ABSTRACT
We all have an everyday understanding of ourselves as individuals, as having a self, and we also refer to ourselves in practically the same sense as persons. We perceive ourselves as unique in many ways, in terms of personality, ability, appearance, background, potential, and so on. And of course the fact that we are going to die makes this sense of individuality most poignant. But this use of individual, self and person as referring to some kind of cellular unity began to be seriously thrown into question at the beginning of the twentieth century. Just as scientists succeeded in splitting the atom, various disciplines began to “split” the understanding of the individual. Both “atom” and “individual” have the root meaning of “that which cannot be divided”. They had been considered the fundamental units of understanding, but with increasing complexity they were “taken apart”, not only as the objects of the scientific method, but also across a broad scope of philosophical reflection.
