
The massive importance of the individuals is shown by many of our time’s most fundamental ideals and organizations. Ideals like individual liberty, freedom of speech, the right to self-determination, etc., demonstrate that (human) individuals are not only valued as autonomous creatures but also as a source of creativity and innovation. This is related to the belief that no individual can be fully explained in terms of what she has in common with other individuals. What allows this kind of belief to be established? And how does it work? How is it connected with the totality of an individual’s experience, capacities, and social as well as natural environment?
Although individualistic theories have been somewhat discredited during the past few decades, the reconciliation of demands concerning individual freedom with issues concerning societal welfare is still an open challenge to modern democratic societies. Following some suggestions by Louis Dumont, and taking the expression from Fontenay, we take “homo individualis” to stand for a conceptual structure accounting for human beings that are (in many ways) conscious of themselves as intrinsic singularities, both value-laden and non-reducible to any physical, biological, mental or even social determination.
The research hypothesis of this project is that individuality consciousness is linked with the capacity to refer to oneself non-criterially and non-qualitatively, and that this goes together with the capacity to be aware of oneself as also an “empty” and “indeterminate” “pure ego.”
Based on this hypothesis, the project will investigate the conditions of possibility, the overall structure, and the consequences in terms of drives, social capacities and social behavior, of homo individualis. Clarifying the nature of homo individualis will, thus, enable a better understanding of what her “nature” (in a sense to be defined) demands, and, thus, what her well-being and her flourishing could amount to, as well as which kind of societies are able to harmonize the need for, and the protection and fostering of, individuality with the common good.