Benn and Peters in their “Social Principles and the Democratic state” observe that “A man’s status and roles which he had to play in the various departments of life were prescribed by rules handed down from time immemorial.
Economic life was static and secure, regulated by the guild system which blocked undue competition and self- assertion.
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But with the growth of international commerce in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the invention of printing and the improvement of communications, a new individualistic order began to take shape. Social life became more and more characterized by acquisitiveness, the pursuit of power and the striving for honour.”
A number of factors contributed to the rise of Individualism which in turn affected the domain from which these factors had originated. They are as follows:
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1. Economic:
Demand for free trade against the merchandise policies pursued by the state led to pulls and pressure. Its outcome was a theory of laissez-faire state wherein economy was to be governed by the law of supply and demand.
2. Religious:
Christianity’s belief in the equality of human beings in the eyes of God that was re-emphasized by the reformation of the 1950’s gave impetus to individualism: Kant exposed the equality of human beings in terms of attribute of dignity.
3. Scientific:
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Pobbes’s insistence on the self atomized nature of social world was greatly influenced by the principles of physical mechanics that were being recently discovered.
4. Political:
Locke emphasizes on natural right made it obligatory on the part of every social and political institutions to preserve and protect them. It was characteristically a demand of newly emerging bourgeoisie society.