Benedict De Spinoza Individualism Analysis

As Benedict de Spinoza puts it “determination is negation”, essentially indicating that in order to precisely define a matter, one must juxtapose it to the opposite. This principle of binary opposition is clearly seen in the way European civilizations have perceived overseas nations. The differentiation between “West” or “Occident” against “East” or “Orient” can be traced back to the times of Ancient Greece, in which the name Anatolia (Current Turkey territory) had the same meaning as “Orient” in Latin – ‘to rise’, referring to the sun. Such contrast became even more prominent at the height of Roman Empire and succeeding European nations, that first tended to employ “Orient” to refer to less developed “Barbaric” realms of the Northern Africa

The question of whether a nation is an individualistic or collectivist society seems to define much of its domestic policy, therefore it is crucial to give the right answer to it. Before the communist revolution, at the times, when Confucian values were more prominent than nowadays one could say that China is primarily collectivist country, however, scholars have produced numerous works on individualism in Classic Confucianism which raises a question whether China is in fact a collectivistic country or this notion is merely a stereotype, produced by western thinkers, eager to define their homeland through opposition to the East. The differentiation is even more important nowadays as China is becoming more open to the rest of the world. In the eyes of the West, China is not only shifting towards individualistic mode of thinking because of the “one-child policy” introduced in 1979, but some even claim that children of this generation are less socially adaptable, less independent and even selfish as compared to the children, that have

Blake (1981) introduced a resource-dilution theory, which states, that parents with larger number of children may not invest as much in their children as they would, if they had a single child. Such resources include not only material and physical resources, but also factors such as care and attention that contribute to the higher level of intimacy that children share with their parents and their greater psychological security. Therefore only children are on one hand are seen to be selfish, unsocial, highly dependent and even arrogant, whereas other studies provide evidences for such children to be more cooperative, more autonomous and even have better leadership skills than those children that have