Concept of Individual Value Did Not Exist in Ancient Times

[Tomm]

The concept of Individual Value did not exist in ancient times, it was the Catholic Church that brought this concept to Christian Europe:

"The recognition by law of the intrinsic value of each human being did not exist in ancient times. Among the Romans, law protected social institutions such as the patriarchal family but it did not safeguard the basic rights of the individual, such as personal security, freedom of conscience, of speech, of assembly, of association, and so forth. For them, the individual was of value ‘only if he was a part of the political fabric and able to contribute to its uses as though it were the end of his being to aggrandize the state’. According to Benjamin Constant, a great French political philosopher, it is wrong to believe that people enjoyed individual rights prior to Christianity. In fact, as Fustel de Coulanges put it, the ancients had not even the idea of what it means.

In 390, Bishop Ambrose, who was located in Milan, forced Emperor Theodosius to repent of his vindictive massacre of seven thousand people. The fact indicates that under the influence of Christianity, nobody, not even the Roman emperor, would be above the law. And in the thirteenth century, Franciscan nominalists were the first to elaborate legal theories of God-given rights, as individual rights derived from a natural order sustained by God’s immutable laws of ‘right reason’. "

(Excerpted from: The Christian foundations of the rule of law in the West: a legacy of liberty and resistance against tyranny, by Augusto Zimmerman)

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Individual value has spawned greed, pride, envy, rebelliousness, etc ...

Ekklesia/ churches who have taught God's Word as Jesus Says and Christ's Value have done well.

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

Yet, during the Middle Ages most people were regarded as chattel, which is to say that they were property tied to the land like livestock. Individual liberties, such as described in the first post, were not largely defended until the advent of democracy, initially by the efforts of Protestants in America. What did they base their ideas upon? Why, they modeled their new nation after the first nation ever built to serve its people, for the purpose of contributing to their individual happiness, which was none other than the old Roman Republic.

That grand old republic fell to imperialism under the Caesars, and your Catholic Church picked up the banner of Rome after its final collapse. Nowhere in Europe where that church held dominant authority was individual liberty ever normative. Its tortures and executions served to keep down free speech, free thought and individuality, which were the seed stock of Protestantism. It took a new land and a new beginning not yet dominated by that church, before such a dream could come to fruition. Oppressors so often take credit for the very thing that they strove so hard, and failed, to suppress.

 

[Tomm]

Yet, during the Middle Ages most people were regarded as chattel, which is to say that they were property tied to the land like livestock. Individual liberties, such as described in the first post, were not largely defended until the advent of democracy, initially by the efforts of Protestants in America. What did they base their ideas upon? Why, they modeled their new nation after the first nation ever built to serve its people, for the purpose of contributing to their individual happiness, which was none other than the old Roman Republic.

That grand old republic fell to imperialism under the Caesars, and your Catholic Church picked up the banner of Rome after its final collapse. Nowhere in Europe where that church held dominant authority was individual liberty ever normative. Its tortures and executions served to keep down free speech, free thought and individuality, which were the seed stock of Protestantism. It took a new land and a new beginning not yet dominated by that church, before such a dream could come to fruition. Oppressors so often take credit for the very thing that they strove so hard, and failed, to suppress.

Your ideas are biased.
The concept of individual value and rights were existent during the Middle Ages, but that doesn't mean they had the right to spread errors publicly. Each individual still had the freedom to believe whatever he/she wished, but that doesn't mean he/she had the right to spread errors publicly.

An individual's right to interpret the Bible on his own and to spread errors publicly didn't exist until Martin Luther's rebellion against the Church, since then the number of denominations has been getting bigger and bigger, now it's 3000 at least. A supermarket of denominations! Huge confusion and free rein of errors! That's your idea of free speech, free thought and individuality (at expense of Truth).

"Protestantism is the road to ..." - John Henry Newman

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Church History is full of false teachings that are being grown and harvested today.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Why, they modeled their new nation after the first nation ever built to serve its people, for the purpose of contributing to their individual happiness, which was none other than the old Roman Republic.

