Individual

INDIVIDUAL. - I. PHILOSOPHY. - Commonly the term i. is used to signify concrete reality, that is, reality essentially determined in itself and therefore by its nature incommunicable, such as it is given or can be given in experience.

The Latin adjective individuum corresponds to the Greek ἄτομος, and therefore etymologically it is equivalent to indivisible; such in fact was its fundamental meaning in the usage of classical Latinity. The first technical use of the noun ἄτομος is found in Democritean terminology, where it indicates the ultimate indivisible element of the physical world. Plato used the term εἶδος ἄτομον to signify the idea not further divisible into other inferior ideas, that is, the infima species that is realized in the material world; and he used the word ἄτομον to signify a singular concrete whole (Soph., XVI, 229 b). Aristotle identified the reality of the εἶδος ἄτομον with the reality of the οὐσία πρώτη and of every other essence, affirming that no reality can exist other than concrete or singular reality (cf. Met., VI, chs. 4 and 8). Singular reality is called by Aristotle τὸ δὲ τι or ἐν τι καὶ τὸ δὲ τι (which the medievals translated literally as unum quid et hoc aliquid) and also, with a plural term, τὸ καθ' ἕκαστα, that is, singulars. After Boethius the Latin term individuum surpassed its etymological meaning to assume the Aristotelian meaning of concrete reality, in opposition to every universal reality or abstract concept. According to this fundamental acceptation the term passed into common usage.

The philosophical doctrine of the i. has epistemological, ontological and logical developments. From the epistemological aspect, the i. is the concrete intelligible object. As such, its content consists of intelligible notes referred to the empirical datum present to sense with its actual spatio-temporal determinations, as for example when one considers "this tree" or "this man." By virtue of this reference, the human intellect is able to reach concrete reality, to distinguish this i. from that one, and to formulate judgments of experience (v. JUDGMENT; INTUITION). From the metaphysical aspect, the i. is the concrete entity. The commonly accepted Thomistic definition "entity undivided in itself and divided from every other" (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 29, a. 4) is a formula that seeks to take account of the etymology in order to bring out how the concrete entity is essentially one, and as one undivided and such as to be distinct from every other. In this sense the i. is reality essentially determined, by its nature incommunicable, and as is commonly said today, unrepeatable and punctual. If the i. by its own individual determinations differs from other i.'s, it nevertheless remains similar to them in its specific notes, and therefore is intrinsically sufficient to ground legitimate common essential concepts, both analogous and univocal. From the logical aspect, the i. is the concrete subject, that is, that term of which the others are predicated and which is not predicable of any other. It is from this point of view that i. and singular coincide (v. SINGULAR).

The doctrine of the i. has its integration in the doctrine of the principle of individuation (v.), and of the person (v.). In our day it has special relevance because it allows one to evaluate certain motifs proper to contemporary existentialism, for example, the vindication of the singularity of individual existence as against the transcendental idealist conception. Such a vindication is more than legitimate, provided it is not exasperated to the point of denying the specific similarity of i.'s; otherwise existential philosophy would logically end up resolving itself into a philosophy devoid of common essential concepts, that is, into a form of ineffable and incommunicable solipsism. The philosophical problem is not resolved by opposition, but by the balanced synthesis of essence and existence. v. INDIVIDUALISM.

Francesco Morandini

II. SCIENCE

Every living being that is indivisible, capable of autonomous life and endowed with distinctive characteristics of its own may be called an individual. These three attributes, however, fit the empirical concept, but they are not sufficient for a rigorous definition because they cannot be determined objectively by precise and general criteria.

