Abstract

The status of the individual in Hegel has been the subject of much controversy, yet no one has given an adequate account of the role in the individual in Hegel's System. This dissertation attempts to fill this lacuna in Hegel scholarship by developing Hegel's socially significant argument that individuality is, in a sense, illusory. The heart of this argument is found in his Phenomenology . Prior to this work, Hegel was concerned with the problem of alienation and the creation of a human community which would alleviate this problem. By 1800, he saw that alienation and thinking of ourselves as individuals are linked. In the Phenomenology, Hegel sees that education is the means whereby the illusion of individuality can be disspelled, because through it we can come to remember the cognitive process which leads to individuality. Within the structure of consciousness, which is examined as an ontological condition, there is a legitimate epistemological demand for unity. It is the misrepresentation of the nature of this unity and attributing this unity to consciousness which leads to the phenomenon of individuality. The educational process which must, in order to respect man's rational autonomy , attend to the structure of consciousness reveals both the source of the need for unity and the one-sidedness of certain concepts of unity. This source is directly related to the unities we attribute to the world. Hegel's argument is that we develop a sense of alienation because we can, by reflecting on our activity, separate ourselves from the world. This separation, however, is effected through thought only. Attributing individuality to ourselves is one such mode of separation. Thus the individual is important for Hegel because he sees that individuality is the necessary result of the process of consciousness and that when the significance of individuality is misrepresented, problems and contradictions arise. The realization of the limitations of a one-sided notion of individuality prepares the foundation for one's entrance into a true human community.