Plastic character makes man simultaneously universal and individual.
Evidence
Man, who forms himself in order to become a substantial individuality, represents the paradigmatic instance of this movement whereby substance is self-differentiated. Habit has helped man to acquire the ‘plastic character’, making him at once ‘universal and individual’. This is exemplary for the way spirit’s universality, in its different moments, acquires concreteness and actuality through its incarnation in those individual forms. Thus in Hegel, the notion of an ‘individual’ does not merely apply to man, but ultimately can apply also to a nation, an artistic epoch, a philosophy, or a moment of the ‘substance-subject’. Subjectivity is not a reality existing in advance of the process whereby it becomes self-differentiated: each of its moments emerges from an independent interpretation of its own being. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 596
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the ‘plastic character’ as what makes man at once universal and individual — the whole plastic-individuals core definition.
- XREF: The claim that subjectivity is not prior to its self-differentiation but emerges from each moment’s independent interpretation echoes connectionist/emergentist accounts the reader’s brain work wrestles with — no pre-existing subject, only processual plasticity. — connects to: Habit produces the plastic character making man both universal and individual. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 596; Plastic individuals become what they essentially were and wanted to be; Plasticity is the mutual informing of universal and particular in the exemplary individual — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 237 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Habit produces the plastic character making man both universal and individual.
#corroborates(0.95) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 596 - Plasticity is the mutual informing of universal and particular in the exemplary individual
#expands(0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 237 - Plastic individuals become what they essentially were and wanted to be
#expands(0.80) - Plastic individuality synthesizes universal substance with individual form
#expands(0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 583 - Plasticity names the union of universal substance with individual form
#expands(0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 583 - Every person is perceived as both unique individual and general type
#qualifies(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 174 - Modern individuals receive abstract universality ready-made rather than forging it from concrete life
#complicates(0.75)