The Growth of Individualism explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Conflict Between Ethics and Economics

  The chapter extensively explores the collision between traditional Christian economic ethics and the practices of commercial capitalism, particularly around usury and the separation of economics from morality.

• Transformation of Social Ethics

  The chapter describes how the traditional social ethics of the Church, based on corporate morality and spiritual criteria, were discredited and replaced by an individualistic, self-regulating economic philosophy.

• The Role of the Church in Society

  The chapter examines the Church's declining authority over economic life, its failure to adapt its ethics to modern conditions, and its eventual retreat into philanthropy rather than critical guidance.

• Secularization of Social Thought

  The chapter highlights the growth of lay opinion that argued economics and ethics are separate, and the replacement of religious teleology with the analogy of a self-regulating mechanism driven by economic motives.

Characters to notice

• James Harrington

  Cited for his famous passage describing how the ruin of the feudal nobility by the Tudors democratized land ownership and prepared the way for the bourgeois republic.

• Sir Thomas Gresham

  Mentioned as a capitalist who managed Government business in Antwerp, representing the new commercial spirit that viewed usurious interest as bad business rather than bad morals.

• Niccolò Machiavelli

  Referenced in the discussion of the problem of public versus private morality, with the argument that there is one rule for business and another for private life.

• Adam Smith

  Referenced for his theory of the invisible hand, which saw in economic self-interest the operation of a providential plan, epitomizing the characteristic doctrine that left little room for religious teaching on economic morality.

• William Warburton

  Quoted for his unkind remark about Dean Tucker, that 'religion was his trade, and trade his religion,' illustrating the merging of commerce and religion.

• The Church

  Discussed as the institution whose traditional social ethics were being discredited by the rise of individualism and commercial capitalism, and which later abandoned its critical role in economic life.

• The Fuggers

  Mentioned as an example of early commercial capitalists who were denounced by preachers and theologians, yet were innocents compared to later financial speculators.

Key passages

• “Though the assertion of the traditional economic ethics continued to be made by one school of churchmen down to the meeting of the Long Parliament, it was increasingly the voice of the past appealing to an alien generation.”

  Although some church leaders kept defending traditional economic morals until the Long Parliament, their arguments sounded outdated to a new era that no longer shared their values.

  This opening sentence sets the theme of the chapter: the growing irrelevance of traditional religious economic ethics in an age of rising individualism.

• “The new thing in the England of the sixteenth century was that devices that had formerly been occasional were now woven into the very texture of the industrial and commercial civilization which was developing in the later years of Elizabeth.”

  What was new in sixteenth-century England was that practices once used only occasionally became fundamental to the industrial and commercial society emerging in Elizabeth's later reign.

  Highlights the structural shift from occasional economic practices to a pervasive commercial civilization.

• “Finance, being essentially impersonal, a matter of opportunities, security and risks, acted among other causes as a solvent of the sentiment, fostered both by the teaching of the Church and the decencies of social intercourse among neighbors, which regarded keen bargaining as 'sharp practice.'”

  Because finance is impersonal and focused on opportunities and risks, it helped dissolve the traditional view, supported by the Church and neighborly relations, that aggressive bargaining was unethical.

  Explains how the impersonal nature of finance eroded traditional moral constraints on bargaining.

• “While rival authorities were discussing the correct interpretation of economic ethics, the flank of both was turned by the growth of a powerful body of lay opinion, which argued that economics were one thing and ethics another.”

  While different religious authorities debated the right interpretation of economic morals, a strong secular opinion emerged that claimed economics and ethics are separate domains.

  Captures the key turning point where lay opinion bypassed religious debates by separating economics from ethics.

• “The characteristic doctrine was one, in fact, which left little room for religious teaching as to economic morality, because it anticipated the theory, later epitomized by Adam Smith in his famous reference to the invisible hand, which saw in economic self-interest the operation of a providential plan.”

  The prevailing view left no space for religious instruction on economic morals, as it foreshadowed Adam Smith's invisible hand theory, which saw economic self-interest as part of a divine plan.

  Connects the eighteenth-century doctrine to Adam Smith's invisible hand, showing how religion was sidelined by a providential view of self-interest.