Elements for a Philosophy of Individuation

Abstract

This chapter introduces the terms which constitute Simondon’s jargon, showing how they are derived from and related to various fields of scientific research, and explaining their function in Simondon’s philosophy. Crucial to his discourse are the philosophical notions of ‘individual’ and ‘individuation’ which, extended to every domain of being, Simondon proposes as the ontological foundations for a philosophical approach to what he calls a ‘process of individuation’ or ‘ontogenesis’. The genuinely philosophical performance of Simondon’s main book Individuation in the Light of the Notions of Form and Information lies in the attempt to enable different ‘schemas’ – modulation, crystallisation, phase, metastability, transduction, and many other conceptual tools – for the analysis of the different domains of being, of their structural conditions and operational status: tools for defining the thresholds between different domains in order to make a problem of them, rather than to fix them. Simondon’s concepts, in fact, do not define any separate ‘realms’ – matter, living beings, psyche, society – traversed by individuals or any kind of substances of which individuals would be composed. On the contrary, they indicate processes whose dynamic composition forces us to reconsider the notion of individual in terms of individuation.