The
Reality of Freedom
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Individuality
and Genus
THE
view that man is destined to become a complete, self-contained,
free individuality seems to be contested by the fact that he makes
his appearance as a member of a naturally given totality (race,
people, nation, family, male or female sex) and also works within
a totality (state, church, and so on). He bears the general
characteristics of the group to which he belongs, and he gives to
his actions a content that is determined by the position he
occupies among many others.
This being so, is individuality possible at all? Can we
regard man as a totality in himself, seeing that he grows out
of one totality and integrates himself into another?
Each member of a totality is determined, as regards its
characteristics and functions, by the whole totality. A racial
group is a totality and all the people belonging to it bear the
characteristic features that are inherent in the nature of the
group. How the single member is constituted, and how he
will behave, are determined by the character of the racial
group. Therefore the physiognomy and conduct of the
individual have something generic about them. If we ask
why some particular thing about a man is like this or like that,
we are referred back from the individual to the genus. The
genus explains why something in the individual appears in
the form we observe.
Man, however, makes himself free from what is generic.
For the generic features of the human race, when rightly
understood, do not restrict man's freedom, and should not
artificially be made to do so. A man develops qualities and
activities of his own, and the basis for these we can seek only
in the man himself. What is generic in him serves only as a
medium in which to express his own individual being. He
uses as a foundation the characteristics that nature has given
him, and to these he gives a form appropriate to his own
being. If we seek in the generic laws the reasons for an
expression of this being, we seek in vain. We are concerned
with something purely individual which can be explained
only in terms of itself. If a man has achieved this emancipation
from all that is generic, and we are nevertheless determined to
explain everything about him in generic terms, then we have no
sense for what is individual.
It is impossible to understand a human being completely
if one takes the concept of genus as the basis of one's
judgment. The tendency to judge according to the genus is at its
most stubborn where we are concerned with differences of
sex. Almost invariably man sees in woman, and woman in
man, too much of the general character of the other sex and
too little of what is individual. In practical life this does less
harm to men than to women. The social position of women
is for the most part such an unworthy one because in so many
respects it is determined not as it should be by the particular
characteristics of the individual woman, but by the
general picture one has of woman's natural tasks and needs.
A man's activity in life is governed by his individual capacities
and inclinations, whereas a woman's is supposed to be
determined solely by the mere fact that she is a woman. She
is supposed to be a slave to what is generic, to womanhood in
general. As long as men continue to debate whether a woman
is suited to this or that profession “according to her natural
disposition”, the so-called woman's question cannot advance
beyond its most elementary stage. What a woman, within
her natural limitations, wants to become had better be left
to the woman herself to decide. If it is true that women are
suited only to that profession which is theirs at present, then
they will hardly have it in them to attain any other. But they
must be allowed to decide for themselves what is in accordance
with their nature. To all who fear an upheaval of our
social structure through accepting women as individuals and
not as females, we must reply that a social structure in which
the status of one half of humanity is unworthy of a human
being is itself in great need of improvement.
(see fn 1)
Anyone who judges people according to generic characters
gets only as far as the frontier where people begin to be
beings whose activity is based on free self-determination.
Whatever lies short of this frontier may naturally become
matter for academic study. The characteristics of race,
people, nation and sex are the subject matter of special
branches of study. Only men who wish to live as nothing
more than examples of the genus could possibly conform to a
general picture such as arises from academic study of this
kind. But none of these branches of study are able to advance
as far as the unique content of the single individual.
Determining the individual according to the laws of his genus
ceases where the sphere of freedom (in thinking and acting)
begins. The conceptual content which man has to connect
with the percept by an act of thinking in order to have the
full reality
(see Chapter 5 ff.)
cannot be fixed once and for all and
bequeathed ready-made to mankind. The individual must
get his concepts through his own intuition. How the individual
has to think cannot possibly be deduced from any
kind of generic concept. It depends simply and solely on the
individual. Just as little is it possible to determine from the
general characteristics of man what concrete aims the individual
may choose to set himself. If we would understand
the single individual we must find our way into his own
particular being and not stop short at those characteristics
that are typical. In this sense every single human being is a
separate problem. And every kind of study that deals with
abstract thoughts and generic concepts is but a preparation
for the knowledge we get when a human individuality tells
us his way of viewing the world, and on the other hand for
the knowledge we get from the content of his acts of will.
Whenever we feel that we are dealing with that element in a
man which is free from stereotyped thinking and instinctive
willing, then, if we would understand him in his essence, we
must cease to call to our aid any concepts at all of our own
making. The act of knowing consists in combining the
concept with the percept by means of thinking. With all
other objects the observer must get his concepts through his
intuition; but if we are to understand a free individuality we
must take over into our own spirit those concepts by which
he determines himself, in their pure form (without mixing
our own conceptual content with them). Those who immediately
mix their own concepts into every judgment about another
person, can never arrive at the understanding of an
individuality. Just as the free individuality emancipates
himself from the characteristics of the genus, so must the
act of knowing emancipate itself from the way in which we
understand what is generic.
Only to the extent that a man has emancipated himself in
this way from all that is generic, does he count as a free
spirit within a human community. No man is all genus, none
is all individuality. But every man gradually emancipates a
greater or lesser sphere of his being, both from the generic
characteristics of animal life and from domination by the
decrees of human authorities.
As regards that part of his nature where a man is not able
to achieve this freedom for himself, he constitutes a part of
the whole organism of nature and spirit. In this respect he
lives by copying others or by obeying their commands. But
only that part of his conduct that springs from his intuitions
can have ethical value in the true sense. And those moral
instincts that he possesses through the inheritance of social
instincts acquire ethical value through being taken up into
his intuitions. It is from individual ethical intuitions and
their acceptance by human communities that all moral
activity of mankind originates. In other words, the moral life
of mankind is the sum total of the products of the moral
imagination of free human individuals. This is the conclusion
reached by monism.
Footnotes:
- Immediately
upon the publication of this book (1894), critics
objected to the above arguments that, even now, within the generic
character of her sex, a woman is able to shape her life individually,
just as she pleases, and far more freely than a man who is already
de-individualized, first by the school, and later by war and
profession. I am aware that this objection will be urged today (1918),
even more strongly. None the less, I feel bound to let my sentences
stand, in the hope that there are readers who appreciate how
violently such an objection runs counter to the concept of freedom
advocated in this book, and who will judge my sentences above by
a standard other than the de-individualizing of man through
school and profession.
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