Individuals and their environments

While affirming Craig Martin's analysis of how the language of spiritual freedom celebrates individual agency in a way that deflects attention from the institutional conditions that produce individuals, this essay wonders whether there are useful distinctions to be made among people who Martin reads as sharing uncritical appraisals of capitalist individualism. On the question of the relationship between individuals and social contexts, for example, William James's assessment of the role played by social and natural environments might distinguish him from contemporary subjects who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious" and who seek to transcend institutional constraints to gain personal freedom. Different responses to alienation suggest that there might be some role for individual creativity and criticism as resources for imagining institutional change.