Wildean Individualism as Aesthetic Proto-Personalism

The ascendency of the individual in philosophical thought was not an isolated occurance in modernist thinkers across Europe in the 19th and 20th century. Painting in broad strokes, philosophical trends such as egoism, individualism, and eventually personalism cropped up as a response to the strictures of soceity and the state which deemphasized the priority of the person or the individual in social, ethical and ideological structures.¹ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is not unique in this regard. Throughout the course of his own life and writing, Wilde constructs the concept of his own individualism, the ideal human aesthetic orientation as well as the preferred social arrangement which would catalyze the cultivation of the Wildean individualist. While egoism, individualism and personalism all have their own subtle nuances in this regard, the developmental links between the three distinct philosophical stances are of significant import to a proper delineation of their philosophical stakes, and the practical implications of their phenomenology.² The goal of this analysis is to interrogate the development of Wildean individualism in dialogue with the subsequent development of personalism in both Continental philosophy by reading Wilde's work against that of Emmanual Mounier (1905-1950) specifically.

Mounier was a leading French figure in personalism during the first half of the 20th century. Personalism—just as individualism—was not an isolated philosophical incident. At the same time as Mounier and his influence Charles Péguy (1873-1914) were writing in France, a school of personalist thought was taking roots in Boston, Massachusetts through the inspiriation of Borden Parker Bowne (1847-1910). This American school of thought became known as Boston Personalism which would serve as an important intellectual catalyst for the social thought and work of prominent 20th century figures such as Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. To see how strains of thought focusing on the the philosophical primacy of the individual would catalyze significant social and political movements, it seems highly beneficial to attempt an analysis of Wildean individualism which could restore and highlight the significance of Wilde's voice and insight in this philosophical response to modernism.

Individualism can be seen as preceding personalism in that, philosophical individualists were responding to influence mechanistic determinism and positivism in the modern conception of the ethical person. Mounier writes,

Individualism is a system of morals, feelings, ideas and instituations in which individuals can be organized by their mutual isolation and defence. [...] Man in the abstract, unattached to any natural community, the sovereign lord of a liberty unlimited and undirected; turning towards others with a primary mistrust, calculation and self-vindication; institutions restricted to the assurance that these egoism should not encroach upon one another, or to their betterment as a purely profitmaking association [...]³

Personalists, by and large, were responding to an individualism which did not take its critique of modernism far enough vis-à-vis individualism's reconfiguring of the ethical goals of society to free the individual. This analysis will attempt to show how Wildean individualism, especially in its development toward the end of Wilde's life, anticipated the personalist critiques of individualism and in so doing, prefigure the holistic, organic image of the individual which serves as the bedrock of personalist thought. By elevating Wilde to a position which prefigures personalist philosophy, there is an opportunity to open doors which reconsider Wilde's aestheticism and social commentary and his applicability to contemporary ethical dialogue.

Because Wilde's philosophical thought is slippery at best when explicated through his fictional repetoire, this analysis will focus primarily on the social and ethical essays in which the reader can presume the voice of the real Wilde is speaking (that is, with little or no mask): particularly The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891), and De Profundis (1897) . A cursory look will be given to the social dialogues published in Intentions —mainly, The Critic as Artist (1891) , and The Decay of Lying (1891) . The first and primary undertaking of this analysis, is to reconfigure the Wildean individual as a holistic personal unity, rather than a mechnistically bifurcated self and will searching simply for autonomous self-determination. To lay the groundwork, this essay will begin a prelimary discursis on the distinction between person of individualism and the person of personalism. Following discussion of this distinction, it becomes possible to put Wilde and Mounier into dialogue, by closely investigating the similarities in each of their thought as it relates to a definition of the person and the self. Ultimately, having laid the ground work of a personalist interpretation of Wilde's phenomenology, it is Wilde's aestheticism that lies at the heart of his unique and progressive conceptualization of the person.