A Plea for Individualism

ISBN: 1481967622

Author: Verhofstadt, Dirk

Condition: New

Product Description The individual rights and freedoms of man must not be consigned to possibilities of the human mind to experience ideas, thoughts and convictions only within oneself. Humanising modernity precisely has the task to broaden the frontiers of the mind and spread them into the domain of freedom of opinion on a political, social level. Each person has to feel safe and has to be able to speak freely about any subject under the sun all over the world. At the same time, a person has to be able to resist any behaviour or action imposed by authority that goes against a universal secular morality. Following this definition universality and individualism are a logical combination, and are therefore diametrically opposed to fundamentalism and extremism, and also to those trends within conservatism, communitarism and nationalism that wish to subjugate human freedom to tradition, the community or the people. About the Author Dirk Verhofstadt is a Belgian liberal theorist. He has a keen interest in political philosophy, and his philosophical outlook is influenced by Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Karl Popper, John Rawls, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. He graduated in law and press- and communication sciences at the University of Ghent. He is professor Media and ethics at the University of Ghent, Belgium.