CFP: Understanding Homo Individualis. Contemporary Views on Individual and Individuality

Description and purposes of the conference

The FISPPA Department of the University of Padua is pleased to announce the forthcoming conference “Understanding Homo Individualis. Contemporary Views on Individual and Individuality”, to be held from 24 to 26 September 2025. 

We take Homo individualis to stand for a conceptual structure accounting for the intrinsic individuality of human beings, this individuality being essentially irreducible to physical, biological, mental, or sociological determinations. The purpose of the conference is to stimulate discussion among scholars of a variety of philosophical orientations regarding the consciousness of one’s own individuality, thereby contributing to the current theoretical and practical debates. 

While our approach to the topic is largely phenomenological, we actively encourage and value contributions from diverse research fields, including the analytical tradition, critical theory, and beyond. However, proposals should transcend narrow historiographical concerns and engage with more recent accounts seeking to elucidate the structural conditions, conceptual as well as practical implications, and cultural bearings inherent in our understanding of individuality.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• What is self-conscious individuality? What constitutes individuality consciousness as such – cognitively, practically, bodily, and beyond?

• How can a subject develop an awareness of her individual Self?

• What does the dynamic of self-individuation consist of?

• What role does intersubjectivity play in shaping individuality?

• What linguistic articulations allow for self-reference? And how are they connected with self-consciousness and self-individuation?

• What allows an individual to experience herself as something unique, as an irreplaceable singularity?

• What practical dispositions facilitate the self-ascription of individual responsibility?

• How are agency, self-realization and self-individuation related?

• Can individuality serve as a criterion for practical self-regulation, and for guiding one’s life according to personal norms? 

• What allows experiencing the individuality of an individual as a source of innovation and creativity?

• What are the consequences in terms of drives, needs, desires, and actions of such a kind of individual, i.e. of an individual that is required to act as a unique individual?

Consequently, core philosophical questions that will be revisited include (but are not limited to):

• the structure of the individual Self 

• the genesis of individuality consciousness

• self-individuation, self-identity

• individuality and intersubjectivity

• indexicality, de se attitudes

• pure I/Ego

• self-ascription, responsibility, and sense of agency

• autonomy, self-determination and self-realisation

• individuality and personhood

• individual and social norms

• uniqueness and singularity 

• individuality and innovation/creativity

• teleology and individuals’ well-being

• critical and feminist theories of individuality

Submission guidelines

The conference will be held in English.

An abstract of max. 500 words should be sent to: [email protected]; [email protected]