6Meaning and the Individual

GROUNDED IN THE historical process of accomplishing oneself and accomplishing things, a world of meaning may take shape into different forms. Whether it is exhibited internally in the form of ideas or unfolds externally into humanized reality, a world of meaning is always inseparable from the being of humans. Now, when considering the relation between the being of humans and a world of meaning, the individual or the person is an important aspect that cannot be ignored, because a world of meaning is first opened up and presented to the concrete individual or person. At a much broader level, the being of the individual possesses some sort of ontological priority: accomplishing oneself in the social sphere is likewise the concern of a specific individual. As a historical process, accomplishing things and accomplishing oneself and the consequent genesis of a world of meaning concerns the being of the individual at both the metaphysical and social level. Therefore, it is impossible to dodge the problem of the individual in a concrete consideration of a world of meaning.

The Individual from the Metaphysical Perspective

The Chinese term for “individual” (geti ), is composed of two characters. The character ge (), which means “a unit of,” expresses precisely that the individual is first of all a singular mode of being, and the pronoun “this” is usually used to express this singularity. The singularity linked to the pronoun “this” has bounded meaning: “this” individual is not “that” individual; in this sense, the individual is distinct from another. The other character composing this compound word geti is ti (), which could be translated as “body” or “substance.” The individual is at once “this” or “a unit” of “body” or “substance”; the body or substance not only gives the individual its reality, it also makes it become the bearer of different properties or determinations. As the bearer of diverse attributes and determinations, the individual is a concrete unity: the diverse attributes a specific individual possesses are always unified and interrelated in this “substance.” As for the latter aspect, the individual has at once singularity and specific unity. Philosopher Francoise Suárez (1548–1617) already noticed this link between “this” and “substance” when he called the individual an “individual unity,” even though his understanding of the individual pertains more to the theoretical trend of nominalism.1

As a unity, the individual contains its own system and structure; as soon as the original structure of the individual is fundamentally altered, the said individual no longer exists. If a piece of chalk crumbles, transforming into powder, it is no longer the individual piece of chalk it originally was, since the way it held together originally as a structured unity has been entirely altered. This touches upon the irreducible nature of the individual as well: the unity possessed by the individual is the individual’s basic form of being. If an individual disintegrates or is reduced to a more primary set of parts, the said individual correspondingly disappears. A piece of wooden furniture is made out of wood, but if a specific piece of furniture like a bookshelf is entirely disassembled it becomes nothing more than just wood and no longer exists as an individual piece of furniture; an animal consists of a skeleton, muscles, blood, and so on, but if a specific animal like a cow disintegrates into bones, flesh, blood, and so on, and is thereby reduced to those [more primary] parts, it ceases to be the individual it originally was. This irreducibility in a sense makes the individual the primary unity or the basic unit of being.2

As the primary unity or basic unit of being, the individual, although belonging to a definite species, cannot itself be further exemplified. For instance, human being as a species can be divided into such different individuals as Socrates and Confucius, but under Socrates and Confucius no further individual specimens of the human species can be differentiated. In connection with this fact, the fundamental characteristic of the individual is at times understood to be its “noninstantiability.”3 In terms of the relationship between name and object, noninstantiability is first linked to a proper name like Confucius or a qualified name such as “the current president of Peking University.” This link between the noninstantiability of individuals and proper or qualified names shows the uniqueness and singularity of individuals. Uniqueness means that each individual possesses attributes other individuals do not have, and singularity means there are no two completely identical individuals.

In the process of being, the individual continuously faces the issue of particularization. Individuals and particulars are often seen as the same type of phenomenon. According to this understanding, there is no substantial distinction between the individual and the particular.4 But in fact, the two cannot be simply equated. As stated previously, at the metaphysical level, the individual is first of all a specific unity, while particulars correspond to different positions of space and time: so concretely speaking, so-called particulars are the different positions of the individual in space and time. When considering the individual’s particularization, Jin Yuelin states: “The particularization of the individual is precisely the individual’s temporalization and spatialization.”5 The being of the individual unavoidably involves different relations of space and time. While growing, the human being, for instance, undergoes different stages of life, and ontologically speaking, such differences are presented through reciprocally distinguished relations of space and time (an individual human being respectively occupies different positions of space and time from youth to old age). The same individual always obtains particular form of being according to the different positions of space and time he or she occupies. This particularization of the individual in relation to space and time actualizes and concretizes the uniqueness of the individual.

Corresponding to the individual’s particularization in space and time is the problem pertaining to the changing and unchanging aspects of the individual. That the individual passes through different positions of space and time means that the individual is always experiencing alterations, due to which the question naturally arises: In what sense is the individual the same in the process of changing? This question concerns both the relationship between the individual and the universal, and that between the particular and the general. The individual’s alteration in space and time is the individual’s ceaseless formation of specific particulars; the individual’s particularization thus emerges through particulars, and so-called change is first and foremost the altering of particulars. However, the individual is simultaneously an individual belonging to a certain species; this belongingness of an individual to a corresponding species or that an individual is attributed to a species, presupposes that the individual possesses whatever is attributed to the species universally in common. That Confucius is subsumed under the species “human being” is due to the fact that he possesses the universal attributes of human being qua human, which includes possessing rationality, sociality, and so on. However, while universal or common attributes are within the individual, they always blend together into the specific being of the individual in the obtaining of a concrete form, which could be seen as the concretization of universals or concrete universals. On the one hand, a concrete universal is one of the universal attributes of a species; on the other hand, a concrete universal and an individual also integrally combine, emerging as one concrete form of being. In correspondence with this fact, we can also make a distinction between universal, concrete universal, and particular. The universal “human being” distinguishes such individuals as Confucius and Socrates from all other non-human beings (including living and non-living things). Concrete universals, in turn, distinguish different individuals within the species “human”: the same universal attribute of human being is manifested differently in the sociality that Confucius presented in his social relations and social activities on the one hand and in the sociality that Socrates presented in his social interactions on the other. Here, the concrete form of the universal “social” constitutes the key factor that reciprocally distinguishes individuals within the same species “human.” Furthermore, each and every individual undergoes a variety of particular transformations throughout the process of being: the Confucius who took up an official post in the State of Lu is different from the Confucius who traveled from state to state; young Socrates is not the same as elderly Socrates. However, regardless of how the particulars of Socrates and Confucius in space and time may change, Socrates remains Socrates and Confucius Confucius. Is this phenomenon understandable, and if so, how? Once again, we need to focus on concrete universals: the particulars of the individual change while the individual stays the same; the reason for this is that the concrete universals that the individual possesses never change. Although the position Confucius had in space and time altered from the Kingdom of Lu to different kingdoms, and although Socrates transformed from youth to old age, as the unity of universal attributes and the individual’s being, concrete universals do not fundamentally change in the meantime. The latter determines individuals to remain the same individuals. Here, concrete universals seem to have a double meaning: on the one hand, a concrete universal reciprocally differentiates distinct individuals belonging to the same species, while on the other hand, it provides the intrinsic ground for the individual to maintain self-identity throughout the transformation of his or her particularity.

We can now see that beneath the changing and unchanging aspects of the individual is the relationship between particulars and universals and that between individuality and universality. In the history of philosophy, it is Leibniz who is celebrated for his thorough treatment of the individual. While focusing on the individual and denying that two substances may completely resemble each other and differ only in quantity, Leibniz also insists that “every substance is like a complete world and like a mirror of God or of the whole universe, which each one expresses in its own way.”6 “Expressing the whole universe” and being “like a mirror of the whole universe” here relates to the reciprocal connections between individuals and the universal dimension implicated in each individual. The expression “mirror of God” illustrates this point figuratively: For Leibniz, God is the most universal being. What we find in Leibniz here is a certain grasp of the link between individuals and universality.

