Rescuing Ontological Individualism

Standard defences of ontological individualism are challenged by arguments that exploit the dependence of social facts on material facts – i.e. facts that are not about human individuals. In this paper I discuss Brian Epstein’s “materialism” in The Ant Trap: granting Epstein’s strict definition of individualism, I show that his arguments depend crucially on a generous conception of social properties and social facts. Individualists however are only committed to the claim that projectible properties are individualistically realized, and materialists have not undermined this claim.

Uneven worlds of hegemony: towards a discursive ontology of societal multiplicity

The neo-Marxist literature on uneven and combined development has made significant progress towards a comprehensive theory of the international. Its point of departure is societal multiplicity as a fundamental condition of the international. This article identifies an important lacuna in the ontology of multiplicity: there is no discussion of what constitutes a ‘society’, or the basic entity capable of entering a relationship with other entities. Existing solutions, including those relying on relational sociology, gravitate towards ontological individualism. Building on poststructuralist neo-Gramscian theories, I propose to ground the conceptualisation of ‘society’ in the notion of hegemony. This implies a discursive ontology, which attributes the inside/outside dynamic to hegemonic formations rather than states or societies. Coupled with the understanding of hegemony as a scalar phenomenon, this ontology can account for the primacy of the state in modern times, while also enabling a research focus on other types of collectivities.

Gulliver Effects

It has been difficult to place Gulliver’s Travels within a post-Wattsian account of the novel’s emergence and consolidation. Nevertheless, Swift’s text had important effects on the genre he so tellingly satirized. There is, for instance, a Gulliverian source for Fielding’s later assaults both on ‘realism’ and on ontological individualism. The brilliant denunciation of war near the end of Gulliver is likewise extended and novelistically developed in Tristram Shandy. Smollett’s curmudgeonly narrator in Humphry Clinker can be usefully understood as his contribution to Swift’s ‘satirist-satirized’ topos. Frances Burney’s Evelina appropriates Swift’s simian ‘Yahoo’ theme by way of mocking the English upper class. Finally, Swift’s ‘degeneration’ topos is played out as an Irish family saga in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent. Though not a novel as such, Gulliver’s Travels is necessary to understand the novel’s history.

From Interpretation to Construction: Guo Xiang’s Ontological Individualism

Guo Xiang’s ontological individualism represents a case of philosophical construction based on his interpretation of the Zhuangzi. His concept of the self-transformation of the individual who is selfborn, with self-nature and without dependence on others supports the idea of individual autonomy. Nevertheless, each individual’s act for self-interest still benefits other individuals in a non-teleological mutual accommodation. The path from duhua (self-transformation) of each individual on the level of existence, to the xiangyin (mutual accommodation) among individuals on the level of action consequence, to the ideal of xuanming (ultimate concordance), is the path on which the world is to proceed.