Abstract
The concept of individuality expresses an ideal of personal emancipation and self-realization. For many philosophers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, individuality was the highest end, the telos, not only of human life but also of social and political organization. This paper explores the idea of individuality in the works of several nineteenth-century philosophers: Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Schleiermacher, John Stuart Mill, and French socialist Pierre Leroux. It asks the following questions: What sort of emancipation did individuality promise? What were its social and political implications? And what would it emancipate us from, exactly? It also explores the ways in which these several authors used the metaphor of the machine to dramatize the meaning and value of individuality.
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