B. Bosanquet perhaps gained an even more distinct awareness of this. In his view, the individual is inseparable from the universal. Precisely with this in mind, he defined the individual as “the concrete universal.”7 Even though as a neo-Hegelian Bosanquet also stressed that, in the ultimate sense, there is only one individual, which is the absolute,8 what he called the concrete universal is undoubtedly similar to what we have thus far called “a concrete universal,” which includes the unity of what Dons Scotus called “thisness” and “common nature.”9 This link between the individual and the universal or particulars and universals enables the alteration and enduring identity of the individual to coincide without contradiction.

This connection between the individual and the universal just mentioned does not, of course, imply that the individual only exists within the whole. Here, a distinction could be made between the individual’s being and relations of internality. A representative figure of the theory of relations of internality is Francis Bradley. According to this theory, each thing is related to all other things, and in relations of internality, if one of the terms within a relation is separated from the other term(s) in the relation, it loses its identity and ceases to be the thing it originally was. Arthur Pap once summarized the characteristic of internal relations at the logical level: “An internal relation is a relation which forms part of the description of a particular, such that the particular would, as it were, lose its identity if it ceased to stand in this relation.”10 In ontology, internal relations exhibit the connection between the individual and the whole; however, a determination of the individual merely on the basis of internal relations harbors the tendency to dissolve the individual into the whole. In effect, the individual’s properties are not simply reducible to relations; although the individual stands in a relationship to the universal, individuals always possess facets that cannot be assimilated by or reduced to such relations, which is to say that an individual’s properties and unique characteristics cannot be totally qualified by relations. There is always some boundary between individuals: “this” is not “that,” and “that” is also not “this.” This boundary is not only exhibited in relationships of space and time, but also in the different properties found among individuals. This kind of difference and differentiation demonstrates that there is also an externality that pertains to the individual’s relation to other things.

External relations between things ontologically presuppose the being of individuals and also show the relative independence of individuals and the diversity of beings through individual properties that transcend those relations. The individual’s actual form of being is such that the relations between individuals have both internal and external dimensions. The internality of relations demonstrates that the individual is not an isolated, abstract being; the externality of relations demonstrates that the individual possesses some being in-itself that no relation can diminish to nothing. Whereas Bradley fails to adequately account for the being in-itself and relative independence of individuals and reveals the tendency to dissolve the individual into the whole when highlighting the internality of relations, Russell and Moore gravitate to the opposite pole in their quest to refute Bradley’s absolute idealism, and fail to adequately account for the individual’s connection to the whole and the unity of being due to their affirmation of the exteriority of relations between things and their focus on the multiplicity of being. This shows that Bradley, Russell, and Moore all produce one-sided understandings of the individual, which distort the issue in different ways. So, only a twofold overcoming of the theory of internal relations and that of external relations can grasp the concrete characteristic of the individual.

Considering the internality of relations, the individual is by no means an isolated being; rather, the individual exists in a certain system or whole and belongs to a certain species, just as Confucius and Socrates, as individuals, belong to the species “human being.” This relationship between individual and species is the intrinsic precondition of the connection between individuals in the same species: the common attribution of individuals to the same species simultaneously makes them interconnected. But on the other hand, the belonging of individuals to a species does not dissolve them into a melting pot; there are always differences and boundaries between a specific individual, as a concrete being, and the other individuals in the system; such differences and boundaries reveal the self-identity and uniqueness of individuals while reciprocally differentiating them from one another. This “integration” and “differentiation” of the individual into and from the species shows the diversity and complexity characterizing the relations in which the individual stands.

When considering the externality of relations, the being and alteration of the individual always involves the issue of contingency. The emergence of a specific individual still depends on a variety of conditions; whether or not and how these conditions arise and take form is contingent upon the constraint of a variety of factors; this contingency stipulates that there is no way to completely write off either the emergence of individuals or their transformations as necessary processes. For human being this means that there is no specific person that could be seen as a necessary link in the evolutionary derivation of the human species. On the contrary, that an individual person comes into this world is a matter of contingency. Moreover, a specific person as a finite being inevitably dies, but the time of his or her death and the manner in which he or she dies cannot be determined in a necessary way. In brief, considering the universal connections between things and the internality of relations between individuals, there is necessity in principle; but considering the indeterminacy of a specific individual’s alteration and the externality of relations between individuals, what has the potential to happen does not necessarily occur.11

Individuals and Persons

At the metaphysical level, individuals are first presented as things. However, from the philosophical perspective, questioning about things cannot be disengaged from a meditation upon human being. In the book What Is a Thing? Heidegger writes: “The question ‘What is a thing?’ is the question ‘Who is man?’ ”12 This link between things and human being consists in the following: the meaning of things is always open for human being, and questioning about things always leads back to the being of humans, and the form of being of humans that concerns the individual is first of all that of the person.

In the dimension of the individual, the mark of a person is first of all a body. A “body” not only has physical attributes but also properties in the biological sense as well; these properties give a person real being to the extent that they distinguish the person from an abstract idea, making the person a concrete being with flesh and blood. As the substance of sensibility, the body has a bounded meaning: “this body” is not “that body,” and it is bodies that reciprocally distinguish persons at the level of substance, and that makes them unique individuals. The body of sensibility involves different aspects at the same time: from the physical body in the broad sense to the sense organs with their different functions, all of these belong to the body of the individual, and it is in the formation of the body that these different parts and aspects intrinsically unite. We can safely say that this unity exhibited by the body constitutes the ontological precondition of the person becoming an actual individual.

As the ontological mark of the person, the body is the direct medium linking the person to the world. In terms of the most basic relationship of human being to the world, the spatial one, the body is the main reference for whether an external object is either above or below, in front or behind, east or west, north or south, and so on. Likewise, directly intuiting the world from the human perspective always starts with the body. The body determines the angle from which the human being inspects an object, which furthermore constrains the manner of presentation of an object. In the social sphere, the basis of the communication and connections between individuals is the body as well; the body is the foundation of the most basic familial relations, but also of economic and political interests. For the person, the body simultaneously constitutes a social sign and an extra-linguistic form of expression. On the other hand, the body is also the ultimate bearer of every social identity and social role: without bodies, social identities and social roles have no real meaning.

Social life is essentially practical; human being exists in the world and participates in various forms of social activities and social practices, and is therefore a practical agent. The basic mode of action or practice is such that it contains the dimension of sensibility, which determines that practical action is inseparable from the body. Gilles Deleuze states: “The event results from bodies, their mixtures, their actions, and their passions.”13 Here, “the event” refers to the result of human activity, which is based on human actions, passes through a certain duration, and has a relatively independent sense. To affirm the connection between the event and the body means in substance to confirm the link between the body and practical activity; Deleuze undoubtedly notices this when he links the event to the actions of bodies.

In the dimension of history, a body or sensible being who envelops social meaning (including practical meaning) is formed through a historical process and is the consolidation of achievements of historical development. Marx vividly illustrates this point: “The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present.”14 The link between the body and practical activity should also be understood in accordance with this historical dimension. Although practice as activity of the sensibility is inseparable from the body, the body simultaneously acquires a social characteristic through the historical unfolding of practical activity. Marx once analyzed this in detail: “Thus, the objectification of the human essence both in its theoretical and practical aspects is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.”15 To “objectify the human essence” is precisely to make objects express human being’s essential powers and become humanized beings through the historical practice of humans acting upon objects, and it is precisely through this process that sense organs in the natural sense and the senses linked to them are gradually endowed with a humanized nature.

Related to the body is the affective mind (xin ). As the being of spirit and ideas, the affective mind envelops different facets, from rationality, emotion, and will to intuition, imagination, understanding, and spirit. These different capacities exhibit the affective mind’s different ways of being. Dynamically speaking, the affective mind unfolds in a variety of modes of activity, from intuiting, deducing, analyzing, synthesizing, and judging to choosing and deliberating, just to name a few. Yet, however many forms of spirit and capacities the individual may have, and however the individual’s conscious acts may unfold in time, they are all united in the person as a whole; they are the different forms of expression of the same individual’s world of spirit and mental activity. Even if the individual encounters internal tensions at the level of ideas, like the conflict between reason and emotion in the making of moral choices or the clashing of different ideals, all of these discordances are still interrelated modes of the same world of spirit. This unity of the world of spirit and mental activity exhibits a different aspect of the unity of the individual.

