Starting from the most ancient times, the minds of the best philosophers have been occupied with the theme of man's place in life and society. With the acceleration of scientific progress, it has become even more relevant, especially in our time, when every person becomes involuntarily dependent on technogenic factors.
So, what is a man and how is he different from the rest of the animal world?
A human is a creature belonging to mammals, which, in addition to the biological principle, also has a spiritual, social and moral essence.
The problem of determining personality is one of the most important in the system of the humanities. A person cannot be fully cognized from the outside; for this, mechanisms of self-knowledge are needed. In philosophy, there is a whole section dealing with the issues of its study - the so-called "personalism".
Individual and personality are completely different concepts, although they belong to the same category. But still they are sometimes confused with each other.
Individual is a definition with multiple meanings. In particular, it implies any individual representative of the human race, regardless of his personal qualities and experience. Thus, the individual is not alwayspersonality. He may not have the necessary knowledge, experience, skills.
On the other hand, sometimes the individual is treated equally with the personality. Indeed, from the point of view of jurisprudence, a person is any person, even a newborn.
But a professional psychologist, teacher and philosopher look at this definition differently. For them, a newborn is only the potential of a future personality, he still needs to reach this level.
From the above, it is easy to understand that each discipline has its own interpretation of this concept.
You should also not confuse the concept of "individual" with the term "individuality". In general, individuality is a set of qualities that distinguish people from each other. However, this term can also mean a person who differs from other people by some qualities that emphasize his originality and uniqueness. And an individual is, as already mentioned, any individual person, regardless of his qualities.
Personality is a much narrower concept than both of the above. A person is a person who has consciousness, has the ability to know the world and the ability to transform it, building relationships with society and individuals. From the point of view of philosophy and psychology, not every individual can be considered a person. This must be preceded by a process of development, and it is impossible without the upbringing of the individual in society, since man is a biosocial being.
So, the concept of "individual" is not equivalent to the concept of "personality". This can be proven with the followingexample.
There have been cases when a person grew up outside of society - for example, lost in infancy by parents, found and fed by wild animals. In this case, he had only biological needs. And, since the foundations of personality development are laid at a very early age, in maturity they could no longer be taught to speak.
However, those "skills" that were instilled in him by animals (mewing, hissing, barking, climbing trees, etc.) remained with him for life. Therefore, such an individual is not a person, since he has not gone through the process of socialization and he has no consciousness.
