On English individualism

We have had a fair bit of discussion in various threads on the topic, so I thought it might be interesting to consolidate current thinking here on the matter. There would seem to be several parallel strands to explore, including:

1. Does English individualism actually exist?

2. If yes, what is it, exactly?

3. How did it come about?

4. Is it a ‘good thing’?

With respect to the first three, I have found Roger Scruton’s exegesis quite persuasive. He maintains there is indeed such a thing and defines it thus: “…individualism is the disposition of the English to affirm the right and responsibility of individual action in all spheres of social life [emphasis added].

He argues that the principal driver of English individualism has been the common law, which has its own roots in the old Germanic (‘barbarian’) legal systems based on custom and precedent. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes and Norsemen (and the Waelsch) all came to live and co-exist as individuals under Anglo-Saxon common law (meaning a common law for all of them). The lands from which they originated gradually all came under the sway of ‘Roman’ codified legal systems; in general, the relationship there between rulers, lawmakers and everybody else assumed an entirely different character to that which developed in England.

I’ll leave No. 4 open for discussion. It would also be interesting to hear views on the extent to which Anglo-Saxon-style individualism has taken hold in other countries where a common-law system prevails. I think a case could be made for the white settler countries, but what about, say, Singapore? It’s hard to imagine a less individualistic society than that. And, on the other hand, have individualistic societies sprung up anywhere that the Roman (i.e. Napoleonic) system has prevailed?

Scruton writes:

… Home is not just a place; it is also what goes on there. A place becomes a home, by virtue of the habits that domesticate it. The English habits began with people who came to England from Jutland, Saxony and Scandinavia, and who were distinguished by their litigiousness. They established in their territory a remarkable system of law, which was to become the ‘common’ law of England, and which has survived into the twenty-first century. This system of law is sometimes described as ‘judge-made’ law - since it derives from individual cases, decided by the courts, rather than from decrees laid down by the sovereign. But the description is inaccurate. The common law is not an invention but a discovery. The judge’s decision does not make the law: it applies the law, even when the law cannot be stated as a principle. Common law was understood from the beginning as the law of the land. That is, it belonged to England, and not to any resident - not even to the sovereign. William the Conqueror was accepted as king because he promised to uphold the law of England. This law remained the true sovereign of the country and, in some peculiar mystical way, was embodied in the land itself. The law of England was the habit, the ‘being at ease’, which turned the place into a home.

In the course of their history the English accepted monarchs of Norman, French, Scottish, Welsh, Dutch and German origin, even monarchs like George I who spoke no English, or monarchs like Cromwell who were not monarchs at all. They accepted them largely because they viewed their monarchs as creatures, and not creators, of the law. With the exception of Cromwell, each sovereign represented himself as entitled by law to his dominion, and - more importantly - as subject to the law and bound to uphold it. The point was made by the thirteenth-century judge Henry de Bracton, in his De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (’Of the Laws and Customs of England’, c.1220, revised c. 1250). The king, Bracton argued, lies below the law, since it is the law that appoints him. Bracton was not philosophising: he was transcribing the rooted English understanding of law, as something objective, permanent, and part of the furniture.

Many of the peculiarities of the English can be traced to this conception of law. What is sometimes known as their ‘individualism’ - that is, their disposition to affirm the right and responsibility of individual action in all spheres of social life - is surely to be attributed to their sense of being protected by the law from those who might otherwise coerce them. Alan Macfarlane has shown that this individualism has been a feature of English society from medieval times. And he reminds us of the extent to which the Marxist caricature of history - according to which ‘feudal’ tenure gives way to ‘bourgeois’ forms of ownership - misrepresents the history of England, which was one of uninterrupted enterprise and ownership. But perhaps Macfarlane does not go far enough, so as to see English individualism for what it was: a common-law creation, going hand in hand with forms of government that have their origin in Anglo-Saxon times.

The common law endorses custom and tradition - indeed, it is a kind of tradition. And it unites the land and the law in a manner that gives human contours to both. A piece of earth is made safe by the common law; and because it is common - in other words, coextensive with the land itself - it becomes a familiar companion, an unspoken background to daily dealings, an impartial observer who can be called upon at any time to bear witness, to give judgment and to bring peace. The common law therefore played an important part in the sense of England as a home. It was the root cause of the law-abidingness of the English, and of their ability to live side by side as strangers in a condition of trust. All communities depend upon trust: but in few communities does trust extend beyond the family; in almost none does it embrace the stranger, while conceding his right to remain a stranger, and to go about his business undisturbed.

England, however, was a society of reserved, reclusive, eccentric individuals who constantly turned their backs upon one another, but who lived side by side in a common home, respecting the rules and procedures like frosty members of a single club.

