This book explores the recovery of Socratic philosophy in 19th century political thought of G.W.F. Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche. For Kierkegaard the Socratic indivdual in modern times is the person of faith, for Mill the idiosyncratic public intellectual, and for Nietzsche the Dionysian artist.

The dreaming body -- The philosophical Jung -- Locating identities : individual and collective matters -- Projection : the mirror image -- Divine reversal -- Mimesis revisited : Demeter and Persephone -- Jung, Irigaray, and essentialism : a new look at an old problem -- Speaking of the collective unconscious.

Modern individuality is the not-so-secret protagonist of Hegel’s practical philosophy.

According to Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche's only value is the flourishing of the exceptional individual. The well-being of ordinary people is, in itself, without value. Yet there are passages in Nietzsche that appear to regard the flourishing of the community as a whole alongside, perhaps even above, that of the exceptional individual. The ten essays that comprise this volume wrestle with the tension between individual and community in Nietzsche's writings. Some defend a reading close to Russell's. Others suggest that Nietzsche's highest (...) value is the flourishing of the community as a whole and that exceptional individuals find their highest value only in promoting that flourishing. In viewing Nietzsche from the perspective of community, the essays also cast new light on other aspects of his philosophy, for instance, his ideal of scientific research and his philosophy of language. (shrink)

The last two decades have seen a massive increase in the scholarly interest in technology, and have provoked new lines of thought in philosophy, sociology and cultural studies. Gilbert Simondon (1924 - 1989) was one of Frances's most influential philosophers in this field, and an important influence on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler. His work is only now being translated into English. Chabot's introduction to Simondon's work was published in French in 2002 and is now available (...) in English for the first time. It is the most accessible guide to Simondon's important but often opaque work. Chabot provides an excellent introduction to Simondon, positioning him as a philosopher of technology, and he describes his theory of individuation including his crystalline ontology. He goes on to offer a bridge between these two concerns, exploring how they are related. (shrink)

Jacques Maritain claims in the opening pages of Scholasticism and Politics that his distinction between individuality and personality is a universal one, and is found prominently, for example, in classical Hindu philosophy. After explaining Maritain's use of these terms, and their importance in Scholasticism and Politics, I consider the principle Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita in order to see how true Maritain's claim might be, and what importance this might have for politics.

This book provides both a historical analysis of the philosophical problem of individuation, and a new trajectory in its treatment. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze, as well as C.S. Peirce and the lesser-known Gilbert Simondon, Alberto Toscano takes the problem of individuation, as reconfigured by Kant and Nietzsche, into the realm of modernity, providing a unique and vibrant contribution to contemporary debates in European philosophy.

In this incisive work, Calvin M. Hoy focuses exclusively on Hayek's philosophy of individual freedom. Beginning with an analysis of Hayek's definition of freedom, the author examines his proposed methods for preserving personal liberty through economic, legal, and governmental measures, and provides a trenchant critique of Hayek's arguments. Ultimately, Hoy demonstrates that a minimal socialist state is compatible with Hayek's principles, and that Hayek has not successfully stated a comprehensive philosophy of freedom because he focuses on the type (...) and ignores the amount of coercion permissible in a free society. (shrink)

Durante los años 1880, Nietzsche propone una idea original de individuo en tanto pluralidad como un modo de superación del difundido nihilismo con respecto a la unidad. Sus escritos, tanto editados como inéditos, presentan una crítica aguda de la concepción heredada de unidad anímica y cultural acorde con la crisis de identidad que vive Europa en la segunda mitad del siglo xix. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar un hilo que va desde la biología celular hasta la filosofía de Nietzsche. Consideramos cómo (...) la biología celular, especialmente con Rudolph Virchow, inauguró la crítica de la noción de Individuum desde el plano orgánico. Eso constituyó un motivo fuerte en la psicología de los franceses Hippolyte Taine y Theódule Ribot, quienes transpusieron el problema al ámbito anímico y de la psicopatología. Ambos concluyeron con un fuerte cuestionamiento sobre la unidad y simplicidad del yo. Eso generó un profundo interés en la filosofía de Nietzsche que en repetidas ocasiones se refiere al Individuum como una multiplicidad de células. Finalmente, profundizaremos en el registro nietzscheano acerca del Individuum, ya que constituye uno de los costados del pensamiento sobre el Übermensch, que Nietzsche imagina inspirado en los grandes hombres del Renacimiento, como posible superación del nihilismo. Among possible ways that Nietzsche can take to deal with Nihilism and its challenges, he proposes an original idea of plural individual. His papers both published and unpublished, present a sharp critique of the inherited view of psychic and cultural unit. It was in line with the identity's crisis faced by Europe along the second half of the nineteenth century. Our goal is to show a thread that goes from cell biology to Nietzsche's philosophy. We see how cell biology, precisely through Rudolph Virchow, inaugurated the critique of the notion of organic Individuum from the organic field. It became a strong subject in the psychology of Hippolyte Taine and Theódule Ribot. They transposed the issue to the field of mind and psychopathology. Both concluded in a strong challenge on the self's unity and simplicity. This generated a deep concern in Nietzsche's philosophy. He repeatedly refers to Individuum as a multiplicity of cells. Finally, we will go in deep into the Nietzschean consideration about Individuum because this topic means one important aspect of the concept of Übermensch that Nietzsche imagines inspired by the great men of the Renaissance as a promising way out of Nihilism. (shrink)

