Western Values

 

Western Values - Radical Individualism, Moral Subjectivity, and Technological Mastery Over Nature.

A Discourse on the Philosophical Core of the Modern West

INTRODUCTION: THE WESTERN DIFFERENCE

Western civilization stands distinct among the world’s cultural paradigms, not merely for its historical trajectory, but for the deeply ingrained mentality that governs how it perceives selfhood, truth, morality, and the world. Where other cultures may emphasize relationality, ancestral continuity, or spiritual alignment with nature, the Western worldview has often centered the autonomous individual, rational mastery, and progress through change.

This divergence did not arise arbitrarily. It is the result of a unique confluence of philosophical, religious, political, and scientific revolutions. The West, more than any other cultural bloc, has been marked by a specific ethos: the sovereign self as agent and measure of meaning; the belief in progress as moral imperative; and the conquest, not communion, with nature as the route to freedom and comfort.

This essay is a deep exploration into three of the core values that undergird this Western worldview:

1. Radical Individualism
2. Moral Subjectivity
3. Technological Mastery Over Nature

Each value is examined not in isolation, but in its historical, philosophical, and cultural context. We will trace how these ideas emerged, matured, and now shape the postmodern Western mind, and we will also point to their consequences; both empowering and destabilising.

CHAPTER ONE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WESTERN MENTALITY

1.1 From Christendom to Cartesianism

Western civilization in the medieval period was not always so enamored with the self. Medieval man, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “was not a self, but part of a harmony”. The cosmos was hierarchical, divine, and fixed. Man’s role was defined by his place in a divine order, with identity shaped by communal belonging; family, guild, faith. The central values were submission, humility, and obedience to divine law.

But the Renaissance (14th–17th century) marked the beginning of a transition. Humanism placed man, not God, at the centre of inquiry. Thinkers like Pico della Mirandola declared man the creature of indeterminate form, capable of shaping his own essence (see Oration on the Dignity of Man).

This blossomed fully in the Enlightenment, when Descartes’ Cogito (“I think, therefore I am”) crowned the self-conscious individual as the foundational certainty of knowledge. No longer a vessel of divine law, the human subject became the beginning point for meaning and truth. With thinkers like Kant, Locke, and Rousseau, autonomy became the highest good. Man was no longer to be formed by tradition, but by reason and will.

1.2 The Secularization of the World

The Protestant Reformation (16th century) had already fractured the religious authority of the Catholic Church, decentralizing truth and empowering private conscience. This erosion of theological absolutism continued with the Scientific Revolution and the rise of materialist empiricism. God was pushed out of nature, and nature became an object to be measured, explained, and eventually dominated.

This led to a rationalized world, where everything not subject to quantification lost legitimacy. Max Weber called this the “disenchantment of the world.” No longer a realm of sacred mystery, the universe was rendered into a machine.

1.3 From Modern to Postmodern

In the 20th century, the culmination of these shifts took the form of postmodernism: a rejection of metanarratives, truth as constructed, identity as fluid, and values as contingent. Thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida critiqued the very notions of absolute knowledge, stable identity, and objective morality. Western man now doubts even the self that Descartes once elevated.

Yet, even in this relativism, the core Western value remains: sovereignty of the self, now extended into all areas of life.

CHAPTER TWO: RADICAL INDIVIDUALISM

2.1 The Birth of the Self-Made Man

Western radical individualism finds its roots in the Protestant notion of the priesthood of all believers, where each person is directly accountable to God without intermediary. From this grew the idea that individual conscience and self-determination are sacred.

In secular terms, this became the liberal individual; autonomous, self-defining, and owner of rights. From John Locke’s theories of life, liberty, and property to Ayn Rand’s celebration of egoism in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, the Western ideal is clear: to be one’s own master.

2.2 The Psychological Interiorization

Western thought also privileges the interior self. Authenticity is measured not by social conformity but by internal coherence: “being true to oneself.” Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow advanced this in psychology, with the self-actualizing individual as the highest human aim.

This deeply contrasts with collectivist societies, such as in Confucian East Asia, where identity is relational and duty-bound. The Western individual is encouraged to break from tribe, reject tradition, and seek personal fulfillment, even at the cost of social cohesion.

2.3 The Culture of Choice

This individualism underpins modern consumerism, political freedom, and lifestyle plurality. Choice itself becomes moral: the right to choose one’s gender, values, beliefs, career, or destiny. What matters is not what is chosen, but that the choice is one’s own.