England: An Elegy. pp 8-11

Posted by Dan Dare on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 02:14 AM in
Comments (13) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by jamesUK on August 18, 2009, 07:14 AM | #

1. Does English individualism actually exist?

Posted by ROBERT CROSS on August 18, 2009, 11:02 AM | #

Why should we have to justify who we are,this perennial search for a definition of our nationality/culture,this Englishness,seems to be a qualification not shared or demanded of other racial groups,and demeans its basis.If it were asked of any other nationality ,they would be just as hard pressed to define thier “roots” as we are.Englishness is a state of being,of accrued history,of homogenous extended family.We know who we are,that others do not is a cause of celebration not angst.

Posted by Bill on August 18, 2009, 11:38 AM | #

I composed this post for GW below but somehow it morphed into a sort of crossbreed between both posts, (I decided to put it on one side) later I saw Robert’s comment so I retrieved it - here it is just as it was.

Do we need any of this at all? - Why not just leave it to natural instinct?

I suggest we ask those men and women who are daily risking a claw hammer in their face delivering leaflets in hostile territory, or attending BNP meetings, or erecting marquees at the RWB festival in the full knowledge that fifty coach loads of Brown’s Brown shirts are on their way Ask them!

I think the answer lies in Dan’s post above. The average English (British) know who they are and what they’re all about but they are not philosophers or deep thinkers and cannot articulate these feelings. These feelings are instinctive (cultural DNA - call it what you will) and having been fashioned and honed over countless generations. It’s as Fred keep telling us, they’re normal people trying to negotiate their way through life the only way they know how - without let or hindrance within the tribal consensus. It’s worked very well up till now.

That is until the emergence of a cancerous political class that is gnawing the very vitals of their tribal guts from within - how can you legislate against that? Philosophy?

Cosmopolitan Brown and his ilk don’t get it, and subsequently has spent many many hours casting hopelessly around as to what it means to be British, (Is he searching for a philosophy?) one thing it isn’t is a number on a stamped approved document entitling the recipient to all the goodies of the host nation for free. But Brown keeps trying.

Maybe survival is the only philosophy that works, and my guess is we’re not a million miles away from finding out which philosophy will prevail - it could be bloody.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 18, 2009, 12:18 PM | #

That is all true and well-said, Robert. But the question is about intra-European individualisms, and whether the English possess a marked variety and, if they do, for what reason or reasons.

Scruton’s opinion is interesting, as always. But I am not sure about the creative primacy of Common Law. Is this English individualism a genetic or cultural manifestation? Scruton’s conception is suggestive of the all-too-familiar old-school academic addiction to culturalism. Push these guys a little and out pops the customary plaint against genetic determinism. So they effortlessly proceed to rule out any consideration whatsoever of genes.

I ca’t help but wonder, though, to what extent the visible signs of English individualism - the drift of English intellectualism, the frequency of English eccentrism and the entire flight into novel personal experience - is, in fact, replicated throughout the supposedly less individualistic Germanic, Slavic and Latin Europe. I think the case for English individualism has yet to be made.

Posted by Euro on August 18, 2009, 01:54 PM | #

“English” individualism is a contradiction in terms.A highly revealing one.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 18, 2009, 04:01 PM | #

“English” individualism is a contradiction in terms.

Yes, if it’s cultural, merely an English individualism to which all subscribe. Not if it is sociobiological, when it becomes the inherent tendency to individualism of the English.

Posted by Reader_ on August 18, 2009, 05:16 PM | #

England, however, was a society of reserved, reclusive, eccentric individuals

the frequency of English eccentrism

What’s this about? There seem to be lots of eccentric types in other Euro countries, and in America plenty of eccentric people not of English extraction.

Posted by Desmond Jones on August 18, 2009, 05:52 PM | #

Fraser’s hypothesis is based upon his study of law. A nation state, a “society of strangers” can only blossom when the default mechanism of protection through extended family, i.e mafia-like, is rendered subordinate to non-kinship based reciprocty. Therefore, it’s falsifiable. Find an historical example of a kinship based society that functions as a nation state pre-dating English nationalism, and Bob’s your uncle. The concept of individualism is not either or but runs on a continuum extending from war-lordism in Iraq to individual contract in pre-war England. Both are ethnically homogeneous societies but one has chosen to eschew dependence upon kinship based relationships and the other has not. Transplanting the Iraqis to England will not change their view thus the notion that evoluton plays some part.

Mr. Dare is on the right track. A comparison of Europe’s codelied law, that found its origin in Rome and England’s common law which found its origins in the forests of Germany would be illuminating.

Posted by James Bowery on August 18, 2009, 08:10 PM | #

Individualism is the nature of sex. Social animals are distinct from eusocial animals (ants, bees and naked mole rats) in their mode of reproduction: The social relations of social animals has not distorted sex.

Clearly, humans are on the road from being sexual social animals to distorted sexual eusocial animals.

European individualism is among the highest expressions of human sexuality.

To the extent that Rome’s perverse sexuality conquered England and not Germany, it is arguable that England is less individualist, more eusocial and less sexed than Germany. However, Rome’s influence was not universal in the Isles and Gothic colonization of the Roman empire brought its own problems to Germany.

