Plastic individuals become what they essentially were and wanted to be

Evidence

Everything began, or began again, when, ‘falling’ one day onto the term ‘plastic’, I was brought to a stop, at once intrigued and grateful. Intrigued by its discreet presence in the Hegelian corpus, by that whole realm of the unknown which gestured through it. Grateful for something essential which was suddenly recognizable. Attempting to understand it more carefully, I started to study the way it functioned in the Hegelian text, focusing my attention onto everything in it which referred back to a dynamism of the reception and donation of form, hence to subjectivity itself in a process of self-determination. It was an ‘accident’ – the term ‘plastic’ could at first sight be considered something accidental in Hegel’s text – that brought me to the essential. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1246 (#expands, via linked claim)

The second limit on the range of the concept of plasticity is marked, inversely, by an ”open” or unrestrained definition. According to this second limit, plasticity designates a much more effective transformative ability. This involves, not an infinite modifiability—we have not yet come back around to polymorphism—but a possibility of displacing or transforming the mark or the imprint, of changing determination in some way. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 64 (#expands, via linked claim)

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The word plastic denotes a dynamism of receiving and giving form — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1246; Plasticity also means the ability to change one’s own determination — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 64; Habit produces the plastic character making man both universal and individual. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 596 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The word plastic denotes a dynamism of receiving and giving form #expands (0.95) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1246
• Plasticity also means the ability to change one’s own determination #expands (0.90) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 64
• Habit produces the plastic character making man both universal and individual. #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 596
• Plasticity is the mutual informing of universal and particular in the exemplary individual #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 237
• Habit is the plastic operation rendering the body fully pervious #expands (0.78)
• Plastic individuality mediates between sculptural and philosophical plasticity. #qualifies (0.75)
• The word ‘plastic’ spans from form-giving sculpture to the annihilation of form in explosives #qualifies (0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 227