Conclusion

Abstract

In a book published posthumously in 1998, Ernest Gelmer compared the two major competing visions of society in modern thought: On the one hand there is atomistic individualism which sees the individual building his cognitive world (and indeed any other) by orderly, step by step, individual effort, possibly maintaining cooperative relationships with others similarly engaged, but without this fundamentally affecting the nature of the enterprise, which in the end is solitary.... On the other hand, there is romantic organism, which sees the community or the ongoing tradition as the real unit, transcending the individual, who only finds the possibility of fulfilment and creativity and thought, even or especially of identity itself, within that community. (Gelmer 1998: 181)