Modern individualism shifted from freedom-as-such to the value of being this specific irreplaceable self

Evidence

Yet this new inequality was posited from within. First, there had been the thorough liberation or the individual from the rusty chains of guild, birth 4ght, and church. Now, the individual that had thus become independent also wished to distinguish himself from other individuals. The important point no longer was the fact that he was a free individual as such, but that he was this speciiic, iiicplaceahle, given individual. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 2844

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Simmel’s ‘new inequality’: self-differentiation posited from within, where the irreplaceable particular becomes the object of value.
• XREF: Directly articulates the Raskolnikov-adjacent psychology of exceptionalism the reader is tracking—the turn from generic freedom to the claim of being ‘this specific, unplaceable, given individual’. — connects to: Bourgeois Enlightenment traded freedom for self-preservation early on; Individualization as a modernization outcome differs sharply from neoliberal individualism and psychological individuation — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 103; Psychological self-sovereignty predates the internet, which later amplified it — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 113 (+3 more)