Anindividual is one that exists as a distinctentity.Individuality (orself-hood) is the state or quality of living as an individual; particularly (in the case of humans) as aperson unique from other people and possessing one's ownneeds orgoals,rights andresponsibilities. The concept of an individual features in many fields, includingbiology,law, andphilosophy. 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.[1]
From the 15th century and earlier (and also today within the fields ofstatistics andmetaphysics)individual meant "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person". From the 17th century on, anindividual has indicated separateness, as in individualism.[2]
Inbiology, the question of the individual is related to the definition of anorganism, which is an important question in biology and thephilosophy of biology, despite there having been little work devoted explicitly to this question.[3] An individual organism is not the only kind of individual that is considered as a "unit ofselection".[3]Genes,genomes, or groups may function as individual units.[3]
Asexual reproduction occurs in some colonial organisms so that the individuals are genetically identical. Such a colony is called agenet, and an individual in such a population is referred to as a ramet. The colony, rather than the individual, functions as a unit of selection. In other colonial organisms, individuals may be closely related to one another but may differ as a result ofsexual reproduction.
Although individuality and individualism are commonly considered to mature with age/time and experience/wealth, asane adulthuman being is usually considered by thestate as an "individual person" in law, even if the person denies individualculpability ("I followed instructions").
An individual person isaccountable for their actions/decisions/instructions, subject toprosecution in both national and international law, from the time that they have reached theage of majority, often though not always more or less coinciding with the granting ofvoting rights, responsibility for payingtax,military duties, and the individualright to bear arms (protected only under certain constitutions).
InBuddhism, the concept of the individual lies inanatman, or "no-self". According to anatman, the individual is really a series of interconnected processes that, working together, give the appearance of being a single, separated whole. In this way, anatman, together withanicca, resembles a kind ofbundle theory. Instead of an atomic, indivisible self distinct from reality, the individual in Buddhism is understood as an interrelated part of an ever-changing, impermanent universe (seeInterdependence,Nondualism,Reciprocity).
Empiricists such asIbn Tufail[4] in early 12th century Islamic Spain andJohn Locke in late 17th century England viewed the individual as atabula rasa ("blank slate"), shaped from birth by experience and education. This ties into the idea of the liberty and rights of the individual, society as asocial contract betweenrational individuals, and the beginnings ofindividualism as a doctrine.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel regarded history as the gradual evolution of the Mind as it tests its own concepts against the external world. Each time the mind applies its concepts to the world, the concept is revealed to be only partly true, within a certain context; thus the mind continually revises these incomplete concepts so as to reflect a fuller reality (commonly known as the process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis). The individual comes to rise above their own particular viewpoint,[5] and grasps that they are a part of a greater whole[6] insofar as they are bound to family, a social context, and/or a political order.
With the rise ofexistentialism,Søren Kierkegaard rejected Hegel's notion of the individual as subordinated to the forces of history. Instead, he elevated the individual's subjectivity and capacity to choose their own fate. Later Existentialists built upon this notion.Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, examines the individual's need to define his/her own self and circumstances in his concept ofthe will to power and the heroic ideal of theÜbermensch. The individual is also central toSartre's philosophy, which emphasizes individual authenticity, responsibility, andfree will. In both Sartre and Nietzsche (and inNikolai Berdyaev), the individual is called upon to create their own values, rather than rely on external, socially imposed codes of morality.
Ayn Rand'sObjectivism regards every human as an independent, sovereign entity that possesses an inalienable right to their own life, a right derived from their nature as a rational being. Individualism and Objectivism hold that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among humans, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition ofindividual rights — and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations. Since only an individual man or woman can possess rights, the expression "individual rights" is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos), but the expression "collective rights" is a contradiction in terms. Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; amajority has no right to vote away the rights of aminority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).[7][8]
^G. A. Russell (1994),The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, pp. 224–62,Brill Publishers,ISBN90-04-09459-8.
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