Posted by Frank on August 19, 2009, 04:09 PM | #

From ”The Culture of the Teutons”:

When the lawgivers of the Middle Ages gradually found courage to come to grips with this ancient frith, in order to make room for modern principles of law, the attacks had first to be made in the form of indulgences: it was permitted to regard a kinsman’s suit as irrelevant to oneself; it was declared lawful to refuse a contribution towards the fine imposed on any of one’s kin. It took centuries of work to eradicate the tacit understanding of this ubiquitous frith principle from the law, and establish humanity openly as the foundation of equity.

Strangely enough, in the very period of transition, when frith was being ousted from its supremacy as conscience itself, it finds definite expression in laws, to wit, in the statutes of the mediæval guilds, a continuation, not precisely of the clan, but of what was identical with clanship, to wit, the old free societies of frith or communities of mutual support. The guild laws provide that members of the guild must have no quarrels between themselves; but in the regrettable event of such quarrel arising between two of the same guild, the parties are forbidden, under pain of exclusion in disgrace, to summon each other before any tribunal but that of the guild itself; not even in a foreign country may any member of a guild bring suit against a fellow-member before a magistrate or court.

The Frisian peasant laws of the Middle Ages also found it necessary to lay down hard and fast rules for the obligations of kin towards kin, and decree that persons within the closer degrees of relationship, as father, son, brother, father’s or mother’s brother, father’s or mother’s sister, may not bring suit one against another before the court – they must not sue or swear against one another; but in cases where they cannot agree in a matter of property or the like, one of their nearest of kin shall be appointed judge.

The guild statutes are as near to the unwritten law of kinship as any lifeless, extraneous provision can be to the conscience that has life in itself. And they give us, indeed, the absolute character of frith, its freedom from all reservation, in brief.

But they cannot give the very soul of it; for then, instead of insisting that no quarrel shall be suffered to arise between one brother and another, they would simply acknowledge that no such quarrel ever could by any possibility arise. In other words, instead of a prohibition, we should have the recognition of an impossibility. The characters in the Icelandic sagas are in this position still – though we may feel that the cohesion of the clan is on the point of weakening. They have still, more or less unimpaired, the involuntary respect for all such interests as may affect the clan as a whole; an extreme of caution and foresight in regard to all such enterprise as cannot with certainty be regarded as unaffecting the interest of all its members.

Even the most reckless characters are chary of making promises or alliances if they see any possibility of prejudicing a kinsman’s interest. They go in dread of such conflicts. The power of frith is apparent, in the fact that it does not count as a virtue, something in excess of what is demanded, but as an everyday necessity, the most obvious of all, alike for high and low, heroic and unheroic characters. And the exceptions, therefore, show as something abhorrent, uncanny.

I don’t think this is inherently Christian to oppose frith, but I wanted to post this as a clue as to how Germans of another era might have thought.

Posted by Marwinsing on August 19, 2009, 09:39 PM | #

Nick and the lads “high-risk living” dropping leaflets? LOL! Come to my home, South Africa, let Marwinsing show you a bit about “high-risk living”...

Posted by Euro on August 20, 2009, 06:11 PM | #

Bowery writes:

Individualism is the nature of sex. Social animals are distinct from eusocial animals (ants, bees and naked mole rats) in their mode of reproduction: The social relations of social animals has not distorted sex.

Clearly, humans are on the road from being sexual social animals to distorted sexual eusocial animals.

European individualism is among the highest expressions of human sexuality.

To the extent that Rome’s perverse sexuality conquered England and not Germany, it is arguable that England is less individualist, more eusocial and less sexed than Germany. However, Rome’s influence was not universal in the Isles and Gothic colonization of the Roman empire brought its own problems to Germany.

Rome’s perverse sexuality?You’re beginning to sound like one of those Christers.What perverse sexuality.(I hope you dont mind me picking you’re brain ol’ shoe;you’ve got an interesting brain).

Posted by James Bowery on August 21, 2009, 02:43 AM | #

I think the struggles with sexual decadence during the decline of the Roman Empire are well enough documented aren’t they? I’m not picking on Rome specifically here since such sexual perversion seems as inherent in civilization as are its eusocial tendencies. Take, for example, Tacitus’s futile attempt to preach Germanic sexual mores to decaying Rome as early as 100AD.

Civilization is a technology that mankind is far from applying responsibly, due, in large part, to the failure to apply scientific principles and ethics via secession.

We put civilizations in the hands of fools who recognize virtually nothing of the limits of their knowledge and wisdom.

Next entry: Alex Linder: Attack the Conservatives

Previous entry: Myths and great myth

Existential Issues

Of note

General News

Science News

Science Categories

All Categories

The Writers

Each author's name links to a list of all articles posted by the writer; the hashes link to authors' homepages.

Links

Endorsement not implied.

Crime

General

Immigration

Islam

Jews

Nationalist Political Parties

New Right

Science

Whites in Africa