Indivisibility, inherent in the etymology of the word individual, is lacking in cases of fragmentation of the individual unity through fission, gemmation, etc. (v. RIPRODUZIONE). The products of such processes may become free or may remain temporarily or permanently joined to one another in homoeomorphic or polymorphic colonies, as happens in numerous protozoa, worms, coelenterates, echinoderms, tunicates, and in plants susceptible to vegetative multiplication by stolons, cuttings, layers, etc.; if the division has been brought about experimentally, regeneration of the missing parts occurs. Equal perplexity about the limits of the individual may arise in the face of the emergence of two or more free units from a single egg (monovular twins, polyembryony of the insect litomastix truncatellus and of the armadillo tatusia hybrida) or from a single larva (paedogenesis with sporogony of the worm fasciola hepatica; v. also ANIMAZIONE; GEMELLI). And the difficulties increase if one moves into the field of natural or experimental anomalies (Siamese twins; grafted plants and animal or plant chimeras in which organs and tissues of different species or races are associated with a viable outcome).

Equally problematic is the definition of autonomy. Between patent dependence on other organisms and more or less pronounced self-sufficiency, numerous intermediate cases can be found, which justify the disparities of judgment. Thus a certain autonomy can be discerned in the fertilizing arm or hectocotylus of the male argonaut, in the leucocytes of the blood, in tissues and organs cultivable in vitro, and finally in the individual cells of multicellular organisms. On the other hand, physiological autonomy can be denied, despite morphological autonomy, to parasites, to symbionts and to the components of an insect society. Finally, even the presence of peculiar characteristics lends itself to controversies of appraisal. In fact, apart from the frequent difficulty of practically separating such characteristics from the collective ones proper to the group of belonging (race or species) and of distinguishing transitory environmental influences from the action of intrinsic factors, it should be noted that individual characteristics for the most part vary temporally to a greater or lesser degree: the modifications are imposing during embryogenesis, and, in cases of metamorphosis, also after birth; but, strictly speaking, no individual remains unaltered in the successive instants of its life. On the other hand, characteristics can be quite similar in individuals that have the same genetic patrimony (monovular twins, pure lines, clones). Finally, exclusive peculiarities can be found in symbiotic associations: thus in lichens the alga and the fungus, although they can also live separately, acquire, when associated, a functional individuality marked by characteristics that the individual components lack.

From these observations have derived the divergences of views in the definitions of the individual that have historically succeeded one another, on which the knowledge acquired and the theoretical conceptions current from time to time have also exerted an influence.

As long as the fixist-discontinuous doctrine prevailed, the elementarity of the individual, as a component of the species and of the other systematic entities, was accepted without discussion in its empirical meaning. Its unitary value was, at first, accentuated by continuous evolution which, following the example of Lamarck, considered individuals as the only natural realities and taxonomic complexes as transitory appearances (v. CLASSIFICAZIONE). But precisely from this revaluation there derived the disintegration of the concept of the individual when an attempt was made to define its meaning rationally. In fact, on the one hand the cell theory pushed to micromerism, on the other the progress of knowledge about generation and about forms of associated life, led, under the influence of materialism and mechanism, to asserting the divisibility of the individual into progressively subordinate units, down to the final and hypothetical vital units (biononodi, biofori, bionolecole). Hierarchies of individuals of different order or grade were thus instituted, each of which was considered as resulting from the association of individuals of a lower grade. Thus in his "scale of morfonts" Haeckel placed in ascending order the cell or plastid, the animal person or the plant shoot, the colony or sormo. And while on the one hand societies with separate elements and even entire metagenetic cycles were considered individuals, on the other all multicellular beings were held to be colonial, with the vestiges of ancient linear colonies being discerned in their more or less conspicuous metamerism.

The subsequent discoveries about vital phenomena affecting the organism in its totality (neuro-endocrine processes, totipotency of the egg, directing action of organizers, phenomena of vicariation and self-regulation, relations between somatic cells and germ cells) and the evaluation of psychological elements and, for man, spiritual ones rejected by materialism or interpreted by it in mechanical terms that proved untenable, discredited the mosaicist tendency and replaced it with the opposite tendency which considers the individual, in its usual acceptation, as a unitary totality in the complex of its manifestations, independently of its morpho-anatomical structure. Among certain expressions, however disputed, of this tendency, one may count the modern holistic conceptions, which some trace back to W. Goethe and according to which the individual is an indivisible whole, not identifiable in the simple sum of its parts, but rather governing the parts themselves. Within the same framework one may place the current biotypological and constitutionalist conceptions relating to the human person in its indivisible somato-psychic and spiritual unity.

