Individuation Definition

Individuation Sentence Examples

• Knowledge, therefore, with its vehicle, the intellect, is dependent upon the existence of certain nerve-organs located in an animal system; and its function is originally only to present an image of the interconnexions of the manifestations external to the individual organism, and so to give to the individual in a partial and reflected form that feeling with other things, or innate sympathy, which it loses as organization becomes more complex and characteristic. Knowledge or intellect, therefore, is only the surrogate of that more intimate unity of feeling or will which is the underlying reality - the principle of all existence, the essence of all manifestations, inorganic and organic. And the perfection of reason is attained when man has transcended those limits of individuation in which his knowledge at first presents him to himself, when by art he has risen from single objects to universal types, and by suffering and sacrifice has penetrated to that innermost sanctuary where the euthanasia of consciousness is reached - the blessedness of eternal repose.

• Albert and Aquinas agree in declaring that the principle of individuation is to be found in matter, not, however, in matter as a formless substrate but in determinate matter (materia signata), which is explained to mean matter quantitatively determined in certain respects.

• They possess the principle of individuation in themselves, he teaches, but plurality of individuals is in such a case equivalent to plurality of species (in eis tot sunt species quot sunt individua).

• One of the first of these was the Reprehensorium seu correctorium fratris Thomae, published in 1285 by William Lamarre, in which the Averroistic consequences of the Thomist doctrine of individuation are already pressed home.

• While agreeing with Albert and Thomas in maintaining the threefold existence of the universals, Duns Scotus attacked the Thomist doctrine of individuation.