But this leads to existential anxiety. As Erich Fromm notes in Escape from Freedom, the burden of self-definition can be unbearable. Radical autonomy, once emancipating, becomes isolating.

CHAPTER THREE: MORAL SUBJECTIVITY

3.1 The End of Universal Morality

With the decline of religious authority and the rise of secular liberalism, morality in the West became de-centered. No longer rooted in divine command or natural law, ethics became relative to culture, perspective, or personal conviction.

Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “death of God” was not merely theological. It was ethical. If there is no transcendent source of value, then all morals become expressions of will to power, taste, or tradition.

3.2 The Rise of Ethical Pluralism

Western societies now embrace pluralism as a core value. Every person is encouraged to “live their truth,” and moral judgments are often seen as oppressive. Tolerance becomes the highest good but one that can paradoxically lead to intolerance of moral certainty.

Thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre (in After Virtue) argue that this moral fragmentation leads to emotivism; morality reduced to expressions of feeling or preference, with no shared language of value.

3.3 The Psychological Consequences

Without shared moral anchors, Westerners often report moral confusion, especially in areas of sexuality, family, and community. What was once taboo is now normalized; what was once sacred is now subjective. Morality becomes privatized.

This is empowering for personal freedom but erodes communal identity, social trust, and intergenerational coherence.

CHAPTER FOUR: TECHNOLOGICAL MASTERY OVER NATURE

4.1 The Mechanization of the World

From Francis Bacon’s vision of “nature bound into service” to the industrial revolution’s triumph over material scarcity, Western culture sees technology as liberation. Nature is not sacred. It is raw material for manipulation, commodification, and control.

This has given birth to astonishing achievements: medicine, infrastructure, digital life. But the metaphysical shift is profound: man no longer exists within nature; he stands above it.

4.2 Transhumanism and Digital Immortality

The contemporary frontier of Western technological values is transhumanism; the belief that humanity can, and should, overcome its biological limits. Figures like Ray Kurzweil envision uploading consciousness into machines, defeating death, and merging with AI.

This is the logical end of a civilisational trajectory that sees nature, including human nature, as deficient and improvable. The body is not sacred but modifiable. The world is not home but a problem to be solved.

4.3 The Ecological Crisis as a Spiritual Crisis

Yet, as Martin Heidegger warned in “The Question Concerning Technology,” this domination mindset blinds us to Being itself. In treating the world as “standing-reserve,” we forget how to dwell, how to receive, how to belong.

The West now faces the paradox: its greatest strength, technological power, has created its greatest peril: ecological collapse, alienation, and spiritual malaise.

FINAL CHAPTER: CONCLUSIONS AND AFTERTHOUGHTS

Western values have produced unparalleled freedom, innovation, and diversity of thought. But they have also engendered a world of rootlessness, fragmentation, and existential disorientation.

Radical individualism has freed the self but eroded bonds of duty and belonging.

Moral subjectivity has opened space for authenticity but dissolved the common good.

Technological mastery has overcome material limits but endangered the very ground of life.

These are not arguments for the wholesale rejection of Western values, but for their reckoning. The contemporary Western mind stands at a threshold: it must choose whether to continue the trajectory toward hyper-individualized, post-human atomization, or to rediscover what premodern and non-Western cultures never forgot: that man is not a god, but a being among beings; not a sovereign will, but a creature in need of belonging, meaning, and limits.

The future of the West may depend on its ability to reconcile autonomy with communion, liberty with responsibility, and reason with reverence.

INDEX OF SOURCES

After Virtue – Alasdair MacIntyre

Being and Time – Martin Heidegger

The Fountainhead / Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

Oration on the Dignity of Man – Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

The Question Concerning Technology – Martin Heidegger

Escape from Freedom – Erich Fromm

The Death of God and the Meaning of Life – Julian Young

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism – Max Weber

The Gay Science / Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche

The Disenchantment of the World – Marcel Gauchet

The Ethics of Authenticity – Charles Taylor

Discipline and Punish / The History of Sexuality – Michel Foucault

The Postmodern Condition – Jean-François Lyotard

Of Grammatology – Jacques Derrida

The Human Condition – Hannah Arendt

Self and Others – R.D. Laing

Technopoly – Neil Postman

The Abolition of Man – C.S. Lewis

The Courage to Be – Paul Tillich

The End of Nature – Bill McKibben