In my various introductions, in addition to offering a humanistic setting for the selections presented, I have endeavored to provide an intellectual and historical context as well, and survey of the main problems with which they are concerned plus a review of the alternative solutions to these problems that philosophers have offered.

This book is the first to concentrate on the problems of individuation and identity in early modern philosophy and to trace their philosophical development through the period in a coherent way.

Individuals in the Social Lifeworld is an analysis of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world by asking how an individual Dasein (a person) interacts with their fellow Dasein (other people). Acknowledging that mineness is fundamental to Dasein, the book’s analysis uncovers Being-sphere as the existential place of Dasein that is formed through a person’s interactions with and involvements with the world. Being-sphere does not express any form of idealism but is an acknowledgment of what Being-in-the-world means for perception and individual responses to the world. (...) -/- Being-sphere provides valuable tools for social and political philosophy by seeing interpersonal relations as a dynamic interaction of individual Being-spheres (people). Using the concept of Being-sphere in social philosophy explains how a person is embedded in the world and how the world is an integral part of a person. The concept of Being-sphere avoids the problems of the Cartesian subject while at the same time acknowledging the person as a dynamic self-constituting rational and moral agent not wholly determined. It shows how people gain beliefs and use them as the basis for their worldviews and actions. -/- Being-sphere improves Heidegger’s concepts of das Man and Befindlichkeit and provides a broader conception of Dasein and its projection into its possibilities. Because it takes seriously Heidegger’s observation that subjectivity is the true world of Dasein, it can explain the way that a person encounters and appropriates anything in the world, particularly other people. Being-sphere also explains how people experience and are affected and changed by their experiences, revealing new depths of a person’s situatedness in the world and their relationship with society. (shrink)

In this brilliantly articulated new book, ethicist Jacquelyn Kegley carefully explicates and enlarges the scope of Roycean thought and shows that Royce's views on public philosophy have direct and valuable application to current social problems.

Since its publication in 1959, Individuals has become a modern philosophical classic. Bold in scope and ambition, it continues to influence debates in metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language, and epistemology. Peter Strawson's most famous work, it sets out to describe nothing less than the basic subject matter of our thought. It contains Strawson's now famous argument for descriptive metaphysics and his repudiation of revisionary metaphysics, in which reality is something beyond the world of appearances. Throughout, Individuals advances some (...) highly influential and controversial ideas, such as 'non-solipsistic consciousness' and the concept of a person a 'primitive concept'. (shrink)

This article discusses development of the content of the concept “Philosophy Steamer,” which refers to the 1922 expulsion from Russia of a group of intelligentsia who sharply criticized the authorities. The author shows that the group of exiled philosophers was united both by their previous philosophical and social activity and by their joint activity as émigrés. She analyzes the concepts of “historical collective individuality,” “collective person,” and “communal person” introduced by Lev P. Karsavin in order to determine the holistic (...) nature of this exiled social group and its characteristic self-consciousness, behavior, aspirations, and feelings (moods). Examining the event known as the “Philosophy Steamer” through the concepts listed above allows the author to cognize the historical, social, and cultural reality more broadly and productively. The article demonstrates that the concept of a collective person can also be applied to other social groups, thereby extending the methodology of human-studies cognition beyond the study of facts and statistical data. (shrink)

