7. Next, there is a set of familiar ideas, which col-
lectively may be labelled political individualism. This
may be defined generically as a prescriptive doctrine
which finds the source and grounds of political author-
ity in individuals' purposes and the limits to such au-
thority in the minimum required to achieve those
purposes. Somewhat artificially, one may say that the
differing varieties of political individualism have arisen
from different assumptions about how the relevant
individual purposes are to be identified and about the
amount of authority needed to achieve them. (Insofar
as the former are abstracted from a social context,
political individualism becomes an application of the
idea of the abstract individual.)
Hobbes is again of central historical importance
here. For him, political authority derived from human
purposes, not from divine or natural law (in the ancient
and medieval sense), or from immemorial tradition; he
wrote: “The people rules in all governments. For even
in monarchies the people commands” (De cive, XII, 8).
As Hegel justly observed, Hobbes, unlike his prede-
cessors, “sought to derive the bond which holds the
state together, that which gives the state its power,
from principles which lie within us, which we recog-
nise as our own” (Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der
Philosophie, 2nd ed. [1840], Vol. III, Part III, Sec. ii,
Ch. I, B [3]). Locke developed this idea, but without
giving it operational significance; it was Rousseau who
carried to its logical conclusion the view that “conven-
tions form the basis of all legitimate authority among
men,” seeing the Sovereign as “formed wholly of the
individuals who compose it” (Contrat social [1762],
Book I, Chs. IV, VII). Political individualism became
a commonplace in the eighteenth century, with its
predilection for contract and consent. the article on
“Autorité” by Diderot in the Encyclopédie put it very
clearly:
The prince derives from his subjects the authority he holds
over them; and this authority is limited by the laws of nature
and of the state. The laws of nature and of the state are
the conditions under which they have or are supposed to
have submitted themselves to his rule. One of these condi-
tions is that, having no power or authority over them except
by their choice and their consent, he can never use this
authority to break the act or contract by which it has been
conferred on him...
(Vol. I).
It will be seen that, as we have defined it, the limits
of political individualism are in principle wide, en-
compassing theorists of popular sovereignty at one
extreme and, at the other, those “totalitarian demo-
crats” who have claimed to know men's “real” pur-
poses and used them as a justification for tyranny. In
practice, the term has usually been restricted to that
type of political liberalism which aims to confine the
functions and the authority of the state within fixed
limits. Here what counts as “individuals' purposes” has
often amounted to the (primarily economic) claims of
the individuals of particular classes. It was in this sense
that Dicey characterized legislative utilitarianism as
“systematised individualism,” observing that “Ben-
thamism meant nothing more than the attempt to
realize by means of effective legislation the political
and social ideals set before himself by every intelligent
merchant, tradesman or artisan” (Lectures on the Rela-
tion between Law and Public Opinion in England
during the Nineteenth Century [1905], Lecture VI, Part
[B]). As Macpherson's work suggests (Macpherson,
1962) within a certain range, political individualism
becomes the political theory entailed by the eighth
unit-idea, to be considered next.
