

If individual independence of thought did not exist before modernity (at least in the modern sense of the term), now this independence is captive to systems and ideologies. Systems are an example of that public sphere which can guide the individual through culture, politics, and even technology, appropriating the individual's intellectual independence, and the individual sees themselves as weak against them because they lack the power to change them. But they are unaware that they must begin this intellectual independence from their own private sphere. Of course, global socio-political currents play an important role in this direction, but the main concern is when these ideas step from the public sphere into their private sphere. It is in such an age that thinking and independence are solely and entirely a matter of courage. The courage to be what our thought is, instead of what the private sphere expects of us. Thus, independence of thought in the private sphere must become actualized. Especially since this demarcation is initially mental and not physical; consequently, its boundaries and quality play a more varied role among individuals. On the other hand, the public sphere has come to dominate the individual to such an extent that independence of thought is now equated with opposition to one's surroundings. But this surrounding, in our minds, is more the public sphere that has become actualized.

Our age gives birth to the immature individual. Immature, just as Kant points out in "What is Enlightenment?". And maturity in our world is that very courage and honesty in thinking. If immaturity is a product of the acceleration of time in our societies, its desirable reaction is slowness and gradualism. And if today is the era of calling to gather under the banner of this or that ideology, the need for individual solitude is the answer to it. Creating unity among individuals within any paradigm is a warning to the individual that they must preserve their independence of thought. But I must remind that the goal here is not to place the individual against the collective and condemn it. The goal is to state that creating unity and connection among individuals depends on beginning from individual solitude and internalizing it, with the difference that the resulting outcome must lead to the formation of a community and unity among those individuals. That is, the potentialization of the public sphere into the private must be the direct result of individual thought, and not initially of action.

Independence of Thought and Solitude[6]

Independence of thought, in other words, is thinking outside the existing intellectual framework. For an individual who believes in truth cannot confine themselves to a framework. If thinking is done within a mold, self-consciousness will not become actualized. Consequently, one of the traces of the manifestation of this independence is the breaking of molds. Naturally, such critique and questioning must take place far from the prevalent clamor; it must be, contrary to what the public sphere and, more than that, the private sphere of each individual seeks to impose upon them, that the individual, in their solitude, thinks what they ought to think. Thus, clearly, the individual must distance themselves from the specific mold of society. This retreat into solitude is not a physical matter but rather a solitude for thinking. As Nietzsche said, one must distinguish between loneliness and solitude. Solitude is an opportunity for the individual, by withdrawing from their own private sphere, to seek a way out of it, beyond the possibilities available in society. This solitude does not pertain only to politics, but is a prelude to any kind of thinking.

Hannah Arendt writes: "What motivates him, motivates him; what pleases him, pleases him; his normative taste is the taste of the world"[7] This is the very conformity of the individual with the mental spheres of the individual. Precisely, solitude attempts to oppose such conformity. It is the path by which the individual delegates the choice of thinking to another, so that the responsibility also falls upon that other. It is a great misunderstanding to consider solitude as indicative of the individual's passivity in society. On the contrary, passivity lies in not thinking and in following another. Individual solitude is like a silence amidst the clamor reigning around them. Such silence is more valuable than accepting the imposed constraints on the individual and conforming with others. Silence and solitude indicate the dynamism of a culture, not its stagnation.

Our world reproduces individuals like machines of a uniform shape. Individuals who are all products of globalization, or better said, homogenization. Undoubtedly, the consequence of this homogenization is the elimination of the possibility of plurality of thought and the creation of a specific framework for its individuals. Thoughts, tastes, and cultures become increasingly uniform and fit into a specific mold. And the problem will arise when, for human issues, a solution is offered between bad and worse, meaning, again, repetition within the mold. The individual is asked to choose between two options. But how can one think independently and choose among options within the existing mold? The desirable situation for the individual is the negation of the possibilities of the status quo. I believe that, in pursuit of having freedom for individual thought, the last and only last resort is in the realm of politics. Because it is there that the mold exists and action takes precedence over thought. Here, two things come to the individual's aid: thinking and questioning.

