Abstract
L’individualisme moderne est indissociable de la croyance, conçue comme l’investissement visant à surmonter les “transcendances moyennes” (Luckmann) séparant l’individu de la subjectivité d’autrui et de sa propre subjectivité. Repérable historiquement au travers du processus de civilisation, cette forme de croyance auto-réalisatrice (plus l’individu croira en sa propre individualité, plus il sera un individu autonome), qui trouve son plein épanouissement notamment dans les spiritualités apparentées au Nouvel Age, mais aussi dans l’écriture autobiographique, tend à relativiser la relation classique entre incroyance et niveau d’éducation.
Modern individualism is deeply related to belief, considered as an investment designed to overcome the “intermediate transcendences” (Luckmann) separating the individual from the subjectivity of others and from his own subjectivity. This self-fulfilling type of belief (the more the individual believes in his own individuality, the more he will be an autonomous individual), which can be identified early in the civilizing process and finds its fulfilment in New Age-type spiritual forms, as well as in autobiographic writing, tends towards the relativization of the classic relationship between unbelief and education level.