Journal article
Individuality as difference
- Abstract:
- Today’s culture tells us to respect, even celebrate, the many ways in which we are different from each other. These are moral claims about how to relate to people, given that they are different. But does it also matter whether we are different in the first place? I argue for the intrinsic value to us of individuality, understood in terms of our differences from others. Past defences of individuality often unhelpfully conflate it with autonomy or authenticity, but these can come apart from individuality. Individuality is also distinct from numerical identity and moral status, and cannot be fully captured in terms of rarity, diversity, or irreplaceability. Most current theories of well-being leave it open that lives utterly lacking in individuality might be wonderfully good. These theories, I argue, fail to account for what Valéry called ‘the evil of not being unique’.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 219.3KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1111/papa.12267
Authors
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Journal:
- Philosophy & Public Affairs More from this journal
- Volume:
- 52
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 362-396
- Publication date:
- 2024-06-29
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-05-05
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1088-4963
- ISSN:
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0048-3915
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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1994712
- Local pid:
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pubs:1994712
- Deposit date:
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2024-06-04
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Kahane, G
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © 2024 The Author(s). Philosophy & Public Affairs published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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