Am I An Individual? Part 1

A Philosophical History of the Question

Part 1: Ancient to Early Modern Philosophy

Are you an individual? Sounds like a silly question, doesn’t it? You’re you, right? You aren’t anybody else. But it’s not quite that simple. First off, being good philosophers, we have to define our terms. What do we mean by “an individual?” There are many answers to that question. Let’s begin at the beginning.

Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophers, most notably Plato, said there are particulars (individual objects) and universals. Plato wrote that particular objects are the types of objects they are because they share a universal form. So, all those particular trees are trees because they partake of universal Treeness. And that means that each individual tree is less real than the universal Tree. That’s because any individual tree is only a poor copy of the universal Tree.

Sounds daft? Well, Plato’s conception can explain why we recognize things as the type of things they are. We can recognize that that’s a particular tree because we know the universal reality of treeness. We compare the particular things we experience with the forms of the universal to identify things. Plato said the way to understand anything is…