Hegel's 'Individuality'

This book explores an overlooked area in Hegel studies: his use of `individuality (Individualität). Hegel joined a lively conversation, from Leibniz to Romanticism and beyond, about this novel concept/phenomenon. Successive chapters track Hegel s engagement, in such texts as the
Phenomenology
,
Encyclopedia
, and
Aesthetics
. Hegel s system tends to follow a syllogistic logic (universal, particular, singular), but `individuality departs from the norm. The category enacts a certain pragmatics (as against semantics or syntactics) regarding tacit assumptions at work or implicit terms of address, which requires active participation by a thinking subject charged with discerning individuality (which bars resort to explicit rules). The category reflexively implicates the user even in presuming an objective context.

`Individuality should not be confused with `individualism, wholly distinct in origin. Moreover, Hegel s
Aesthetics
embraces a paradoxical anachronism. Like `art itself, `individuality emerged as an essentially modern category, though one transferred to the past and to distant cultures.

1. On `Individuality . - 2. `Individuality Before Hegel. - 3. `Individuality in Hegel s Early Thought. - 4. `Individuality in the Phenomenology of Spirit (I). - 5. `Individuality in the Phenomenology of Spirit (II). - 6. Hegelian `Physics . - 7. Hegelian `Organics and `Anthropology . - 8. `Individuality in Hegel s Aesthetics (I). - 9. `Individuality in Hegel s Aesthetics (II).