The issue of knowing what it means for a group to have collective beliefs is being discussed more and more in contemporary philosophy of the social sciences and philosophy of mind. Margaret Gilbert’s reconsideration of Durkheim’s viewpoint in the framework of the plural subject’s account is one of the most famous. This has implications in the history and the sociology of science—as well asin the history and sociology of philosophy—although Gilbert only outlined them in the former fields (...) and said nothing about the latter. Symmetrically but independently, a historian of science, Mara Beller, has recently challenged Kuhn’s conception of the role of consensus in sciences in a brilliant analysis by carefully studying the history of Copenhagen School of Quantum Mechanics. Not only does she show the role of disagreement and controversies (doubting whether there was any collective belief characteristic in this group of physicists), but she even shakes up the very idea of individual beliefs. Each scientist (Heisenberg, Bohr, etc.) could be seen as divided into several selves. This paper contends that these two conceptions open important new horizons in several domains, especially if they are linked together. The paper assesses this claim in the light of empirical examples like the Vienna Circle, Copenhagen School, and, eventually, Cartesian philosophy. Key Words: plural subject • polyphony • collective briefs • Cartesian argumentation. (shrink)

This thought-provoking classic investigates how the Renaissance spirit fundamentally questioned and undermined medieval thought. Of value to students of literature, political theory, history of religious and Reformation thought, and the history of science.

ABSTRACTScholarship on medieval philosophy has rightfully acknowledged the historical and systematical merit of Avicenna’s thought in all divisions of philosophy. Avicenna however did not...

Laura Hengehold presents a new, Deleuzian reading of Simone de Beauvoir's phenomenology, the place of recognition in The Second Sex, the philosophical issues in her novels, the important role of her student diaries and her early interest in Bergson and Leibniz.

A short overview of the theories of Individuality in early modern philosophy.

This paper is an amended version of a talk Saul Kripke gave at the Eastern Division meeting of the APA in 1992 (an extended abstract was previously published as Kripke, 1992). It contains philosophical reflections and technical results concerning “Carnapian” quantified modal logic, that is, modal logic with quantification over individual concepts. The paper contains the fullest statement by the author available of (un)axiomatizability results he obtained in the 1970s. (The Editors.).

For generations of scholars the emergence of the notion of human subjectivity has marked the shift to philosophical modernity. Mainly traced back to Descartes’s founding of philosophy on the Cogito and to Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’, the rise of subjectivity has been linked to the rise of the modern age in terms of a reconsideration of reality starting from an analysis of the human self and consciousness. Consequently, it has been related to long-standing issues of identity, individuation and individuality (...) as a foremost topic on the agenda of the philosophers. Only in recent times, however, have comprehensive studies on early modern theories of subjectivity and individuality become available to scholars. […] Since the complexity of these topics and of their historiographical treatment is increasing, the only way to shed light on them is to intensify the debate itself. As a multi-authored collection of essays, the present issue of Society and Politics is not aimed at addressing or endorsing a particular position in these debates: rather, it questions and calls attention to the issues of subjectivity and individuality in their historical development, encouraging the debate on topics recently analysed. (shrink)

Georges Canguilhem s’est opposé à la médecine positiviste qui cherche à établir la normalité une fois pour toutes. Il a en revanche mis au centre de la médecine les individus, avec leurs variations et leurs subjectivités. D’un côté, il s’est concentré sur l’individu dans sa globalité, par opposition à ses organes et tissus ; d’un autre côté, il a soutenu qu’un individu n’est normal que par rapport à un milieu donné. Dans cet article, je soutiens que la conception de Canguilhem (...) du normal comme relatif à un individu et à son milieu est toujours d’une grande actualité. En même temps, je soutiens qu’il a négligé de développer certaines questions soulevées par sa propre philosophie. Notamment, il n’a pas pleinement analysé comment les individus en viennent à juger de leur propre normalité ni les conséquences sociales de leurs jugements. De même, il n’a pas considéré que tous les individus et groupes n’ont pas le même pouvoir de façonner leur milieu et le milieu des autres. L’approche holistique de Canguilhem à l’égard des êtres humains et de leur milieu fait que la question des jugements des individus sur leur propre normalité est plus complexe qu’il ne l’a reconnu. (shrink)

The Individual and the Political Order examines major theoretical perspectives, both historical and contemporary, in major issues in social and political philosophy. It combines accessibility with appreciation of philosophical complexity and discusses applied issues, such as morality and war, as well as theoretical approaches to justice, rights, and democratic liberal thought.

