Convivialism and Altruistic Individualism

The commitments of associations are expressions of a new more altruistic individualism. In such an individualism, the claim for hedonistic self-realisation combines with the need to help others and mobilises convivialist values to infuse meaning in quests for recognition. Such an evolution, this article argues, encourages that we break with the common sense opposition between individualism and solidarity. Several authors have showed that if the modern epoch is characterised by individualism, it itself did not invent individualism. Furthermore, altruistic individualism, through its opposition to former egotistical forms formerly dominant in modernity, renews with a qualitative individualism that has ancient roots. The contemporary commitments which the Convivialist Manifesto aims to illuminate the meaning converge towards this apparently contradictory affirmation of an altruistic individualism.