Personalism, a term I’ve never heard before, seems closely related to three other ideas: (1) self-actualization, (2) nonconformity and (3) subjectivity.
Ngo Dinh Diem’s ideologically loaded, dictator-pleasing, bootstraps-style personalism sounds most like self-actualization, which puts the onus on the person to shoulder the burden of escaping communist collectivism.
Nonconformity is the relative of personalism sought out by the 1950s public in George Marsden’s /Twilight of the American Enlightenment/. 50s intellectuals were anxious to shape a persona that could not be dominated by ideology. Marsden, a Catholic, views this a bit ironically, so I’m not sure if we can call this nonconformity equivalent to personalism.
Finally, subjectivity is a term I’m familiar with from the Japanese New Left. There was an ongoing debate between those who felt that the greatest chance for victory came from subsuming oneself in the subjectivity of the Party, and those who felt that total subjectivity rested in the hands of only of those breakaway sects which fully understood the laws of social science (Marxism), and those who felt that a full social awakening came from each individual realizing his (first and foremost “his”) full subjectivity. Hippie personalism obviously overlapping with this third category, but seemingly to different or nonspecific ends.
Personalism, a term I’ve never heard before, seems closely related to three other ideas: (1) self-actualization, (2) nonconformity and (3) subjectivity.
Ngo Dinh Diem’s ideologically loaded, dictator-pleasing, bootstraps-style personalism sounds most like self-actualization, which puts the onus on the person to shoulder the burden of escaping communist collectivism.
Nonconformity is the relative of personalism sought out by the 1950s public in George Marsden’s /Twilight of the American Enlightenment/. 50s intellectuals were anxious to shape a persona that could not be dominated by ideology. Marsden, a Catholic, views this a bit ironically, so I’m not sure if we can call this nonconformity equivalent to personalism.
Finally, subjectivity is a term I’m familiar with from the Japanese New Left. There was an ongoing debate between those who felt that the greatest chance for victory came from subsuming oneself in the subjectivity of the Party, and those who felt that total subjectivity rested in the hands of only of those breakaway sects which fully understood the laws of social science (Marxism), and those who felt that a full social awakening came from each individual realizing his (first and foremost “his”) full subjectivity. Hippie personalism obviously overlapping with this third category, but seemingly to different or nonspecific ends.