Dividuum

Dividuum (from Latin dividuum ) means divisible in philosophy; the term is mostly used as an antithesis to the individual (indivisible), usually to mark a counter-thesis to classical subject-philosophical positions.

Such uses include the following:

• The German botanist Alexander Braun characterizes in his work "The individual of the plant in its relation to the species: generation sequence, generation change and generation division of the plant" (1853) the plant in contrast to the animal as a dividual , as a principally divisible living system.
• In 1906 Fritz Mauthner saw the individual split into a " double ego ", which was characterized by an alternating consciousness: a consciousness that consciously absorbs the here and now, but at the same time is also able to look at another time to move to another place or to another personality and to be aware of this too. "The double ego means the opposition of the individual, ie a dividual: a person with two heads, Siamese twins."
• Paul Klee in his diaries (1898–1918) differentiates between "dividuum", the divisible structure, and "individual", the indivisible organism. Here the dividual is characterized by its purely repetitive, ie structural, properties. The individual has fixed dimensions and a certain extent, you cannot add or subtract anything without changing it radically. The dividuum, on the other hand, is inorganic, "dividual structures (can be) put together to form organisms"
• The psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein defines the "dividuum" as the person torn between "I" and "WE".
• The sociologist Ulrich Beck speaks ironically of the "dividuum" when he characterizes people who have broken down into many roles and unconnected partial personalities.
• The philosopher Ulrich Steinvorth uses the term " dividuum " to denote the earliest stage of development of the embryo . Since the individual means "indivisible being", he describes the embryo up to an age of 14 days as a dividuum , a "divisible being", because at this early stage the embryo can be divided and multiplied at will. Hence, Steinvorth's consistent conclusion is "to release embryos for research up to 14 days of age".
• The linguist Klaus Mudersbach describes as a "dividuum" in the area of ​​religious communication content as an object that "can be linguistically designated by a singular reference term or a proper name". He describes "dividuals" as the amount of what a believer knows about a believed object, since in epistemistic considerations the individual believer cannot objectively and correctly know the believed object.

Regardless of epistemic questions, he describes in his communication semantics as "dividuum" "the set of terms that the language user knows about the subject and can use for referring"

• The sociologist and systems theorist Peter Fuchs uses it to describe a differentiation of the social address (a theoretical term whose theoretical role in the context of systems-theoretical communication theory captures what is usually usually booked under the term "person")
• The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche states that man is able to love “something of himself, a thought, a desire, a product” more than something else of himself. To that extent his essence is divided, so he is not an individual , but a dividual . As an example, he cites, among other things, a mother who gives her child "what she withdraws from herself, sleep, the best food, possibly her health, her wealth."

In botany, a dividuum is an offshoot of a plant that has the same gene pool as the mother plant. Stocks that are formed accordingly are called polycormons .

literature

• Michaela Ott: Dividuations. Theories of Participation. Berlin: b_books, 2014
• Gerald Raunig: Dividuum. Machine capitalism and molecular revolution. Volume 1, Vienna: transversal texts, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Duden 2003  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ see: biological-concepts.com "Dividuum"
3. ^ Fritz Mauthner. On psychology (1906)
4. ^ Rainer Crone. Die Moderne and Caspar David Friedrich (2002)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Dennis Heinbokel. Assessments of genetic technologies
6. ^ Klaus Mudersbach. Communication About Beliefs: Basics of Epistemistic Linguistics (1984)
7. ↑ Mudersbach, Klaus: Terms in the view of the language user. In: Wille, Rudolf (ed.): Conceptual knowledge processing: basic questions and tasks. BI-Wiss.-Verl .: Mannheim [u. a.], 1994, p. 117 (131)
8. ↑ Cf. From pupil to mold pot (PDF; 122 kB) The address of education - world society, manuscript 2006, 9 (with further literature from this theoretical environment)
9. ↑ Human, All Too Human I, Morality as the self-division of human beings (KSA 2, p. 76)

Web links

Wiktionary: Dividuum  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• The dividual or the divisibility of man (radio play 2002)