Pluralism and Protection of Personal Identity

The starting hypothesis of the new age atomism was that individuals, such as Robinson, are capable of survival in an environment due to their reason and their own strengths, and that such independent individuals organize a state community on the basis of their own insights and pragmatic needs. The atomistic paradigm failed because of a mistaken calculation of its fundamentals. The new-age reason proved to be a bad guarantor of individual safety due to a paradoxical consequence hidden in its essence, according to which co-operation among atomized rational individuals is possible only because they, as rational beings, do not differ from each other at all. Political atomism was based on an absurd cognitive panopticism. It jeopardised individuals since it construed them from reason and forgot about traditions, which take an equal part in constituting a person. In its anti-estate illusion, atomism stood for the proposition of universal equality of all men, forgetting even about the gender differences. Kierkegaard was the first to feel this when he put the fear of losing one's identity in the centre of his philosophy. The fear of losing personal identity has initiated the development of the strategies for its protection.