THE INDIVIDUAL AGAINST THE SPECIES IN THE CURRENT POSTMODERNITY

Abstract

The “network of social relationships” in human society has produced individual human beings and throughout history has developed a model for each society of successive “types of individualism”. When individuals becomes more individualized and their autonomy is greater with respect to others in their society, their integration into that society becomes also closer (Durkheim). Nevertheless, contemporary “market society” produces a individualist human being whose characteristics (selfish, narcisist, hedonist, consumer and competitive) leads to the break up of social bonds and destroys “the network of social relationships”, that constitute the essence and origin of human nature.