3. The third element of individualism might be
called the idea of self-direction, or autonomy, accord-
ing to which the individual subjects the norms with
which he is confronted to critical evaluation and
reaches practical decisions as the result of independent
and rational reflection.
It could be argued that this idea was first clearly
expressed (since Aristotle) by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
According to the traditional medieval doctrine, the
order of a superior, whether just or unjust, had to be
obeyed; for Thomas it need not, if conscience forbade
its execution. His argument was that “everyone is
bound to examine his own actions in the light of the
knowledge which he has from God” (Quaestiones dis-
putatae de Veritate, qu. 17, art. 4). As Ullmann has
commented: “The general principle he advocated was
that 'every man must act in consonance with reason'
... a principle which persuasively demonstrates the
advance in individual ethics and a principle which
began to assert the autonomy of the individual in the
moral sphere” (1966, p. 127).
In the religious sphere that autonomy was clearly
evident in Luther's argument: “... each and all of us
are priests because we all have the one faith, the one
gospel, one and the same sacrament; why then should
we not be entitled to taste or test, and to judge what
is right or wrong in the faith?” (An den Christlichen
Adel deutscher Nation von des christlichen Standes
Besserung [1520], I, ii), and in Calvin's teaching (at
least with respect to the Roman church) that “Our
consciences have to do, not with men, but with God
alone” (Institutio religionis Christianae [1536], IV, x,
5). In the social, and especially political, sphere, it was
one of the cardinal values of the Enlightenment and
the main target of the latter's critics, who were terrified
by this exaltation of the individual's private judgment:
hence de Maistre's “political protestantism....”
The most systematic expositions of the idea of au-
tonomy are in Spinoza's Ethics (1677) and, above all,
in Kant. Kant's third practical principle for the will
was “... the Idea of the will of every rational being as
a will which makes universal law,” according to which
“all maxims are repudiated which cannot accord with
the will's own enactment of universal law. The will
is not therefore merely subject to the law, but is so
subject that it must be considered as also making the
law for itself and precisely on this account as first of
all subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as
the author)” (Grundlegung..., Ch. II; trans. H. J.
Paton). Kant argued that “To the Idea of freedom there
is inseparably attached the concept of autonomy, and
to this in turn the universal principle of morality,” and
that “... when we think of ourselves as free, we
transfer ourselves into the intelligible world as mem-
bers and recognize the autonomy of the will together
with its consequence—morality” (ibid.).
In itself, this idea is neutral with regard to the prob-
lem of the relativity of values (and for Kant it was
evidently compatible with objective moral certainty;
but see below: II, 10), though it has often been re-
garded as incompatible with most versions of deter-
minism. As Kant put it: “... To be independent of
determination by causes in the sensible world (and this
is what reason must always attribute to itself) is to be
free” (ibid.). It can have the logical status either of
a universal proposition (a priori or empirical) concern-
ing the conditions of human (or moral) action; a first-
order moral principle; or a sociological ideal-type, as
in David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950).