The corporeal body of sensibility and the affective mind of ideas are not only intrinsically unified; they are also involved with one another. As interrelated facets of the individual, the corporeal body and the affective mind are inseparable. The individual form of being possesses both sensibility and corporeality as well as consciousness and spirit; without the former (body), the individual would be nothing but an illusory specter; without the latter (the affective mind), the individual would be a walking corpse. In both cases, the true individual is nowhere to be found. Now, classical Chinese philosophy stresses the inseparability of the affective mind and the corporeal body, and so speaks of the concrete form of the individual as the unity of the affective mind and the corporeal body. By contrast, dualistic theories put the mind and body on two parallel tracks, which entails a commitment to a “mind without body” and a “body without mind.” In this way, dualism ontologically dispels the true individual.

The individual is also a practical agent. So, the unification of body and the affective mind within the individual unfolds in the process of practicing and acting. As we have seen, Deleuze notes that the event arises from bodies. Actually, to be more precise, the event, which corresponds to human activity, arises from both the body and the affective mind. From the everyday practical activities of eating and dwelling to economic, political, and cultural activities, the affective mind and the corporeal body interact and fuse together in different ways. Even in unconscious activity we can see the reciprocal interaction of the affective mind and the corporeal body: as activity, it not only unfolds as the actions of the body, for it also includes consciousness. Even though activity in an unconscious or subconscious state seems not to involve the self-aware participation of consciousness, it does involve the unfolding of conscious acts in a tacit or implicit form. So, we can see that the interaction between the affective mind and the body in action and practice gives the unity of the individual person a dynamic form.

The unity of the person not only involves the relationship between body and mind. In a broader sense, it also concerns the question of personal identity. In the dimension of accomplishing oneself, the self-identity of the person is obviously an issue of considerable importance. As for the being of the individual, the basic condition of accomplishing oneself is the enduring identity of the individual through time: if the “I” of yesterday weren’t the “I” of today, or if the “I” of tomorrow were to differ from the “I” of yesterday and today, then one would have no ground upon which to refine oneself. Ontologically speaking, if the individual were to dissolve into mutually unrelated forms of being at different spaces and times, the unified agent who refines himself would cease to exist. Considering the individual from the perspective of values, accomplishing oneself is different from an extrinsic duty; rather, it is the very responsibility one takes on for oneself. However, this relationship of responsibility of one to oneself only has meaning under the condition that the subject remains the same throughout different succeeding times: if the “I” of yesterday, today, and tomorrow were to separately belong to three different subjects, it would be impossible not only to confirm the one “who” is responsible but also to clarify “the one for whom” one is responsible. So, refining oneself essentially unfolds as a process, which is based on the enduring identity of the individual, but if the individual were to break up into different fragments, there would only be the birth and death of each instant and no continuous process of self-maturation (taking steps to the ideal form of being).

In connection with the question of “whether or not the individual stays the same in the process of changing,” there is the problem of personal identity, which concerns the alteration and identity of the person. How could we confirm that a person undergoing a variety of transformations in space and time is still the same person? For this, Searle once summarized the following criteria. First, there is the spatio-temporal continuity of the body. Even though the corresponding parts of the body are continuously replaced at the molecular level, the person’s body has its continuity from youth to old age. Even though many different kinds of things happen to change in a person’s body throughout this time, like the maturation of certain organs, the growth of limbs and overall height of the body, and so on, the basic structure of the body usually remains relatively stable. Second, as for the physical body, in ordinary cases the human body will not become as large as an African elephant nor become as tall as a giraffe. Third, there is memory. The first and second criteria deal with the third person, whereas the third involves the first person singular; it concerns the order of before and after between conscious states. The fourth is the continuity of personality, which concerns the continuity of such facets of the person as character and temperament.16 The first two criteria belong to the “physical” stratum, whereas the third (memory) belongs to the psychological stratum or the stratum of consciousness. Locke was in fact one of the first to confirm the identity of the person from the perspective of memory, and directly called it “consciousness.”17 The fourth criterion is much more complex; it is linked to the mind and consciousness, but also differs from phenomena of conscious activity like memory. However, Searle never analyzed or explained this fourth criterion in sufficient depth.

On the physical and psychological stratum, there is no fundamental difference between the identity of the person and the identity of the individual in the metaphysical domain; both involve the continuity of physical things in time. The identity of the person based on memory mainly points to the conscious realm; as the ground of personal identity, what must be emphasized is the continuity of consciousness. The spiritual world of the person in the process of existing always undergoes a variety of transformations, but this does not mean that a succeeding mental state will be isolated from the preceding, parts-extra-parts. On the contrary, as the conscious activity of the same individual, it contains internal continuity, and the individual’s memory is the condition of possibility of this continuity. But, even this continuity depending on consciousness is not enough to account for the identity of the person, as the thought experiment of brain transplantation shows. Yet, speaking in negative terms, if there were no such continuity of consciousness, the identity of the person would be similarly unimaginable. So, beginning with the unity of the affective mind and the corporeal body, the identity of the person is obviously inseparable from the continuity of consciousness.

The continuous duration of consciousness involves temporality. In actual fact, the identity of the person concerns the problem of time from the very beginning. In the social sphere, the meaning of time consists in historicity; it is precisely the historical unfolding of society that distinguishes time from an abstract and empty passage of succeeding moments. For persons, the meaning of time is similarly expressed through their actual lives and practices. According to its substance, the continuation of preceding and succeeding states in the temporal sense has as its actual content the continuity of the person’s life and practices; this continuity of life and practice makes the unity of the person’s self-recognition and understanding of him or herself possible while providing others with the grounds to grasp the identity of the person through preceding and succeeding states. Although the duration of consciousness also involves time, this kind of time only emerges in the process of one practicing and living; abstracted from the latter, the conscious subject would amount to Putnam’s hypothesized “brain in a vat,” in which the duration of consciousness is not so much temporal as it is logical.

Personal identity is not of course just limited to the mind, the body, and the continuity of both in time; it also concerns values, which are embodied in such facets as character and virtues. Searle touched upon these facets concerning the continuity of human character in some sense, but his analysis seems to focus on the psychological dimension of character and temperament. In actual fact, relative stability can be seen in other facets too, from the everyday issue of being a person to the much broader social issue of directed action, and this stability is based on the stability of virtues and character. Despite the specificity of situations and the diversity and variability of actions, the person’s character and virtues remain relatively continuous and stable; even though there is some variability pertaining to character and morals themselves such that they are not absolutely unchanging, as the ontological attribute of personal identity, their transformation and development are intrinsically interconnected; the latter differs from the continuity of consciousness attained through memory. In a more profound sense, they consist in the duration of values and value orientations. In contrast to the conscious mind and the physical body, the identity and duration of virtues and character have a much more intrinsic characteristic.

In regard to the broader sense of meaning, the self-identity of the person cannot be restricted to the individual dimension. As an actual being, the individual always lives in society. Consequently, the self-identity of the individual is inseparable from this ontological circumstance. Every individual forms unique relationships with other people, society, and other conditions in the process of existing. Such relationships not only constitute a by–no-means inessential facet of the individual’s being; they also constrain the character of the individual being and his or her practice of life. From the very moment the individual arrives in the world, he or she forms an inseparable connection with the parents that have given him or her life; such bonds are natural (blood line) as well as social. Regardless of how the individual transforms later on, this relationship between him/her and his/her parents will remain unchanged and unchangeable: there may be differences between the “I” of yesterday and the “I” of today, but it is always the same parents who gave the individual his or her life. In broader terms, the variety of political, economic, and cultural relationships the individual forms in social life not only have aspects that change, they also encompass enduring facets that do not disappear fleetingly as soon as they arise. This enduring nature of social relations is at once based on the enduring nature of social life while also ensuring that social life endures with continuity as well. In regard to the individual’s form of being and way of being, this continuity of social life and social relations both determines and exhibits his or her enduring identity.

