ABSTRACT
The challenge of the material world has reasserted, as discussed in the last chapter, that human beings are part of this world, rather than standing outside it, and as such they need to treat their natural context with care. Similarly, the social challenge reaffirms that the individual is part of society, rather than being detached from a social context. These challenges of nature and society, therefore, reveal how the individual is both embodied and embedded, rather than enjoying an exaggerated autonomy or a mythical complete freedom. As a result, individual autonomy becomes a normative goal rather than an empirical reality; it describes where we aspire to go rather than where we actually are. The Renaissance aimed at freeing humans from the ties of tradition and custom, so that they could reconstruct the world in a rational fashion. The challenge of society has shown the limitation of this freedom, that individuals are ultimately part of a social context. By challenging other foundations, society provides a new foundation for belief and action, requiring new ways that individuals can relate to one another, searching for new keywords that should accompany individual freedom and environmental care. We discuss some of the challenges of society in this chapter and return to them in Part II.