This provocative volume, one of the most important interpretive works on the philosophical thought of the Renaissance, has long been regarded as a classic in its field. Ernst Cassirer here examines the changes brewing in the early stages of the Renaissance, tracing the interdependence of philosophy, language, art, and science; the newfound recognition of individual consciousness; and the great thinkers of the period—from da Vinci and Galileo to Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno. _The Individual and the Cosmos in (...) Renaissance Philosophy_ discusses the importance of fifteenth-century philosopher Nicholas Cusanus, the concepts of freedom and necessity, and the subject-object problem in Renaissance thought. “This fluent translation of a scholarly and penetrating original leaves little impression of an attempt to show that a ‘spirit of the age’ or ‘spiritual essence of the time’ unifies and expresses itself in all aspects of society or culture.”—_Philosophy_. (shrink)

In ‘Happiness and Human Flourishing’, Thomas E. Hill, Jr, contrasts Kant's notion of happiness with that of human flourishing, explains the role of happiness in Kant's ethics, and suggests some reasons why Kant portrays happiness rather than flourishing as the non-moral good of the individual. While there is much I agree with in Hill's essay, I disagree with Hill on how best to conceive of human flourishing in Kant's philosophy, and on the importance of human flourishing in Kant's ethics. (...) Comparing my views with Hill's is not what chiefly interests me, however. After section 1, I make little explicit reference to ‘Happiness and Human Flourishing’. Instead, I seek to expand the discussion begun there by Hill of ‘how happiness and human flourishing are relevant to [Kantian] ethics’. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper provides an introduction to three translations of articles by Soviet philosopher Boris Hessen: “Mechanical Materialism and Modern Physics,” “On Comrade Timiryazev’s Attitude towards Contemporary Science” and “Marian Smoluchowski (On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death)”. It begins by presenting a central tension in Hessen’s work; namely, how even though he is better known for the externalism of his 1931 Newton paper, much of his work has been considered exemplary of an internalist approach. I then show that for Hessen, (...) the history of modern science was defined by the discovery of the dialectical unity in opposition between dynamic and statistical regularity. This not only sheds important light on Hessen’s understanding of causation, but also reconciles the aforementioned tension by showing his approach to the relationship between individuals and collectives in the study of physical phenomena, along with the relationship between individual scientists and socioeconomic conditions. (shrink)

The relationship between the individual and society is the leitmotif of Georges Gurvitch’s work. Beginning from the early Russian-language books on the philosophy of law and ending with the works on sociology published in France and the USA at the final stage of his career, Gurvitch studied the individual person and collective units as interacting sides of the collective social subject. He sought to overcome the struggle between individualism and collectivism which found its ideological expression in the rivalry of (...) the French (Emile Durkheim) and German (Max Weber) schools of sociology. Gurvitch formulated the concept of society as dynamic interaction and mutual determination of the individual and collective unit. In his Russian-language works, written before his emigration, he maintained that it was in the sphere of law that one could determine how the individual and society mutually condition each other and determine the direction of social development. In the late 1920s and early 1930s in his teaching on social law, Gurvitch formulated the concept of sociability which enabled him to focus attention not on the confrontation, but on the interaction of the individual and society. In the concept of “normative fact” he defined the being of society and embodied the dialectical interaction between singularity and multitude. In the late 1930s in his teaching on microsociology, he introduced criteria of sociability, recording individual (intensity of the fusion of individual minds) and collective (the force of social pressure) aspects of the process of social development. Proceeding from these criteria Gurvitch developed a gradation of sociability, expressing it in the scheme “mass — community — communion” which enabled him to analyse the formation of collective units and determine the features of their existence. In his article “Mass, Community, and Communion” (1941) he presented the forms of sociability which enabled him to describe the mutual conditioning of individuals and collective units. Gurvitch’s article spells out the key principles of his philosophy and sociology of law which overcome individualism and collectivism in his account of society. (shrink)

Leibniz's earliest philosophy and its importance for his mature philosophy have not been examined in detail, particularly in the level of detail that one can achieve by placing Leibniz's philosophy in the context of the sources for two of the most basic concerns of his philosophical career: his metaphysics of individuals and the principle oftheir individuation. In this book I provide for the first time a detailed examination of these two Leibnizian themes and trace its implications (...) for how we should interpret other major Leibnizian themes and for how we should read Leibniz and other philosophers of the sixteenth and later centuries as 'modem' philosophers. Leibniz began his philosophical career more than 300 years ago, a fact that shapes fundamentally my attempt in the pages that follow to come to terms now with the texts that he left us. Leibniz's did not do philosophy in a way wholly congenial to twentieth century philosophical methodologies, especially those that have enjoyed some prominence in recent Anglo-American philosophy. Moreover, as we shall see, Leibniz is not a modem philosopher, when 'modem' is understood to mean making a sharp break with medieval philosophy. Indeed, I shall argue, scholars should discard such terms as 'modem' from historical philosophical scholarship, so that old texts can be allowed to remain old - to stand on their own in and from times now long past. (shrink)