In the context of accomplishing oneself and accomplishing things, the meaning of the self-identity of the individual at the ontological and axiological levels lies first in providing one with the precondition of refining oneself in the individual domain. When the individual maintains his or her enduring identity and remains the same “I” with regard to one’s mind, body, social relationships, and practice of life despite the changes one undergoes in time, not only does the unity of the subject of the individual domain gain confirmation, but the problem of “who” is responsible and “whom” one is responsible “for” in this domain gains a basis for solution as well.

At the level of ideas, personal identity also involves the person’s self-confirmation, which is reflexive. “Reflexive” here means that the object of the person is himself or herself, which is inseparable from the individual’s self-consciousness and reflective consciousness. Charles Taylor once compared humans and animals when considering the intrinsic characteristic of persons. Taylor discovers that which distinguishes humans from animals not in simply having desires, but in the capacity to make one’s own desires objects of one’s own evaluation, which constitutes the characteristic of the person and self.18 This process of evaluating that Taylor analyzes reveals in another way the reflexivity of the person or the directedness of the person toward himself or herself. As for the person’s external form, there seems to be a mutually exclusive relationship between the objectifying characteristic of being directed toward oneself and the self-recognition of the individual, since objectification tends to eliminate agency. Natorp mainly grounds his critique of phenomenology upon this. For him, the reflective method that phenomenology adopts involves objectifying, which leads to the following dilemma: how can agency be reached through consciousness’s objectification of itself?19 We will temporarily leave aside the critique of phenomenology here and show what needs to be pointed out at the theoretical level: Natorp’s argument ignores that the individual possesses a twofold characteristic in self-consciousness or one’s reflexive consciousness of oneself: the individual is at once both object and agent, and it is precisely this twofold nature that makes the person’s reflexive consciousness or reflective consciousness become the mark of the person’s individuality.

Tied to the person’s self-confirmation is the distinction between the self as individual and the other as individual, which logically presupposes the uniqueness of the individual’s self-confirmation. At the metaphysical level, the uniqueness of the individual lies first of all in his or her noninstantiability. For the person, this uniqueness not only consists in the unrepeatable and irreducible nature of the individual or the fact that there are no two identical individuals, but also in the irreplaceable nature of the individual in the axiological sense. As an individual, the human being is ontologically speaking an unrepeatable being and axiologically speaking a one-and-only irreplaceable being. Perhaps a person’s concrete social role could be replaced, but the concrete being of a person cannot be replaced by other beings. So, it is precisely in the person that the uniqueness of the individual is most profoundly expressed.

Of course, the unique character of the person is not just limited to the unrepeatable ontological nature and irreplaceable value of the person. At a much more intrinsic level, the person is inseparable from character or individuality. Once again at the metaphysical level, individuals show their respective particularities through particular relations of space and time (at different positions in space and time, the individual exhibits different forms); the person’s concreteness, on the other hand, is expressed through diversity of character. Individuality is a synthetic form of being, including not only the person’s temperament and mental disposition, but also his or her reason, emotion, and will; individuality not only concerns one’s intrinsic capacities, but also one’s character and virtues, so as a whole, individuality expresses the synthetic unity of temperament, disposition, reason, emotion, will, capacities, and character. The spiritual form of this unity is the feature within every specific individual that reciprocally differentiates individuals from one another. As a synthetic spiritual attribute, individuality is not just a mental tendency; it also expresses the human being’s character in a holistic way. In contrast to the variability of particulars in specific positions of space and time, individuality has both the characteristics of unity and stability, which enables individuality to be beyond pure and simple relations of space and time and possess an internal form of presentation.

As a unique manifestation of human being’s individual character, individuality also concretely reveals the intrinsic link between individuality and the being of humans. This link is exhibited at a deeper level in the relationship between individuality and purpose. When discussing the relationship between individuality and purpose, Bosanquet states that purpose is secondary to individuality.20 As a neo-Hegelian, Bosanquet speaks of the individual in terms of the absolute, but we could produce a broader understanding of his statement. In an extended sense, purpose entails value. So, to say that purpose is secondary to individuality is to emphasize the ontological priority of the individual, which entails that purpose originates from the individual; in contrast to saying that the individual entails purpose, to say that purpose originates from the individual is to emphasize the original value of the individual’s being.

Persons differ from things at the level of purpose. Heidegger once examined things within the scientific horizon. For Heidegger, science concerns itself with universality, and science understands particular things merely as examples.21 By extension, an individual as a thing is presented merely as a specimen of a species. However, the individual as human being cannot be simply reduced to a specimen or example. Specimens of a species are merely contingent beings, which are mutually replaceable in the dimension of values, possessing no unique intrinsic value in and of themselves. A person on the other hand constitutes the source of a purpose, and so the meaning of the person’s being is irreplaceable. In terms of physical structure and physical nature, there are no fundamental differences between different specimens of the same species, but persons are not simply beings at the physical level; the difference between a person’s individuality and that of another’s encompasses the purpose of being and values that cannot be substituted for one another. Viewed as things, the birth, transformation, and death of a specimen of a species has no substantial influence upon the being of the species itself. Viewed as human beings, every single person possesses facets that are neither dismissible nor ignorable.

That a person has individuality of course does not mean that a person is an isolated individual. At the metaphysical level, individuals are original unities in systems of different forms, and in each case are involved in a diversity of relationships. Similarly, a person is likewise a being within relationships, which are not only physical, but also in a more substantial sense social. When one arrives in this world, one immediately finds oneself within relationships corresponding to the ethical norms of family and kinship ties. Huang Zongxi once pointed out: “Human being is born and falls to the earth tied only to parents and siblings, the inextricable feelings of this stage emerge with birth and are truly real, and so begin to bear the prestige of being-humane and righteous.”22 Although between parents and offspring, brother and brother there is the natural dimension of blood ties, but as the origin of social ethical principles, filial relations are more social than natural. Moving from everyday family life to the broader social sphere, more economic, political, and cultural activities are involved, and so the person finds himself or herself in social relationships of diverse forms. From the external perspective, the other seems to transcend the person: others external to the individual in this sense constitute the other and are opposed to the person. However, as stated previously, ontologically speaking, the relations between individuals and those between the individual and the system and whole are marked by internality, which is similarly the case for those between persons. In metaphysics, it is precisely these relationships marked by internality that sublate this transcendence of the Other over and against the individual.

At the same time, as beings in social relationships, every person possesses certain rights and must fulfill corresponding duties. Now, the content of these rights and duties is always specified in correspondence with the concrete position a person occupies in a social system. In the previous case of familial relations, whether one is a father or a mother, one has the duty to care for one’s adolescent sons or daughters, and has the right to demand care from one’s sons or daughters at old age. Similarly, whether one is a son or daughter, one has the right to demand care and support from one’s parents while still dependent, and has the duty to care for one’s parents when they need it. Here, son and daughter, father and mother are all concrete beings, and the duties and rights corresponding to them are no less unique: my responsibilities and duties in relation to my own mother and father differ from those responsibilities and duties other people have in relation to their mothers and fathers. Similarly, other people cannot substitute for a particular child in his or her fulfillment of the rights and duties he or she has in relation to his or her parents. In this sense, the person could be seen as the bearer of specific rights and duties. Of course, the content of the rights and duties that a person takes on will differ in accordance with different historical ages and different social backgrounds. Moreover, there are also differences between the duties and rights that different individuals of the same historical age take on, but as a human being, the individual always possesses the most basic rights (including one’s own right to live) and the basic duties corresponding to them (including the duty to respect and honor the same rights in others). Even though this right and duty may suffer a variety of restrictions under certain historical conditions and for that reason remain unrealized, that they are the essential property of humans as social beings is something that never changes. This most basic right to live and this most basic duty to respect and honor the same right of others to live are intrinsically connected to the irreplaceable nature of the being of the individual in ontological terms. Each person is a singular being, so the rights and duties he or she has are singular as well. The unique rights and duties that a person has gives him or her the ontological attribute of individuality at the social level and manifest the social characteristic of the person as well.

