Reconstructing IndividualismAmerica has a lovehate relationship with individualism. In Reconstructing Individualism, James Albrecht argues that our conceptions of individualism have remained trapped within the assumptions of classic liberalism. He traces an alternative genealogy of individualist ethics in four major American thinkersRalph Waldo Emerson, William James, John Dewey, and Ralph Ellison. These writers shared commitments to pluralism (metaphysical and cultural),