Introduction

Summary

This book explores what Europeans in the twentieth century understood by individual freedom and how they endeavored to achieve it, often against the odds. The Introduction lays out its conceptual bases, arguing that the quest was multi-faceted and unfolded in nonlinear ways, which jars with teleological narratives of the rise and decline of “the individual.” It disputes Annelien de Dijn’s recent account of one dominant concept of modern liberty and is attentive to mainstream as well as marginalized versions of individual freedom, questioning Michel Foucault’s idea that the former were “imposed on us” through disciplinary power. Instead, the book borrows from sociologist Georg Simmel and political philosopher Isaiah Berlin to stress the subjective, gradual, and unpredictable character of individual freedom and the fact that it was pursued against a range of obstacles and constraints. It tells a story of conflict-ridden expansion. Men and women had to claim their personal freedom in a context marked by world wars, the expanding power of the state, the constraints of work life, pre-established moral norms, the growing influence of America, and the uncertain future of colonial rule.