Marx analyzed the connection between the person and society in greater detail from the perspective of interest:

Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing or knowing it . . . private interest is itself already a socially determined interest, which can be achieved only within the conditions laid down by society and with the means provided by society; hence it is bound to the reproduction of these conditions and means. It is the interest of private persons; but its content, as well as the form and means of its realization, is given by social conditions independent of all.23

Private interest is tightly bound to the person as a prominent marker of the person’s individuality. However, something social still proves to be seen even within this individualizing aspect. Although the initial motivation of a particular producer to make a product may be the seeking of his own interest, to truly realize the worth of the product, the producer must fulfill the needs of others, and it is the social or general interest that is realized in the process of fulfilling such needs. In brief, from the concrete content of private interest to the mode and means of its realization, from the sought goal of individual interest to the objective result of seeking such an interest, the individual always remains just as tied to others as to society as a whole. After entering the modern age accompanying the development of economic interactions was the tightening of the bond between the person and the other: “In the case of the world market, the connection of the individual with all, but at the same time also the independence of this connection from the individual.”24

Does the aforementioned social characteristic of the person result in the dissolution of individual character? Does sociality contradict individuality and vice versa? Could they possibly be mutually inclusive? From a broader perspective, these question touch on the relationship between individuality, sociality, and natural disposition. Natural disposition is precisely the first nature of what is most natural, including the biological determination of human beings in the concrete acts of eating, drinking, and fornicating. Human being is such that the natural dispositions of different individuals do not differ at the fundamental level: one is hungry and desires food; one is thirsty and desires drink; one is cold and desires clothing to keep warm. Individuals are more similar than different as far as the intentions behind such instinct-based activities go. In other words we would be hard pressed to deduce unique individual characteristics merely from these actions and intentions alone. However, the case is not the same at the social level. When satiating hunger and quenching thirst in the natural sense transforms into eating and drinking as a cultural affair in the social sense, differences in character can then be seen to mark eating and drinking (the differentiation of taste at the culinary level). Similarly, when materials that serve the natural function of providing warmth become symbols differentiating identity, status, and taste, so many individualizing distinctions begin to take shape between individuals in terms of what they wear (fashion culture). Essentially, individuality is itself a social characteristic, and individuality can only truly develop in a social context. Ways of thinking, for example, involve the capacity of human beings to understand and reform the world. In contrast to aesthetic taste, which is tied to natural dispositions in relation to food and clothing, ways of thinking express the social attribute of human being in a much more intrinsic sense, and differences in character at this level presuppose the adequate development of this social attribute in human beings. The difference between Hume’s empiricist way of thinking and Hegel’s speculative way of philosophizing expresses the difference between English character and German character much more profoundly than what’s on tap at this English pub compared to that German bar, which demonstrates the interconnection between the social attribute of human being and the diversification of character.

As the internal manifestation of individuality, human character is neither pre-formed nor readymade; rather, it is generative; although the genesis of character is not entirely separable from the natural disposition of human being, it still requires social guidance and education. From the perspective of external form, this seems to imply some sort of contradiction: character is ordinarily tied to uniqueness, diversity, and difference, while social guidance and education is directed at realizing the socialization of the individual, and the socialization of the individual here means bringing the ideas and actions of the individual into the general guidelines of society and making them exist in the world in harmony with the demands and permission of society, which undoubtedly entails the aim of conformity. However, in a much more substantial sense, the guidance and influence of society does not exclude the formation of individual character. In fact, guidance and education do not only involve universal norms; they are also rooted in individual differences as well. The individualization of education that we see everywhere today and the tailoring of education to the unique talents of each individual demonstrates this point. At the pre-social (natural) level, differences between individuals are always relatively limited; the cultivation and formation of individual character and the socialization of the individual exhibit two sides of one and the same process, and education and guidance dealing directly with the individual is undoubtedly indispensible in this process. The actual form in which society influences and guides does not resemble anything like a one-way indoctrination of the individual; the relationship between the influence and guidance of society and the individual’s own understanding and acceptance is interactive. This interaction determines the socialization of the individual to be complementary with the diversification of individual character.

In summary, human being’s concrete form of being is the being of the individual person. A person is a union of the affective mind and corporeal body, showing an enduring identity unfolding in time, an enduring identity of a body (the physical and physiological) and spirit (the affective mind and consciousness) whose content is the continuous duration of virtue and character. This enduring identity of the person is the ontological precondition of accomplishing oneself and accomplishing things. As a concrete being, the person has a unique character; this uniqueness is expressed in ontology as non-repeatable singularity and in axiology as irreplaceable non-substitutability. As a thing an individual may be understood as a specimen of a species; as a human being, however, the individual person possesses the intrinsic attributes of purposiveness and unique character. So, character is the ontological uniqueness of the person, but in combination with the axiological purposiveness of the person, character is the orientation of the person’s being. The genesis of character and the process of developing character involve the historical content of the individual (person) interacting with society. Synthetically speaking, this content intrinsic to the person is concretely expressed as the union of individuality and totality, which Marx concretely elucidated as follows: “Man, much as he may therefore be a particular individual (and it is precisely his particularity which makes him an individual, and a real individual social being), is just as much the totality, the ideal totality—the subjective existence of thought and experienced society present for itself—just as he exists also in the real world as the awareness and the real enjoyment of social existence, and as a totality of human life-activity.”25 Tied to the “particular individual” is the irreducible, unrepeatable, and irreplaceable characteristics of the person, and “totality” here expresses the unity of the person’s intrinsic attributes and the multiplicity of relationships in which he or she is involved; both constitute interrelated aspects of an actual person.

Accomplishing Oneself and the Development of Character

From a much broader historical perspective, the interaction between the individual person and society is not only shown in the fact that society’s guidance of and influence upon the individual can only be accomplished through the individual’s own understanding and acceptance; it may also be seen in the intrinsic link between the derivation of society itself and the transformation of the individual’s mode of being. When discussing the transformation of society, Marx once pointed out:

Relations of personal dependence (entirely spontaneous at the outset) are the first social forms, in which human productive capacity develops only to a slight extent and at isolated points. Personal independence founded on objective [sachlicher] dependence is the second great form, in which a system of general social metabolism, of universal relations, of all-round needs and universal capacities is formed for the first time. Free individuality, based on the universal development of individuals and on their subordination of their communal, social productivity as their social wealth, is the third stage. The second stage creates the conditions for the third.26

What is analyzed here is the historical derivation of society. According to Marx, changes in the form of society correspond to changes in the form of the individual’s being: the first form of society corresponds to the person’s dependence upon the other; the second great form of society is characterized by objective dependence or the person’s dependence upon things; the third stage of social development is based upon the whole-sided development of the person and free individuality. The meaning of the individual’s being comes into view through this historical development of society: the person’s mode of being constitutes one of the most important grounds upon which historical stages are distinguished.

This historical role the person plays in the development of society also highlights the meaning of the person’s own development. Historically speaking, personal development and self-accomplishment have constituted the motif of philosophical concern for a very long time, but different philosophical positions and schools have formed very different understandings of personal development and self-accomplishment. As far as Chinese philosophy goes, Confucianism found “cultivating human being” (cheng ren ) or “accomplishing oneself” (cheng ji ) to be of the highest priority since the pre-Qin period. Confucius himself once distinguished between “for-oneself” (wei ji ) and “for-others” (wei ren ); the former is directed at the complete realization of the self, whereas the latter is directed at working for others. The basic orientation of Confucius was to deny “being-for-others” on the basis of “being-for-oneself.” With a stress on “learning for-oneself” (wei ji zhi xue ), “cultivating human being” (cheng ren ) is also precisely the refining of human being or perfecting the ideal human character. In this sense, there is no substantial difference in the senses of “cultivating human being” and “accomplishing oneself.” Confucianism aside, there is also Daoism. Although differing in philosophical standpoint, the former and the latter still share a common concern for the person. Zhuangzi’s affirmation that “the fully singular person (du you zhi ren ) is the height of nobility,”27 and his warning not to “alienate oneself with things,”28 while succeeding in “complying with others without losing oneself,”29 all manifest a confirmation of the value of the person (the self).