In the definition of the individual, then, one encounters difficulties similar to those relating to the definitions of taxonomic complexes and which may be summed up in the impossibility of drawing exact limits that are natural and valid in all cases. In any case it must be borne in mind that individuality, as a synthesis of peculiar characteristics, is not necessarily exclusive to the single individual, but can also manifest itself in collectivities, when their isolated members lack certain attributes recognizable in their whole: thus a society of insects has its own individuality, although it is composed of numerous individuals. On the other hand, individuality can become evident or can be attenuated in the successive stages of development: the first case is found in the aforementioned phenomena of polyembryony, paedogenesis, vegetative multiplication; the second in those of parasitism or late symbiosis. This leads to the necessity of considering the individual not only statically in space as a harmonious and distinct whole of parts, but also in its temporal dynamism as the whole of all its phases of development and activity: in this sense an egg or a larva are, rather than individuals, transitory stages of the individual. Moreover the individual presents not only exclusive characteristics, but also all the characteristics proper to the systematic group to which it belongs (race, species, etc.) and therefore its value cannot be fully understood when it is considered in isolation and cut off from the complex of belonging. Finally it may be observed that the uncertainties about the limits of the individual become gradually attenuated as one passes from the germ to the adult and from lower to higher organisms, that is, with the progress of morpho-physiological differentiation. In man the individual acquires that completeness which allows it the appellation of "person."

In conclusion, it can be said that modern views have reappraised the natural concept of the individual, while the question of its exact delimitation is no longer considered timely, inasmuch as it is not necessary in order to affirm its objectivity and its practical graspability.

Sergio Beer

III. ETHNOLOGY

There have been, especially in the second half of the last century, and there still are today, scholars of ethnology, history of religions and related sciences who in the life of peoples have denied and deny any value to the individual in relation to society. Only a few of the very many testimonies that could be adduced of this theory, so grave in its consequences for the aforementioned sciences, are reported here. Bastian asserted that the thought of the individual is sterile; only social thought is fruitful, producing the psychic creations that the spirit can contemplate and study. Indeed, he added, it would be better to say that the thought of the individual receives the possibility of its existence only after and within social thought. When man, as a social being, has cast his reflections upon the ethnic horizon, that is, into the social products of customs, usages, myths, legends, languages, etc., then he will be able to observe himself and, with a good method of analysis, every individuality will reveal itself anew. For in reality man exists only as a social being: the individual exists only in abstraction. This "psychology of the thought of peoples" would be ethnology (Der Völkergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Menschen, Berlin 1886, pp. 6-20).

Gumplowicz, an Austrian sociologist, maintained even more vigorously than Bastian that "the greatest error of individual psychology is to suppose that man thinks. From this error arise the perpetual inquiries into the source of the individual's intellectual activity, into the causes that make him think in one way rather than another, from which theologians and naive philosophers take the occasion to make considerations and indeed to give advice on how man ought to think. For in the first place, what thinks in man is not he, but the society that surrounds him; the source of his intellectual activity is not in him, but in the social environment in which he lives, in the social atmosphere that he breathes, and he cannot think otherwise than as the influences of the social environment, which concentrate in his brain, will" (Grundriss der Soziologie, Vienna 1885, p. 167).

Post, the founder of juridical ethnology, held that individual psychology cannot serve as a basis for science, because only a small part of psychic life reaches the individual's knowledge; the greater part escapes him everywhere. Noting that individual psychology had remained stationary from the time of the Greeks down to our own day, he added: "But an immense progress will be possible when, in place of individual psychology, social psychology is put, when, basing itself on the customs and social ideas of all the peoples of the earth, a history of the evolution of human consciousness is written. The great idea of the social science of our times is that it strives to know the nature of the human spirit from its influences in every field of the life of peoples" (Die Grundlage des Rechts und Grundzüge seiner Entwicklungsgeschichte. Leitgedanken für den Aufbau einer allgemeinen Rechtswissenschaft auf soziologischer Basis, Oldenburg 1884, p. 478; id., Einleitung in das Studium der ethnologischen Jurisprudenz, ibid. 1886, p. 10). In short, reading these authors one has the clear impression that society is considered as a living being that thinks, wills, acts, realizes — that is, the qualities proper to the individual are attributed to it; hence a true overturning of values.

