Individualism is the West’s most distinctive civilizational trait

Evidence

Individualism. Many of the above features of Western civilization contributed to the emergence of a sense of individualism and a tradition of individual rights and liberties unique among civilized societies. Individualism developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and acceptance of the right of individual choice—what Deutsch terms “the Romeo and Juliet revolution”—prevailed in the West by the seventeenth century. Even claims for equal rights for all individuals—“the poorest he in England has a life to live as much as the richest he”—were articulated if not universally accepted. Individualism remains a distinguishing mark of the West among twentieth-century civilizations. In one analysis involving similar samples from fifty countries, the top twenty countries scoring highest on the individualism index included all the Western countries except Portugal plus Israel. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 192

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hofstede’s individualism/collectivism dimension and cultural psychology literature the reader likely knows from another context.