There are a multitude of views concerning how an individuals rights and responsibilities in a society should be conceived, advanced through the years by successive generations of political philosophers. In the twentieth century, there have been three main schools of thoughts about the individual and society: anarchistic, liberal, and communitarian. Anarchists believe that individuals should be utterly free from constraint by society, free to follow their consciences wherever they might take them. Liberals believe that individuals deserve certain rights and that it is society's job to protect them by enacting laws. Communitarians hew the middle ground by believe that linked social responsibility within a society allows individuals to be autonomous while respectful of others. I believe that none of these ideas has a monopoly on the truth. However, this paper will explore all three concepts of individualism and show why the liberal concept is closest to the truth.
Thoreau is considered by many to be the father of the anarchistic conception of individualism. This is not exactly an accurate portrayal of his point of view, however. In his most famous political work, the Treatise on Civil Disobedience, Thoreau vehemently defends the individual's right to conscientiously object to unjust laws. While this has been taken by many to be a direct appeal for anarchy, Thoreau was really advocating for a better governmentùnot no governmentùand for the individual's right to object forcefully to a government which they considered to be morally corrupt and to have lost the consent of the governed. As he notes: "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." Thoreau's point here is not that an individual is free from the constraints of laws, but rather that t...