Answer:
For libertarians, the basic unit of social analysis is the individual. It’s hard to imagine how it could be anything else. Individuals are, in all cases, the source and foundation of creativity, activity, and society. Only individuals can think, love, pursue projects, act. Groups don’t have plans or intentions. Only individuals are capable of choice, in the sense of anticipating the outcomes of alternative courses of action and weighing the consequences. Individuals, of course, often create and deliberate in groups, but it is the individual mind that ultimately makes choices. Most important, only individuals can take responsibility for their actions. As Thomas Aquinas wrote in On the Unity of the Intellect, the concept of a group mind or will would mean that an individual would “not be the master of his act, nor will any act of his be praiseworthy or blameworthy.” Every individual is responsible for his actions; that’s what gives him rights and obligates him to respect the rights of others.
But what about society? Doesn’t society have rights? Isn’t society responsible for lots of problems? Society is vitally important to individuals. It is to achieve the benefits of interaction with others, as Locke and Hume explained, that individuals enter into society and establish a system of rights. But at the conceptual level, we must understand that society is composed of individuals. It has no independent existence. If 10 people form a society, there are still 10 people, not 11. It’s also hard to define the boundaries of a society; where does one society end and another begin? By contrast, it’s easy to see where one individual ends and another begins — an important advantage for social analysis and for allocating rights and duties.
We cannot escape responsibility for our actions by blaming society. Others cannot impose obligations on us by appealing to the alleged rights of society, or of the community. In a free society we have our natural rights and our general obligation to respect the rights of other individuals. Our other obligations are those we choose to assume by contract.
Explanation:
P.S. I read this piece years ago, so it is not mine, just saying, but I have saved it, and I guess it will help another person.
