The genesis of individuality as a philosophical problem

Abstract

The article raises a number of philosophical problems related to the concept of “individuality”. The subject areas of philosophy, for which the conceptualization of individuality is important, are defi ned. The main plot is the opposition of the individual and the universal. Thus, the problem of the status of individuality has epistemological, axiological and ontological aspects. The article discusses possible options for conceptualizing individuality. The key point is the analysis of the individuality’s genesis and the establishment of its ontological status. The work emphasizes that the approach to the study of individuality should be precisely genetic, and not historical, because this is not a study of the past, but a study of the current present. The previously existing ideas about individuality still exist today. Thus, the problem of the genesis of individuality turns out to be not only the problem of defi nition and conceptualization, but also the problem of grasping an actually changing and transforming set of ideas. Therefore, the ontological status of individuality becomes a complex conceptual task, the outlines for the solution of which are presented in the article. It is worth noting that the genesis of individuality, as a philosophical problem, has remained on the periphery of philosophical research for a long time, although it was implicitly present in them, therefore this work is relevant.

Keywords

• individuality
• individual
• individuation
• genesis
• genetic method