Individual is a term often used in opposition to a subject; likewise, a term used by Charles Peirce in a sense too close to the etymology of the word individual, singular (that which is indivisible or which cannot be decomposed into anything simpler or less).
Let’s look at these two aspects in detail.
To view human beings as individuals is one thing, and as subjects are quite another.
The dominant image of human beings inherited from Western humanism is that of individuals defined as conscious, unified, and autonomous beings.
For postmodernists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida, every aspect of this image must be put to the test or at least severely re-qualified.
Our own image as individuals must be replaced by an understanding of our status as subjects. More precisely, we need a shift of emphasis from consciousness to the unconscious, from the unified to the divisible, and from individual autonomy to cultural overdetermination.
The subject is not only a center or division (conscious/unconscious) but also a place where consciousness plays a predominantly superficial role. The focus of our freedom is extremely limited, if not completely illusory, because our actions, thoughts, and even desires are completely and ruthlessly conditioned by cultural forces.
Unlike the general, the individual in the sense of Peirce is existence or actuality, whose status seeks to free space for itself here and now.
He sometimes calls individuals “logical atoms” because they are units incapable of being dissolved into something smaller or simpler. He denies the existence of such atoms, arguing that the only beings we know are those who are not absolutely individual (ie, completely anti-general).
Therefore, Peirce is an ideal constraint, surrounded by actualities and existences that force him to incarnate in the here and now.
