Louis Dumont: Die Deutsche Ideologie

The French anthropologist Louis Dumont traces the development of classical German culture as a rival to French Enlightenment and universalism.
In Germany, the dominant idea of western individualism was reinterpreted according to the values of the religious estate-based society. Dumont uses the concepts of individualism and holism, which he believed were interlinked, a theory he develops in his study on the Indian caste system, to differentiate between European sub-cultures. Although the emerging modern age in Germany was characterised by individualism, it also clung to certain traditional holistic elements, unlike the typically western idea of universalistic individualism. In contrast to the western concept of the abstract individual, the paradigmatic educational thinking of German ideology gave rise to the ideal of the holistic individual, who develops his personality in accordance with the demands of society.