It is enough, however, to reflect for a moment on the fact that all modern progress in the sciences and their applications is chiefly the fruit of individual efforts, and the colossal error of this position immediately becomes evident, whereby the value of the individual is admitted among peoples of high civilization but denied among those of inferior civilization.

Vierkandt, for example, while vigorously combating this mentality, admitted it at first for primitive peoples. "The difference in the position of the individual — he says — with respect to the totality of barbarian peoples and of civilized peoples consists generally in this, that among the former it rises less above the others than among the latter. We can apply to this difference the two terms bound individual and free individual, inasmuch as the first is characterized by the subjection of his will, his feeling and his thought to the corresponding characteristics of the community, while the second is distinguished by a relative independence with respect to these characteristics. The free individual is possible only in full civilization; among savage and semi-civilized peoples, even the great individuals, who have an important practical and political activity, do not rise above the mass except by their dynamic qualities, not from a theoretical point of view. The gregarious instinct of man is revealed so strongly in this period of time that the individual there is nothing but 'a living animal in a herd'" (Herdengeschöpf: A. Vierkandt, Naturvölker und Kulturvölker, Berlin 1896, p. 171).

Spencer, in his work Principles of Sociology (London 1876; Italian trans., Padua 1922), treating of the original external and internal factors of social phenomena, recognized the necessity of studying them historically. This he did by showing what present-day primitive man is like in the physical, emotional and intellectual respect, because he considered him the most faithful representative of prehistoric man. He is an individual lacking abstract ideas and principles, lacking inventive imagination, a credulous being, who has no religious idea or feeling, nor moral sentiments. In conclusion, Spencer expresses how he conceived the whole individual in function of society. "The reader — he says — will have seen that the intellectual characters of the savage are found again among civilized children. As a final clarification we shall indicate that the development of the highest intellectual faculties always goes hand in hand with social progress, as cause and at the same time as consequence. The progress of primitive man is retarded by the absence of capacities which progress alone can bring to birth" (Principles of Sociology, Italian trans., p. 17). Also Th.-W. Danzel said in more recent times that "the individual of a primitive group or community is almost fully lost in the life of his community. The thought and conduct of the primitive are collective, etc." (Kultur und Religion des primitiven Menschen, Stuttgart 1924, p. 5). Great has been the importance of this theory when one reflects that from it have arisen various theories on the origin of society, of the family, of the State, of morality and of religion, such as the school of Durkheim and of Lévy-Bruhl, the animism of Tylor, the various opinions on the origin of religion from the different forms of magic, that is, from the irrational.

It is a very great merit of Fr. Schmidt, as Lowie, Koppers and Mühlmann acknowledge, to have reacted forcefully against this false evaluation of the individual, as well as against the methodological errors that derived from it, and to have practically encouraged research on the individual among primitive peoples. In his important work L'ethnologie moderne, in which he set out the program of the valiant international journal of ethnology and linguistics Anthropos, founded by him in 1906, he clearly pointed out the false path on which ethnology had set out. "Modern ethnology — he said — is entirely dominated by collectivist principles; one cannot doubt the great diffusion of these ideas. We must add that in practice these principles govern ethnological studies far more sovereignly than one might imagine from the theoretical statements we have cited. One can simply say that studies other than those of the group are unknown to the ethnology of our times. Modest beginnings in other directions, which appear here and there, cannot be regarded as substantial changes, because they have often been inspired by very different motives, although in certain tendencies we note with satisfaction that they contribute to breaking the empire of collectivism" (p. 617).