However, that one affirms the value of the individual (person’s) being does not imply that one has truly grasped the meaning of the individual’s being or the mode of being one ought to have. Confucianism places great emphasis on self-refinement or self-realization, but it has its own slant on the issue of how to understand the self and the individual. For Confucianism, cultivating human being or accomplishing oneself is primarily directed at the attainment of sagehood. We can see a simple summary of this point in the following passage by Zhang Zai: “The way of the superior human being is to work toward accomplishing oneself and refining human nature, but until sagehood is reached, all practical activity remains incomplete.”30 To attain sagehood means to take the sage as a universal model of ideal human character and to sculpt oneself according to it as the criterion. So, although accomplishing oneself in the sense above prioritizes the person and the self, in terms of content, the “self” or person here refers to a universally valued goal, and the aim of accomplishing oneself is the attainment of the same form of character (sagehood). In this way, the diversity and individuality of human beings is more or less covered up by this universal and uniform orientation of personality. Similarly, although Daoism’s opposition to “alienating oneself with things” shows a concern for the individual, Daoism continues to understand the ideal form of “the self” or individual as an “authentic person” (zhen ren ) or “natural human being” (tian ren );31 so corresponding to Daoism’s idealization of the natural condition, in terms of the distinction between what is natural and what is human, to be authentic and natural is just to harmonize with nature or blend in with nature. Daoism’s appraisal of nature is simultaneously tied to overcoming the determination of purposiveness. The statement, “acting without effort is what is called natural” demonstrates this point.32 Here, “acting without effort” (wuwei wei zhi ) is first of all said in opposition to the effort of pursuing a purpose, so its distinguishing feature is acting without intentional projects; defining “nature” as “acting without effort” implies a disengagement from purposeful action. This mutual exclusion between nature and purpose simultaneously distances the natural person from the determination of purposiveness. Whereas Confucianism’s theory of cultivating human being entails diminishing individuality through a universal orientation of human character, Daoism’s theory of “the authentic person” and “natural human being” logically leads to the elimination of purposiveness.

The Confucian and Daoist understandings of the individual or self mentioned earlier reflect the existential condition of human being under natural economic conditions, albeit from different perspectives. According to Marx’s understanding, human being finds itself in the first form of society when “human productive capacity develops only to a slight extent and at isolated points”; the relations of personal dependence he speaks of in connection with this is exhibited both in the dependence of particular individuals who live in lower social classes upon other particular individuals who live in higher social classes. Such a relation also unfolds as the dependence of the individual upon the group or social class system itself. Under conditions “in which human productive capacity develops only to a slight extent and at isolated points,” one’s being is inseparably tied to the group; in this vein, Confucianism affirms that “human life cannot be sustained without the group”33 and that if one were to “leave the group and not depend on others one would face nothing but predicaments,”34 which both point out, to different degrees, the existential condition of human being. The importance Confucianism places on the universal attribute and social content of human character seems to reflect this relationship between the individual and the group or society. By contrast, Daoism’s appraisal and appreciation for the pre-civilized form of nature reveals another tendency. For Daoism, social systems and systems of norms exercise nothing but constraints and restrictions upon human being, which is in a sense a reflection of relations of personal dependence; so, returning to nature here, means overcoming these limitations and restrictions, which seems to express dissatisfaction with relations of personal dependence in a unique fashion.

Moving from the first form of society toward the modern age, “personal independence” gradually replaces “personal dependence.” In contrast to the various forms of “personal dependence” (including the subordination of the individual to the species, group, and social system), “personal independence” provides human being with more possibilities for multi-faceted development. However, on the other hand, accompanying the universal unfolding of material trade relations, the development of individuality gradually comes to suffer restrictions in another sense. Since the modern age, the market economy tied to the capitalist mode of production raises the “general social metabolism” to a higher level. At the economic level, the core of a general social metabolism is the trading of commodities, whose basic principle is the exchange of equivalents. According to its original form, the exchange of equivalents presupposes disregarding the differences of commodities in terms of their physical properties and use-value. Furthermore, distinctions between the persons participating in the trade become increasingly irrelevant. In effect, under the same principle of exchanging equivalents, the particularity of individuals does not enter the exchange equation; on the contrary, these particular characteristics are flattened out and equalized:

Activity, regardless of its individual manifestation, and the product of activity, regardless of its particular make-up, are always exchange value, and exchange value is a generality, in which all individuality and peculiarity are negated and extinguished.35 . . . The subjects in exchange exist for one another only through these equivalents, as of equal worth, and prove themselves to be such through the exchange of the objectivity in which the one exists for the other. Since they only exist for one another in exchange in this way, as equally worthy persons, possessors of equivalent things, who thereby prove their equivalence, they are, as equals, at the same time also indifferent to one another; whatever other individual distinction there may be does not concern them; they are indifferent to all their other individual peculiarities.36

In brief, the exchange of commodities affirms not the uniqueness and difference of individuals, but rather their equivalence and homogeneity; with the exchange of equivalents as a universal principle, human individuality is never truly manifested. Accompanying the commodification of labor, human being itself starts to enter the market of exchange, and under the same principle of equal exchange, the characteristic of human individuality is further concealed underneath general equivalents.

The eliminating of individuality through the exchange of commodities itself presupposes the abstract form of labor. The use-value of commodities takes shape in concrete labor, while the exchange-value of commodities originates from abstract labor. Differences in use-value correspond to the diversity of concrete labor, but exchange-value is linked to abstract labor. In order to make the exchange value of commodities become comparable, quantitatively speaking, the concrete form of labor needs to be canceled and reduced to abstract general labor:

Just as labor, which creates exchange value, is indifferent to the material of use-values, so it is to the special form of labor itself. Furthermore, the different use-values are the products of the work of different individuals, consequently the result of various kinds of labor differing individually from one to another. But as exchange values, they represent the same homogenous labor, that is, labor from which the individuality of the workers is eliminated. Labor creating exchange value is, therefore, abstract general labor.37

At the level of abstract labor, not only are the differences of the objects of labor ignored, but also the concrete characteristics of the laborer and his or her productive activity. This essential homogeneity of labor makes the individual differences of the laborer seem to lose all substantial meaning.

The concealing of individual character by abstract labor and the relation of exchange associated with it makes the intrinsic value of the individual encounter the threat of dissolution. As stated previously, associated with the unrepeatable nature of the individual in the metaphysical domain is the irreplaceable nature of the individual at the level of value. However, the process of exchange and circulation based on abstract labor not only renders individuals homogeneous and equivalent, it also renders them replaceable: “At a definite moment circulation posits each not only as being equal to the other, but also as the same, and its movement consists in each alternately taking the place of the other from the standpoint of the social function.”38 When the individual is seen as a largely replaceable object, the intrinsic value of the individual’s being diminishes.

This diminishing of the individual’s value appears as an objectification and equipmentification of human being at an intrinsic level. When abstract labor equalizes the individual characters of the laborers, there is no more substantial difference between the individual and other beings, and the commodification of labor power further reduces the laborer to a thing that could be weighed with the same measure as used to measure things. In a relation of general social metabolism, the relation between human being and human being is implied to be a relation between thing and thing and the value of human being is reduced to some equivalent object, to which one is tied in one’s objective dependence upon things.

A further development of the commodification and objectification of human being is the subordination of the inner self to external things. In modern society, this has become increasingly obvious. The omnipresent constraint of institutions and the process of routinization tied to it renders the individual’s creativity irrelevant: the individual’s action then consists in nothing more than the completion of institutional procedures or the carrying out of institutional functions, and the inflation of mass culture also makes individuals become increasingly uniform, gradually losing their capacity of judgment in the realms of aesthetic taste and manner of behavior. In connection with the gradual formation of technical guidance, experts and authorities in each specialized field continue to push upon people criteria for each kind of choice and behavior through their respective paths and ways, thereby engendering habitual submission: aside from accepting and following the opinions of experts and authorities, people seem to have no other choice. As an extension of human being’s objective dependence upon things, these processes prevent the actual individual from manifesting his own value.

