Individuation

The principle of individuation, or principium individuationis,^[1] describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things.^[2]

The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Leibniz, Carl Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, David Bohm, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze,^[3] and Manuel DeLanda.

Arthur Schopenhauer[edit]

For Schopenhauer, the principium individuationis is constituted of time and space, being the ground of multiplicity. In his view, the mere difference in location suffices to make two systems different, with each of the two states having its own real physical state, independent of the state of the other.

This view influenced Albert Einstein.^[20] Schrödinger put the Schopenhaurian label on a folder of papers in his files “Collection of Thoughts on the physical Principium individuationis.”^[21]

The I, as a psychic individual, can only be thought in relationship to we, which is a collective individual. The I is constituted in adopting a collective tradition, which it inherits and in which a plurality of I ’s acknowledge each other’s existence.

This inheritance is an adoption, in that I can very well, as the French grandson of a German immigrant, recognize myself in a past which was not the past of my ancestors but which I can make my own. This process of adoption is thus structurally factual.

The I is essentially a process, not a state, and this process is an in-dividuation — it is a process of psychic individuation. It is the tendency to become one, that is, to become indivisible.

This tendency never accomplishes itself because it runs into a counter-tendency with which it forms a . (It must be pointed out how closely this conception of the dynamic of individuation is to the Freudian theory of drives and to the thinking of Nietzsche and Empedocles.)

metastable equilibrium

The we is also such a process (the process of collective individuation). The individuation of the I is always inscribed in that of the we, whereas the individuation of the we takes place only through the individuations, polemical in nature, of the I ’s which constitute it.

That which links the individuations of the I and the we is a pre-individual system possessing positive conditions of effectiveness that belong to what Stiegler calls retentional apparatuses. These retentional apparatuses arise from a technical system which is the condition of the encounter of the I and the we — the individuation of the I and the we is, in this respect, also the individuation of the technical system.

The technical system is an apparatus which has a specific role wherein all objects are inserted — a technical object exists only insofar as it is disposed within such an apparatus with other technical objects (this is what calls the technical group).

Gilbert Simondon

The technical system is also that which founds the possibility of the constitution of retentional apparatuses, springing from the processes of growing out of the process of individuation of the technical system. And these retentional apparatuses are the basis for the dispositions between the individuation of the I and the individuation of the we in a single process of psychic, collective, and technical individuation composed of three branches, each branching out into process groups.

grammatization

In the process of individuation, wherein knowledge as such emerges, there are individuations of mnemo-technological subsystems which overdetermine, qua specific organizations of what Stiegler calls tertiary retentions, the organization, transmission, and elaboration of knowledge stemming from the experience of the sensible.

The philosophy of Bernard Stiegler draws upon and modifies the work of Gilbert Simondon on individuation and also upon similar ideas in Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. During a talk given at the Tate Modern art gallery in 2004,^[29] Stiegler summarized his understanding of individuation. The essential points are the following:

Akrasia

Deindividuation

Identical particles

Identity formation

Indiscernibles

Nekyia

Positive disintegration

Principle of individuation

Rationalization (sociology)

Self-actualization

Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d'existence des objets techniques (Méot, 1958; Paris: Aubier, 1989, second edition). (in French)

Gilbert Simondon, , link to PDF of 1980 translation.

On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Part 1

Gilbert Simondon, L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (l'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information) (Paris: PUF, 1964; J.Millon, coll. Krisis, 1995, second edition). (in French)

Gilbert Simondon, , Part 2, links to HTML files of unpublished 2007 translation.

The Individual and Its Physico-Biological Genesis, Part 1

Gilbert Simondon, L'Individuation psychique et collective (1964; Paris: Aubier, 1989). (in French)

Bernard Stiegler, .

Acting Out

Bernard Stiegler, . (in French)