Fr. Schmidt has always held that ethnology is the science of the group, the science of peoples; indeed he has recognized for it a very broad specific field, defining it as the science whose object is the development of the spirit and of man's external activity, conducted by the spirit, in the life of peoples. But at the same time he saw the necessity of studying the variations and the different evaluations of a people's civilization, arising from the individual, without which one cannot have an exact knowledge of the current state of civilization, from which ethnology starts in order to make its historical reconstruction. Therefore, in proposing the study of the individual among primitive peoples, he rightly observed that one must not be content to ascertain and study the great agglomerations of peoples and tribes and their universal conceptions, customs and usages, but must direct attention to the fluctuations and variations within these agglomerations, whether they proceed from small groups, or from certain isolated families, or principally from particular individuals. In this last respect, importance must be given principally to those individuals who stand out from their environment through exceptional talents, whether for the arts and crafts or for war, or in the social, intellectual and religious order; the object of particular study must be their entire formation, what they have received from the environment surrounding them and the influence they exert around them. In all this there is, as Fr. Schmidt rightly notes, only the negative side of the problem, insofar as one ascertains how one or more individuals stand out from the community. But it is even more important to study when and how certain individuals can act positively on society, supplying, adding, enriching and perfecting, whether by developing what is already there, or by introducing more or less original innovations into it.

Mühlmann points out the necessity and the greater importance of biographies of the primitive individual, made from the psychological aspect of personality, using the accounts of relatives, neighbors, friends and enemies about the life of the individual in question, or even autobiographies, from which biographies and autobiographies one can see the influences that the individual receives from others and exerts on others, and therefore better understand the civilization of primitive peoples.

After the alarm raised by Fr. Schmidt, studies on the primitive individual in relation to society and in general multiplied. Vierkandt himself, who, as has been seen, had paid his tribute to the common current that entirely devalued the primitive individual, changed his mind and published his study on Leading Individuals among Primitive Peoples. There have been scholars, such as Leroy, Bellon, Krause, Lowie, Schmidt, who have criticized in a general way the various theories that found religion, morality and social life on the irrational, and have rejected the French sociological school of Durkheim, especially the prelogism of Lévy-Bruhl. Missionaries, explorers and scholars of every nation have turned their attention to the primitive individual in every part of the world. Among many, mention is made here of Fr. Koppers for the Yamana of Tierra del Fuego, Koch-Grünberg for the primitives of the Amazon River in Brazil, Nordenskiöld for the Chiriguano and the Ciané, Sapper for the Checina, Radin for the Winnebago, Fr. Schebesta for the Pygmies of the Ituri and of the Malay Peninsula, Stephan for the primitives of New Pomerania in Melanesia, Beck, Knabenhaus and Basedow for those of Australia, etc. With regard to the latter, given the greatest importance that the evolutionist authors and especially the French sociological school have attributed to them, it will be interesting to report here the judgment of Basedow, who took part in 15 exploratory expeditions among them. "Among the members of a tribe — he says — one finds diversities of character and talents just as one observes in a modern society, including orators, warriors, artists and buffoons."

Studies on the individual undoubtedly need to be further developed; nevertheless, already twenty-five years ago they had set out on the right path. Koppers, in conclusion to a study of his, could affirm in 1928 that "in the light of the new investigations primitive peoples appear ever more rehabilitated. An old injustice has been repaired. I say an injustice (he added) because to deny a man individuality means in the end nothing other than to take away from him what belongs to him as specifically human. This has been given back to primitive peoples. By the power of facts the contrary a priori theories have been surpassed, and they can now be considered definitively destroyed" (Individualforschung unter den Primitiven [v. bibl.], p. 364). If the study of the individual is necessary for a correct knowledge of the current civilization of primitive peoples, as was said above, it is even more so for the ascertainment of cultural causality, closely linked to the determination of time. Precisely in this lies the inferiority of ethnology with respect to history founded on written documents, an inferiority already pointed out by Gräbner, since while in the latter one can ascertain the action of individuals, in the former one cannot yet ascertain it. The study of the myths of the tribe, especially a methodical investigation of the different figures of the ancestors and culture heroes, can, according to Schmidt, yield numerous traces of individual history. A clear case of this is found among the Maidu in the reformer Oankohtupeh, who brought the people back again to a higher form of the most ancient religion.

Luigi Vannicelli