ABSTRACT
Individualism has been a key idea in Western societies for many centuries and is one of those unexamined assumptions about the way the world is constituted. Individualism is the idea that people are individual selves that are quite distinguishable from other selves and can be defined apart from any social context. There are four neglected virtues that Danielle Allen thinks are diminished by the ideology of radical individualism and neglected by the mainstream media: respect for evidence, tolerance of ambiguity, caring about consequences, and commitment to the common good. These four virtues need to be nourished in order to compete with their opposites: elevating opinion over evidence, interpreting the world in black and white, keeping an emotional distance from other people, and accepting interest group politics as an ideal. Ultimately, Allen believes that a balance between individualism and community must be recovered and that a discourse of these two worldviews must involve all American citizens.