How is it possible for the individual to truly actualize his intrinsic value? From the perspective of ideal human character, particular attention must be paid to the idea of “free individuality.” Marx saw “free individuality” as the main characteristic of the third stage of social development and shows its meaning in the dimension of history. The initial form of social development is that of personal dependence; in relations of personal dependence individuals are subsumed under other persons or an external social system (including hierarchical structures), and lack genuine individuality and freedom. As the manifestation of this relation of personal dependence in terms of form of human character, the goal of ideal character is universalized and uniformized, which the determination of accomplishing oneself with “the attainment of sagehood” demonstrates. Attaining human freedom and independence by means of overcoming relationships of personal dependence constitutes the most important aspect of developing free individuality. Interconnected with personal dependence is objective [sachlicher] dependence. While personal dependence implies the elimination of human individuality and autonomy, objective dependence implies concealing the intrinsic value and purposive determination of human being through the objectification and equipmentification of human being itself. While overcoming personal dependence, free individuality also demands overcoming objective dependence. In positive terms, the actual meaning of the latter lies in confirming the intrinsic value of human being and affirming human being’s purposive determination.

The double overcoming of personal dependence and objective dependence exhibits the negative characteristic of free individuality. At the positive or affirmative level, free individuality is concretely expressed in terms of the whole-sided development of the individual person. Marx in fact links free individuality to the “whole-sided development of the individual.” From a broader perspective, the whole-sided development of the individual first of all concerns the relationship between mind and body. Here, “body” includes the being of sensibility and the capacity of sensation tied to it. “Mind” then points broadly to consciousness and the world of spirit. In this sense, “whole-sided development” means combining and integrating the two. The body as sensible being is also linked to “Nature” (innate or natural properties), while the mind as the world of spirit envelops human being’s cultural content. So, the whole-sided development of the individual person also involves the relationship between humans and Nature. Historically speaking, Confucianism stressed the way of humans (rendao ), and Daoism the way of Nature (tiandao ). Sublating these two opposed ways implies simultaneously grasping both primordial nature (Nature in-itself) and civilized or humanized nature (Nature for-humans).

The humanized dimension, as the historical sedimentation of cultural development, is predominantly the manifestation of human being’s sociality; the natural disposition of human nature, by contrast, is internal to every concrete individual and is predominantly the manifestation of human being’s individuality. Individuals whose development is whole-sided are in a way individuals whose social relations are their own communal relations,39 and whose social potentials have been adequately realized to the point that they express their unique individuality. So, the “whole-sided development” of the individual consists in this double-sided unfolding of sociality and individuality.

Broadly speaking, free individuality implies overcoming the one-sided nature of being. For consciousness, this demands overcoming the mutually restricting boundaries between reason, the passions, and the will, so that the individual adequately develops rationality and sensibility; as for the determination of human character, it is directed at the unity of being truthful, beautiful, and good; as for the world of spirit, it is directed at the ideal goal of integrating one’s real capacities with one’s inner state of mind. This development of individuality implies overcoming the uniformity of human character. From the integration of reason, passions, and will to the attainment of the unity of being truthful, beautiful, and good, from the development of capacities to the elevation of one’s state of mind, the actual forms of individual perfection are rich and diverse, and there is neither universal model nor single path among them.

The whole-sided development of human being is the content of free individuality, which is also manifested in the process of creating values. The free form of individuality does not exist purely in the form of ideas and mentality as it also involves human being’s creation of values and is concretely expressed in the process. Creating values is directed at reforming the world and refining oneself: the unity of reason, passions, and will in the interfusion of being truthful, beautiful, and good takes shape in the process of reforming the world and refining the self, where it is manifested. For the individual, the process of creating values not only constitutes the actual source of development of free individuality; it also provides free individuality with rich, concrete content. Therefore, creativity is the very essence of free individuality.

Free individuality expresses the individual’s concrete way of being, and unfolds as the overcoming of different limitations. When human being is still constrained by personal dependence and objective dependence, human being’s capacities, interests, and ways of engaging activities subsist in a variety of limiting forms. Under historical conditions in which personal dependence is predominant, the person is anchored to a solidified and unchanging social role; in relations of objective dependence, persons are reduced to bearers of objectified functions, the typical manifestation of which can be found in large-scale industrialized production: On a massive industrial assembly line, the individual is reduced to a link in this material production process. As regards human being’s way of being and mode of being, the historical precondition of developing free individuality is overcoming such limitations and restrictions, which furthermore demands the multifaceted realization of the individual’s potentials and the multifaceted unfolding of the individual’s activity in both breadth and depth. When discussing the individual’s ideal way of being, Marx once illustrated this in a figurative fashion; that is, in the ideal society still to come:

Nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.40

Of importance here is that the person will not “always be” a particular individual, which implies transcending the limitations that external roles and functions exercise upon the person, enabling the person to genuinely attain multifaceted development.

Diverse formations of individuality intrinsically involve the relation between the directionality of individual development and different possibilities of development. At the processual level, later stages of development start out from prior stages which condition them, but prior stages of development do not necessarily lead to certain later stages, which reveals a certain dissymmetry. The relatively mature and relatively stable form of being that a person has attained in character and capacity can always be traced back to some sources or seeds that can be found in the person’s earlier environment, education background, and prior efforts, but this does not mean that the person’s earlier development necessarily determined the formation of later phases. Due to changes in the individual and in the individual’s social circumstances and by virtue of the consequent effect of such changes, one’s individuality always implies different possibilities of development; so the direction of individual development is never absolutely unchanging. Based on this fact, it seems we could make a distinction between the actualization of potentiality and the realization of possibility. The actualization of potentiality to some degree presupposes the determinate direction of a tendency: the resultant phase of development corresponds to the direction of development that was already implicitly contained in the point of departure. The realization of possibility, on the other hand, does not presuppose a pre-determined direction, but rather implies different possible tendencies, and provides the individual’s own creativity with necessary space to develop. Evident here is the interweaving of necessity, possibility, contingency, directionality, and self-creativity in the process of developing individuality. The development and formation of individuality does undoubtedly have its internal ground, and this ground does determine a tendency of development, but to understand this development as a necessary and pre-determined process because of this would be an error. The process of developing individuality is always influenced by factors and conditions both social and individual, among which we find contingent constraints tied to varying circumstances and the individual’s own inner creative activity. Viewing the development of free individuality purely as the actualization of a potentiality or reducing it to the mere realization of a possibility show two one-sided approaches. The determinate direction implied by potentiality and the creativity implied by possibility exhibit modes of interaction in the process of developing free individuality.

