Concept
Individual
Overview
An individual is one that exists as a distinct entity. Individuality (or self-hood) is the state or quality of living as an individual; particularly (in the case of humans) as a person unique from other people and possessing one's own needs or goals, rights and responsibilities. The concept of an individual features in many fields, including biology, law, and philosophy. Every individual contributes significantly to the growth of a civilization. Society is a multifaceted concept that is shaped and influenced by a wide range of different things, including human behaviors, attitudes, and ideas. The culture, morals, and beliefs of others as well as the general direction and trajectory of the society can all be influenced and shaped by an individual's activities.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Individual is discussed.
Consider the conception of the individual self. The individualistic school of England and France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was empirical in intent. It based its individualism, philosophically speaking, upon the belief that individuals are alone real, that classes and organizations are secondary and derived. They are artificial, while individuals are natural. In what way then can individualism be…
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
(This might imply either of two theories.) Either, if the individual named Socrates be eternal, and if the soul of Socrates be Socrates himself, then the soul of each individual is contained in the intelligible world. Or if, on the contrary, the individual named Socrates be not eternal, if the same soul can belong successively to several individuals, such as Socrates or Pythagoras, then (as Alcinoous, e.
Plotinus, Plotinos
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
The individual is something quite _new,_ and capable of _creating new things._ He is something absolute, and all his actions are quite his own. The individual in the end has to seek the valuation for his actions in himself: because he has to give an individual meaning even to traditional words and notions. His interpretation of a formula is at least personal, even if he does not create the formula itself: at least…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
In such circumstances it is called an individual, and the conditions of individuality are called rights. As surely as it affirms its individuality, so surely does it affirm such a sphere the two conceptions indeed are convertible.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph
This is hardly the view of the nineteenth century. It is possible that logically the individual is prior to the State; historically and in the order of Nature, the State is prior to the individual. In other words, such rights as every single personality possesses in a modern world do not belong to him by an original ordinance of Nature, but are slowly acquired in the growth and development of the social state.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Individual
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Ibn Tufayl
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Philosophy
- Individualism
- Philosophy of biology
- John Locke
- Übermensch
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Individual and group rights
- Metaphysics
- Law
- Organism
- Anattā
- Person
- Objectivism
- Statistics
- Søren Kierkegaard
- State (polity)
- Brill Publishers
- Tabula rasa
- Nikolai Berdyaev
- Buddhism
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Anarchism.