The rise of capitalism in the early nineteenth century marked the appearance of the language individualism.
The capitalism economic system emphasized the individual both as the holder of self-interest and as the foundation of all legal rights. One of the famous people that supported economic individualism was Adam Smith. Although he is sometimes labeled as the first great capitalism economist, he preferred to describe his system as "natural liberty". When individuals are left to their own devices, Smith held, the ensuing system possesses an inherently self-adjusting quality that will ensure the maximum satisfaction of individual desires.
Edmund Burke was concerned that this would lead to the fragmentation of persons into atomized individuals lacking any sense of identity or place. The French social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville similarly believed it might lead to individualistic isolation in which people retreat from public life into families and small groups of interested combines.Nietzsche proposed, instead, that an individual might attain the "transvaluation of values," by which he meant that one could generate authentically for one's self the unique principles that would guide oneself and oneself alone. The authentic individual must discover in a radically individualized way those precepts that realize his or her own valuation.
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