The realization of possibility and the actualization of potentiality both unfold as different aspects of the same process. In broad terms, the development of individuality intrinsically entails historicity and processuality. At the processual level, the whole-sidedness of individuality has different historical meanings. In earlier stages of social development, the individual seems to present a whole form, but this is the primordial “wholeness” found in those historical stages where the differentiation of social relations and the division of labor had not yet adequately developed. The latter can neither be seen on the same level as nor equated with the whole-sided development found in the theory of free individuality. Marx once wrote in his Grundrisse, “In earlier stages of development the single individual seems to be developed more fully, because he has not yet worked out his relationships in their fullness, or erected them as independent social powers and relations opposite to himself. It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history has come to a standstill.”41 Whole-sided development, manifested by free individuality, on the other hand, is the mode of being human being attains after overcoming both objective dependence and personal dependence, which in contrast to the primordial wholeness and primitive abundance is grounded in a much higher stage of social development and contains a deeper historical meaning. It is precisely in this sense that Marx claims that “[u]niversally developed individuals, whose social relations, as their own communal relations, are hence also subordinated to their own communal control, are no product of nature, but of history.42

As a product of history, free individuality and the whole-sided development of human being have their actual preconditions; aside from overcoming both personal dependence and objective dependence at the level of social history, particular attention must also be paid to what is called free time. Free time is first of all said in contrast to the necessary time of labor. From the perspective of society, production in the intellectual sphere only becomes possible once the labor time used to produce means of livelihood and the means of production has been reduced to a definite degree. The less time invested in the former, the more time can be spent on the latter: “The less time society requires to produce wheat, cattle, etc., the more time it wins for other production, material and mental.”43 Similarly for the individual, under conditions in which the individual’s entire time is occupied by necessary labor, the development of his other facets and capacities remain but empty ideals; only after obtaining time that he can freely control does the schedule open up for the individual to develop multiple facets. The meaning of increasing the individual’s free time through the saving of his labor time consists in creating the conditions for the individual’s full development: “The saving of labour time [is] equal to an increase in free time, i.e., time for the full development of the individual.”44 The intrinsic link between the reduction of the person’s labor time, an increase in his free time, and his full development is obvious. The free development of individuality will become actual as soon as each person is allotted free time through a decrease in the labor time of all: “The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.”45 There is a consistent unity between the free development of individualities and the multifaceted development of the person in different fields, and the common precondition of both is coming into possession of free time. Evidently, free individuality shows its actual character on the basis of free time.

Turning from the prior condition and ground of the free development individuality to the internal process of this development, we encroach upon a different form of freedom. In positive form, the free development of individuality means realizing a concrete diversity of worthy ideals through creative activities. The realization of such ideals is exhibited at the individual level as the person’s self-realization or self-refinement. In negative form, the free development of individuality aims at liberating the person from various forms of subjugation, disturbances and restrictions; at the historical level, this “liberation” is manifested as the double-sided overcoming of personal dependence and objective dependence.46

In regard to its primitive and abstract form, freedom in the positive sense originates from such desires as that for self-determination and to be the master of one’s own will, which could be more generally formulated as “freedom to.”47 The latter exhibits the tendency to start out from a certain set of values, and to uphold an idea and standpoint in order to struggle for the thoroughgoing realization of the ideal that corresponds while reforming the world and refining oneself. If this approach is excessively and one-sidedly developed the individual readily falls into influencing if not dominating others with his own will power, ideas, and ideals; at the level of society, this leads to the molding of human beings on the basis of a one-sided and universal model, which results in dogmatic ways of thinking and despotic ways of behaving. At the same time, the pushing of ideas is often linked to a rational design; when both are integrated with indoctrination of thought and the modification of practices, the despotic enforcement of rationality readily results. Here there seems to be a paradox: the “positive” aspiration toward freedom readily leads humans to the opposite of freedom. A historical consideration reveals that under the one-sided implementation and carrying out of ideas like democracy, rationality, equality, and revolution, some sort of deposit quality was engendered within each of them. In the form of positively realizing an idea, this idea becomes alienated from itself while degenerating into a tool for the repression, control, and violation of people’s thoughts and actions. The ideological maintenance of a pre-established form of being and the utopian pursuit of illusory plans show different aspects of this tendency. Here, the positive approach to freedom undoubtedly expresses its negative meaning as well.

Relative to the positive form of freedom is the negative form of freedom, which aims at shaking off restrictions and forms of control issuing from outside, or in other words, “freedom from.”48 However, while demanding to break free from restrictions, the negative mode of freedom seems to entail a tendency to eliminate already fashioned ideals and goals. Whereas the positive mode of freedom embodies the internal demand of “What ought to be done?” the negative mode of freedom entails a doubt and denial of all such demands. If this negative and skeptical standpoint is excessively developed it could run the risk of abandoning all worthy commitments on the substantial or universal level. When he ties “absolute values” to “our primitive past” and views the demand to transcend the relative validity of individual beliefs as an “incurable metaphysical need,”49 Berlin shows his rejection of dogmatism but also reveals his accusation of and distance from universal values. Logically speaking, when shaking off and destroying becomes the main let alone only choice and approach, any agreement about or commitment to values loses its essential ground, thereby leading inevitably to the nihilistic orientation toward the destruction of all values. So-called post-modernism manifests an aspect of the negative ideal of freedom. Post-modernism aims at deconstructing pre-existing worlds of meaning (including value principles), but while transcending, destroying, and negating pre-existing systems of meaning, post-modernism neither commits to nor opens up any new world of meaning. After shaking off and eliminating everything, what remains is a sense of nothingness and meaninglessness.

At the same time, the process of developing individuality involves the constraint of norms. Norms include purposes on the level of substance and have the dual function of guiding and restraining. Guiding expresses the positive sense of directing and restraining expresses the negative sense of limiting. In direct correspondence with the role of ordinary ideas in the process of reforming the world and refining the self, freedom in its positive form essentially involves agreeing with and affirming the meaning of universal norms. By contrast, with shaking off, transcending, and negating as its approach, freedom in its negative form logically entails some estrangement from norms, which corresponds to the dispelling of valued goals, and which makes the guiding role of value principles impossible to actualize in the process of reforming the world and molding the self.

Evidently, each of these two forms of freedom has its own limitations. So, the ideal of freedom linked to the whole-sided development of the individual (free individuality) cannot be simply equated with them. Even though the positive orientation of freedom affirms human creativity and confirms the meaning to which values lead, excessively emphasizing this aspect of freedom skews it along the path of dogmatism and despotism; even though the negative mode of freedom may assist in inhibiting the dogmatism and despotism to which positive freedom may inevitably lead, because it has its own deficiency in a commitment to values and ignores the guidance of norms it logically leads just as easily to nihilism. Confucius once mentioned the principle of being loyal (zhong ) and empathic (shu ). Being loyal means “helping others take their stand insofar as you wishes to take your stand, and get others there insofar as you wish to get there,”50 the essential tendency of which is to extend oneself to others, to influence and effect the other with one’s own value ideals, so as to make such ideals become the aim pursued in common by the self and the other. Being empathic then refers to the principle of “not doing unto others what you yourself do not desire.”51 Although this principle cannot entirely extricate itself from a certain kind of solipsism, it still envelops the will to avoid violating the other and a willingness to respect the other. The former is positive, but with this as the sole principle there is always the risk of forcing one’s own values upon others and falling prey to dogmatism; the latter is negative, which obviously harbors the negative tendency to inhibit and suppress the former (“helping others take their stand insofar as you yourself wish to take your stand, and getting others there insofar as you yourself wishes to get there”); yet, holding too strongly to the latter may also lead to the suspension of all worthy ideals. Confucius saw the unification of the two as the way to realize moral principles while avoiding the one-sided intentions harbored respectively by the positive and negative approaches. Even though Confucius was unable to go beyond the model of thought that determines accomplishing oneself with the attainment of sagehood, in responding to the issue of determining a moral way of being, his viewpoint is most certainly profound. Concretely understanding the free development of individuality through the unification and mutual supplementing of being contentious and being empathic we can notice further that this process is inseparable from the guidance of worthy ideals and the intention to create values on the one hand and also that adequate respect should be paid to the internal characteristics of the individual so as to avoid the dogmatic and coercive tendency to destroy the diversity and concreteness of individual beings. Furthermore, while affirming the valuing of ideals and the creation of values, we must avoid absolutizing them and abstracting them from their position in the process of history. Entailed here is some way of combining negative freedom and positive freedom or the twofold sublation of their opposed aspects.

The process of accomplishing oneself whose aim is free individuality, concretely expresses the meaning of the individual’s being as regards the transformation of history and the significance of values. While the fact that the individual precedes purpose reveals the meaning of the individual’s value at the level of ontology, the free individuality linked to the whole-sided development of human being gives concrete substance to this meaning. With the overcoming of personal dependence and objective dependence as a prior condition, free individuality reveals the purposive determination of human being and reflects the transformations and developments undergone by the form of society, from which the meaning of the individual’s being gains deeper senses of value and broader historical implications. This very process of generating meaning shows furthermore the historical and axiological dimensions of a world of meaning at the level of individual existence.