{"title":"Metamorphoses of individualism in Modern political philosophy","authors":"Natalia Spasenko","doi":"10.31649/sent01.01.192","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The author, following Niklas Luhmann, interprets the opposition \"individual-society\" as one of the pillars to which the ideological content of modern society is anchored. The same can be said about political philosophy: no matter how we understand the term \"society\" (in terms of collectivism, communalism, or holism), individualism is always understood as something ontologically rooted, as a constitutive factor of political space. Despite the resistance of influential opponents, methodological individualism has not become either a historical relic or a synonym for professional incompetence. Attempts to overcome this resistance led to the realization of a speculative tendency – self-description, which, according to Luhmann, inevitably constitutes itself as an ideology. However, individualism in the Modernity did not manifest itself as a strategy of a particular \"-ology\", but as a practical, non-contemplative strategy of political philosophy. The author agrees with Peter Koslowski that the question of the nature of the opposition \"individual-society\" can be answered only hypothetically. After all, this duality appears as: (1) a product of the historical process of individuation; (2) the result of the development of social production, the transition to private property; (3) an initial property of conditio humana. In contrast to other epochs, Modernity was the only one to propose to exclude the will to the common from individual motivations, to monistically present the individual concept of the good as a desire for personal gain.","PeriodicalId":37673,"journal":{"name":"Sententiae","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sententiae","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.31649/sent01.01.192","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The author, following Niklas Luhmann, interprets the opposition "individual-society" as one of the pillars to which the ideological content of modern society is anchored. The same can be said about political philosophy: no matter how we understand the term "society" (in terms of collectivism, communalism, or holism), individualism is always understood as something ontologically rooted, as a constitutive factor of political space. Despite the resistance of influential opponents, methodological individualism has not become either a historical relic or a synonym for professional incompetence. Attempts to overcome this resistance led to the realization of a speculative tendency – self-description, which, according to Luhmann, inevitably constitutes itself as an ideology. However, individualism in the Modernity did not manifest itself as a strategy of a particular "-ology", but as a practical, non-contemplative strategy of political philosophy. The author agrees with Peter Koslowski that the question of the nature of the opposition "individual-society" can be answered only hypothetically. After all, this duality appears as: (1) a product of the historical process of individuation; (2) the result of the development of social production, the transition to private property; (3) an initial property of conditio humana. In contrast to other epochs, Modernity was the only one to propose to exclude the will to the common from individual motivations, to monistically present the individual concept of the good as a desire for personal gain.
期刊介绍:
Sententiae is historico-philosophical open access journal. Journal created by Modern philosophy''s research group (Pascalian society). Founded in 2000. Published twice a year, in June and December. Our purpose is to foster the development of a wide gamut of contemporary approaches, active implementation of them into research practice, and establishment of high standards of teaching philosophy basing on the achievements of contemporary history of philosophy. Our key priority is to ensure the empirical substantiation of historico-philosophical conceptions, basing on the criteria of literality, exhaustivity, contextuality and taking into account the existing speculative interpretations. Jean-Luc Marion was the first to formulate this set of criteria in 1998 as the main features of contemporary researches of Descartes''s philosophy. We regard these principles as the methodological background of any substantiated research method in the history of philosophy. Publishing materials on all historico-philosophical topics, we pay special attention to researches in terminology, issues of philosophical translation and untranslatability, manuscript researches (including handwritten heritage of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy professors of ХVІІ–ХVІІІ century), and cover the development of large-scale projects in this area. We also publish new bilingual and commented Ukrainian translations of classical foreign philosophical texts. Among our priorities there is also a coverage of the history of philosophical thought in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries and its relations to the wider cultural context (theology, literature, natural sciences, political ideology etc). The content of each issue is distributed according to Genre Sections and Thematic Headings. Currently there are 10 Genre Sections.