I suspect I am not the only one who learned about the emergence of individualism in the medieval period, If anyone has sources off the top of their head that would be good.https://twitter.com/ruschenpohler/status/1193959876394770433 …
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Replying to @AdmiralHip
I've always treated such claims as skeptical and teleological? idk maybe i'm missing some brilliant study out there, but a lot of it seems to be really trying to draw a line between "primitive tribalism" and "Good Modernity Times"
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Replying to @AdmiralHip
and here i thought we'd binned evolutionary theory ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Replying to @HalstedMedieval @AdmiralHip
Wait, I'm just asking for the emergence of first signs of individualism. If you're sceptical of what you call "broad brush" approaches, surely you have detailed narrative accounts of how specific individualistic traits (however you define them) came abt in certain times & places?
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Replying to @ruschenpohler @HalstedMedieval
Yes, sorry, I should have clarified. I do not mean broad brush stuff, I mean there are studies on individualism out there within the context of medieval history.
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The Big One is Aron Gurevich’s The Origins of European Individualism (trans. 1995), but its theses are no longer widely accepted because ... well we don’t do That Kind Of Big Theses anymore. Still an interesting read - but read carefully!https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Origins_of_European_Individualism.html?hl=nl&id=QrksZOjpURYC …
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Replying to @AnotherAspirin @AdmiralHip and
Cf. this extended review: https://css.cua.edu/humanitas_journal/forgotten-roots-of-individualism/ … I admire Gurevich as a scholar but his idea that “the individual” has an origin just does not hold up to detailed scrutiny (ironically, this is due to a renewed focus on individual people, texts, artefacts and manuscripts).
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I remember in my Greek religion class, we defined individuality and the beginnings of it as being a belief in the abstract, because it positioned oneself in a wider worldview. But this began very early, and there is a lot of debate over when these beliefs began.
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But it was in relation to Neanderthals potentially burying their dead with flowers, because it suggested a belief in the afterlife. Or when they demarcated rooms in their cave dwellings, as an indicator of personal space.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @AnotherAspirin and
Like I said though, lots of debates on this. Hard to study the psychology of people in the past, through actions.
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Especially when those actions are only visible through other media: text has a bias but so do various forms of material evidence. How DO we interpret pottery, and how has that changed in the past and how will that change in the future?
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