The Authentic Individual: Thinking and Questioning

Schopenhauer considered the courage to question the first condition of philosophizing. Today, Socrates, Spinoza, and Nietzsche are remembered only as symbols. Truth is meaningless because questioning has also been forgotten. Systems and ideologies within that mold pose the question for all of the individual's problems before they do, and answer it themselves. They place the options before us and ask us to decide without any questioning. But the rebel asks: when the option is not the result of the individual's own understanding, how is the choice theirs? Is choice possible without the individual having a measure within themselves to assess it? The intellectual scale of each individual is their independence in thinking and their ability to use their individual reason. And this independence of individual thought, through questioning in any society, will be destructive to all kinds of ideologies that are built upon the immaturity of its masses. Conversely, the best false promise to individuals is to consider them free in decision-making without them being able to think for themselves.

One must ask: which thinker has consciously moved with their individual reason in complete agreement with the systems and ideologies of their age? Even these individuals rebel against religion because they believe that questioning has no end and they cannot bear to enter the mold. The cause of this rebellion is not self-display, or at least it should not be. Rather, it is once again a cry for an unattainable desirable situation that demands the continuation of thought, not its refusal. Rebellion is first an intellectual and mental matter, not a political action or the like.

The realization of individuality and the independence of individual thought from the constraints of the particular realm, in its simplest yet most complete form, is Nietzsche's Become what you are. This sentence is the first principle for any thinker, that is, a becoming that for the individual is contingent upon their self-awareness. An individual who has the courage to question measures every matter with their own reason and does not limit themselves in expressing it. This individual is the authentic individual[8]. The authentic individual for whom questioning is like the questioning as awareness and responsibility for the gadfly, aimed at overcoming the backwardness and immaturity dominating the world.[9]

The characteristic of these individuals is their self-being. A self-being that insists one must become what one ought to be. The prerequisite of this self-being is a look at oneself from outside oneself. Precisely the boundary that Heidegger draws between Dasein and Dasman. Dasman, unlike Dasein, does not know itself and is what hegemony wants it to be, because it lacks the ability to think. Dasein, as the authentic individual, can actualize the potential-self[10] into the actual-self[11]. This "self" cannot become actual when the systems surrounding it try to present an image of the individual to the individual, rather than what they ought to think. In other words, when the individual neglects to think about every matter they encounter, a collection of their possessions[12], especially a type that is a product of today's lifestyle in societies, prevents their self-becoming[13]. Kierkegaard called this losing oneself and considered it the greatest and most dangerous threat to the individual.[14]

What makes a human, human is certainly their capacity for reason and, as has been repeatedly mentioned, their courage to think. The independence of thought for the human is the stage of discovering light and emerging from Plato's cave. That is, the ability to understand and perceive the truth with one's own reason. But it must be remembered that only those can move on the path of light who break the chains attached to them. And they will know that outside the cave, the boundless horizon of the ideal state can be found, not in the bondage of the status quo and others confined within their particular realm. The independence of individual thought today is akin to independence from the various currents that fall within the particular realm, and the breaking of such chains. But one should not think that there is a shortage of ideologies and thoughts that constantly invite the individual towards themselves and confine the individual's mental world ever more tightly, yet all are situated within their particular realm. Indeed, if the independence of individual thought and questioning is our crisis today, its remedy is a renewed look at our particular realm, not the public realm.

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[1] Self-awareness

[2] I think

[3] Sapere aude

[4] Mill, J. S. (2010). On liberty. London: Penguin.

[5] Utility

[6] Solitude

[7] Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, translated by Mehdi Khalaji, Tavaana Academy, p. 50

[8] Authentic individual/ Genuine individual

[9] Ramin Jahanbegloo (2016). Gadflies in the public space: A Socratic Legacy of Philosophical Dissent. Lanham: Lexington Books. PP 65

In this book, Jahanbegloo shows examples of figures such as Socrates, Camus, and Gandhi, who, as rebels in their own times, refused to accept the prevailing socio-political status quo.

[10] Potential-self

[11] Actual-self

[12] Having

[13] Becoming-self

[14] Soren Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death (1849), Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University press, pp. 33

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The Necessity of Individuality and Independent Thought in Our Age

Author: Aref Vasli

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