If you believe you are, first and foremost, accountable to God or to an ideal reality for your actions, then you will be less likely to focus directly on how your actions effect other people. St. Thomas Aquinas is one religious philosopher who emphasized the dependency of human action not on society but on divine truth. People who think this way do not consciously look to others for clues about how they should act, but look instead to their own ideals. Science and Me Eventually, the philosophical views of Plato and Aquinas gave way to a more scientific, empirical way of thinking, while the seeds of individualism continued to grow. Empirical science has helped to promote individualism in the West by marginalizing the role of society and spotlighting the individual.
Science replaces the divine, eternal laws described by Aquinas with natural, physical laws.
Before capitalism, people filled pre-established roles in a feudal society. What you did depended on what your parents did, and you inherited their station in life as well as their possessions. There was almost no social mobility. The fact that most people in the West have to go out and make money for their livelihood has encouraged them to think of themselves as independent, free individuals. In the Middle Ages, the word estate used to mean not only your property but what you did for a living.