CRITIQUE OF INDIVIDUALISM 160

TOO MUCH INDIVIDUALISM DAMAGES SOCIETY AND EXCLUDES MINORITY GROUPS

TOO MUCH FOCUS ON INDIVIDUALISM LEADS TO SOCIAL DISORDER AND A LOSS OF FREEDOM

INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITARIAN POLICY STUDIES, 2000; Communitarian

The enjoyment of liberty requires a healthy social order. If the quest for individual freedom and autonomy is pushed too far, society suffers. The resulting social disorder--manifested in such problems as runaway crime, declining public institutions, economic exploitation, eroding manners, and disrespect for of our common civic space--impinges on our liberty. If our streets our unsafe, our schools and other public institutions neglected, and our attitudes toward one another self-seeking and uncivil, our freedom is diminished.

INCREASING PRIVACY EXCLUDES AND SUBORDINATES MINORITIES

Iris Marion Young, Prof. of Ethics and Political Theory at the University of Pittsburgh, 1998; FEMINISM, THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE, "Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory," EE2001hxm p. 442

The second principle says that no person or aspects of persons should be forced into privacy. The modern conception of the public, I have argued, creates a conception of citizenship which excludes from public attention most particular aspects of a person. Public life is supposed to be 'blind' to sex, race, age, and so on, and all are supposed to enter the public and its discussion on identical terms. Such a conception of a public has resulted in the exclusion of persons and aspects of persons from public life.