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8. Alternative Accounts of Individual Form
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185 Eight • Alternative Accounts of Individual Form Stein shares with the Christian tradition, in a way that Aristotle did not, a concern for the individual and for the value of each and every individual. Each individual is not merely a means for the continuation of the species but is, rather, immeasurably valuable in the eyes of God. Stein has a beautiful passage about watching long lines of soldiers marching by; they form a mass where each conforms to all the others, all steps perfectly paced off. And yet the eyes of love— the eyes of the mother or bride—pick out a particular individual. They anxiously wait for just that one and recognize that individual’s distinctiveness, even amid the great sea of soldiers.1 Further, Stein rightly points out that the person is not reducible to her human nature ; she is not simply one like all others with the human form. A person has a level of unrepeatability and dignity that the classic Aristotelian position did not adequately emphasize. If, in objecting to Stein’s position, I end up undermining Stein’s insights into the value of our individuality or our personhood, then I have failed. My contention in this chapter is not that Stein is wrong about the philosophic and moral significance of our individuality; it is, more simply , that our individuality can be adequately accounted for without positing a priori content-rich individual forms. Stein is, I believe, correct about the intelligibility and value of our individual distinctiveness , but I think that individual forms can be understood in a slightly different way than Stein (predominately) argues. Stein distinguishes the substantial form, with its actual being , from our essence, with its essential being, which is then un1 . See EeS 464–65/ESG 425–26/FEB 508–9. 186 Alternative Accounts of Individuality folded in actual being. Individual forms, on Stein’s dominant account , lie first and foremost at the level of essential being, as the final determination of the essence for finite personal entities. It is in this sense that Stein’s individual forms can be described as a priori . They are not a priori in the sense of existing somewhere temporally prior to all actual being.2 Essential being, although other than actual being, need not be prior to all actual being. Further, as properly atemporal, essential being is not relevant to time (even if the intelligibilities having essential being can be unfolded in time). Thus, in describing Stein’s individual forms as “a priori,” I simply mean that the being most fit to them is other than actual being: it is essential being. Stein further claims that in virtue of our substantial form and our spirit, we can “stand over against” the possibilities of our essence ; we can decide who and how we want to become ourselves. Thus, our true identity and deepest individuality lie in our spirit, not our individual form. It is our actually conscious, living, choosing self that is utterly unrepeatable and thus unique in the stronger sense. In addition to our spirit, however, Stein also affirms an individual form, which lays out possibilities distinctive for each of us as an individual and not merely as a human being. These individual forms do not make any of us unique in the stronger sense, but they do do so in a weaker sense. While this understanding of individual forms is, I believe, the most consistent way of reading Stein’s texts, there are very subtle hints of other possible interpretations. Stein makes a few comments throughout her writings which suggest—ever so subtly—slightly different understandings of individual form. These versions either do not make individual forms a priori or they play down the degree to which individual forms specify the content of the human form. None of the alternative understandings is consistent with the 2. And thus a priori here is being used in a sense closer to that of Kant, Reinach , and Husserl than to that of Plato insofar as he affirms a world of a priori Forms. [3.128.199.162] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 22:15 GMT) 187 majority of what Stein says, and the comments leaning in these directions are comparatively few. But they offer hints of another understanding of individual form. Further, and perhaps more significantly, I think that these comments hint at a better version of individual form than Stein’s dominant position. I argue in the previous chapter that Stein’s account of individual form...