What is the best way to understand the narratives of self-identity at the beginning of the 21st century? This interdisciplinary collection brings together perspectives from analytical psychology, sociology, psychiatry, psychosocial studies and psychoanalysis to consider questions about individuation and freedom in our disconnected world. The contributors discuss the meaning of, and need for, individuation in individualized and liquid societies. The book begins with a comparison of three approaches: C.G. Jung's individuation, Ulrich Beck's individualization, and Zygmunt Bauman's liquidity. (...) This sets the tone for further consideration of topics including guilt, social media, global nomads, and surveillance. Theoretical reflections are enhanced by clinical material, and the book emphasises the connections between sociology and psychoanalysis, offering significant insights into the importance of psychosocial approaches. This timely work will be of great interest to academics and scholars of psychosocial studies, Jungian studies, sociology and politics. (shrink)

Reasonable individuals can disagree about philosophical questions. This disagreement sometimes takes the form of conflicting intuitions; the seminar room provides many examples. Experimental philosophers, who have devoted themselves to the systematic study of intuitions, have found empirical support for what anecdotes suggest. Their data often reveals that a significant minority of subjects have intuitions counter to those of the majority.1 A recent replication of [Knobe, 2003a] discovered three distinct subgroups of subjects with three distinct patterns of response. Only about one-third (...) of subjects gave the expected asymmetric responses to Knobestyle probes. The other two-thirds gave symmetric responses to harm and help probes, with about half judging side-effects were intentional in both harm and help cases and half judging that they were intentional in neither [Nichols and Ulatowski, 2007]. (shrink)

Criticisms of the “container” model of pregnancy picturing female and embryo as separate entities multiply in various philosophical and scientific contexts during the last decades. In this paper, we examine how this model underlies received views of pregnancy in evolutionary biology, in the characterization of the transition from oviparity to viviparity in mammals and in the selectionist explanations of pregnancy as an evolutionary strategy. In contrast, recent evo-devo studies on eutherian reproduction, including the role of inflammation and new maternal cell (...) types, gather evidence in favor of considering pregnancy as an evolved relational novelty. Our thesis is that from this perspective we can identify the emergence of a newhistoricalindividual in evolution. In evo-devo, historical units are conceptualized as evolved entities which fulfill two main criteria, their continuous persistence and their non-exchangeability. As pregnancy can be individuated in this way, we contend that pregnant females are historical individuals. We argue that historical individuality differs from, and coexists with, other views of biological individuality as applied to pregnancy (the physiological, the evolutionary and the ecological one), but brings forward an important new insight which might help dissolve misguided conceptions. (shrink)

Was ist ein Einzelding? Gibt es ein erstes und letztes Prinzip, das erlaubt, etwas als Einzelnes und Eines anzusprechen? Lasst sich das Einzigartige und Einmalige mit den Mitteln des Denkens erfassen? Ist menschliche Individualitat ein Apriori oder eine empirische Konstruktion? Die Untersuchung erschliesst ontologische und ethische Grundzuge der Individuationsfrage im Gesprach mit drei ihrer Hauptstationen, die ihrerseits in einem dichten Geflecht von Verweisen, Anknupfungen und Anverwandlungen stehen. Sie kann als Beitrag zur Individuationstheorie wie auch als problemorientierte Einfuhrung in die behandelten (...) Positionen gelesen werden.Nietzsches Individuationsgedanke wird einerseits im Willen zur Macht als dem ontologischen principium individuationis der perspektivisch zerstreuten Realitat geortet, andererseits - anhand einer Neulekture zentraler Nachlass-Stellen - in dem abgrundlichsten Gedanken der ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen, der eine ethische (im Sinne Nietzsches: esoterische) Selbstpositionierung des Menschen vor dem Ganzen des Seienden erfordert.Als zweite Station erortert die Untersuchung Leibnizens monadologische Theorie einer absoluten Individualitat in ihren ontologischen Wesenszugen und im Hinblick auf das daraus erwachsende moralische Postulat einer universellen Harmonie, mit dem Leibniz die unter umgekehrten Vorzeichen auch Nietzsches Denken umtreibende Frage nach dem ontologisch-ethischen Verhaltnis von Perspektivitat und (moglicher oder negierter) Totalitat beantwortet.Mit der Thematisierung des aristotelischen Individuationsgedankens wird die Individuationsfrage in ihren massgeblich gewordenen Ursprung zuruckverfolgt. Besprochen werden u.a. die Frage nach der Bestimmbarkeit des Einzeldings als erster ousia, die entelechiale Wesensverfassung des Lebens, die Struktur des bestimmend-eingrenzenden logos sowie die Moglichkeit einer ethischen Selbstindividuation des Menschen im Spiel von Entgrenzung und Selbsthaltung. (shrink)