The Roman Republic was not for 'individual happiness'. The Romans were about community, the Cives Romanum. The goal of the Republic was to safeguard virtue and the hearth, not spread 'individual happiness'. Even individuals remained under their Pater Familias, the head of the family, that had oversight and control of even basic daily arrangements. Further, the citizen was under the Censor, who was to regulate his mores, and sumptuary laws were common. Too much wealth was suspect, hence Cato the Elder denouncing golden rings and the like.

The goal was to achieve Libertas, from where our word Liberty comes from, but this is a more nuanced concept. It is more the ability to live well through shouldering civic responsibility for the common good, then being 'free to do as you see fit for your own wellbeing'. The latter would be Licentitas to a Roman, a vice, where our 'licentitious' comes from. In many ways, the Roman Republic betrayed the 'village writ large' mentality that it grew from.

The Republic was about what was best for the Roman People as a whole, embodied in SPQR, the senate and people of Rome. It was an extention of the principles of the family. This is why their heroes were Marcus Curtius who sacrificed himself in the forum, or Hortensius at the bridge, or Cincinnatus. It is what is implied in Coriolanus turning away from Rome by his mother's pleasing, or the Sabine women brokering a peace between Romulus and their relations. It is when this broke down, when individual gain was sought primarily; when Sulla marched on Rome for his personal auctoritas, or when Caesar crossed the Rubicon; that the Republic failed. Even in its death, it still had this aspect, so that Augustus was Pater Patriae, or the Liberators that killed Caesar looked back to their august ancestry.

The Republic, res publicae, means 'our thing'. At heart it is about the Common Good, the same idea as the English term Commonwealth, rather than facilitating individual happiness per se. This is why the side-lining of Scipio Africanus after years of glorious service was not only deemed necessary, but often held exemplary. This is why the latter generations of the Republic, with its first Triumvirate and Milo and Clodius' dueling mobs were judged so egregious. It was not out of spite that a temple to Concord was erected where Tiberius Gracchus was slain. Ambition was a good thing, Auctorictas was a good thing, but the Republic held when the primarily goal was not the happiness of the Individual, but the responsibilty to the common good.

 

[Paidiske]

I'd say the development of humanism - which was incubated in the Christianity of early Renaissance Europe - was a clear and necessary turning point. And although it looked to ancient Greece and Rome (and other sources; Kabbalah and medieval Islam among them), it developed what it drew from those sources in new directions.

So I wouldn't say that the Church brought these ideals to Europe so much as they developed within the Church (and not just the Catholic part of the Church), and not without resistance from scholastics and other Christian leaders and thinkers.

Today, I think one of the biggest things our society struggles with is the balance between individual and communal good. To be healthy and whole we need both.

 

[Yekcidmij]

The concept of Individual Value did not exist in ancient times,)

So why were there laws that protected life and property? Thinking of Hammurabi's Code...

 

[tz620q]

So why were there laws that protected life and property? Thinking of Hammurabi's Code...

I think we view these concepts from our modern paradigm as a protection on individuality and individual's rights. I think in early agrarian times, when these protections were first established it had more to do with how to establish an orderly community. If people are allowed to murder and rob each other, it is detrimental not just to the victim; but to the society in general.

 

[Tomm]

So why were there laws that protected life and property? .

In ancient China, there were also such laws.
But does it mean they respected the value of individual persons??

I don't think so, what they sought to protect was the society as a whole, which, to them, is what individuals lived for.

 

[Yekcidmij]

I think we view these concepts from our modern paradigm as a protection on individuality and individual's rights. I think in early agrarian times, when these protections were first established it had more to do with how to establish an orderly community. If people are allowed to murder and rob each other, it is detrimental not just to the victim; but to the society in general.

In ancient China, there were also such laws.
But does it mean they respected the value of individual persons??

I don't think so, what they sought to protect was the society as a whole, which, to them, is what individuals lived for.

I'm not saying that the collective wasn't more important than the individual, I'm simply questioning the idea that individual value "did not exist" as if it didn't exist at all.