123 School Work

If the West truly desires to promote human rights globally it must be prepared to question

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  Is the notion of the individual person a concept specific to Western societies?
  
       One of the greatest assumptions of the west regards the conscious recognition of every human being on the planet as an autonomous individual. Within a western frame of mind every single person is regarded as a single unit of consciousness who is capable of making the absolute distinction between himself as a singular entity and the rest of his surrounding universe including other human beings. He not only recognizes this distinction but also acts upon it to maximize his recognition not only through his own perspective but also through the perspective of everything that surrounds him. In other words the individual recognizes himself as having his own separate needs, desires, and values and is capable of coming to his personal rational conclusions vis a vis his surroundings and its inhabitants, and his surroundings, with everything that that entails, also recognize the individual as such.
       For westerners such a definition of the human person is assumed a priori as if it is completely natural, stemming forth from the natural existence of the human being himself, thus negating that, far from being 'natural', this is a result of a 2000 year old process, mediated through theological and philosophical thought and major historic events that shaped Europe into the social milieu that created the possibility for a modern day western society to come into existence. In his account 'A modified view of our origins: the Christian beginnings of modern individualism' Louis Dumont traces back individualism to its most probable origins, the Indian renouncer, the hermit, the out-worldly individual and moves forward step by step through an evolution of thought and historical milestones towards the Catholic invasion of western thought and the Reformation, climaxing with the emergence of the modern, in-worldly individual.
       The first step Dumont identifies in the development from Holism to Individualism is the hermit. In eastern philosophies the intellectual who rejects the world and isolates himself from the community in search of enlightenment, separating himself from the world in a bid to come closer to that which is not of this world, is highly respected as one who has wisdom and who is of paramount value. The process in which this individual was inserted back into society without peeling off his individuality and his paramount value was triggered by the early Christian modifications of Hellenistic teachings...