Since the most ancient times, the minds of the best philosophers have been occupied by 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 technological factors.
So,
what is man and how does he differ from the rest of the animal world?
Man is a creature belonging to a mammal, which, in addition to its biological origin, also has a spiritual, social and moral essence.
The problem of identifying a person is one of the most important in the humanities system . A person cannot be fully understood from the outside; for this, self-knowledge mechanisms are needed. In philosophy, there is a whole section dealing with issues of its study - the so-called "personalism".
The individual and personality are completely different concepts, although they belong to the same category. But still they are sometimes confused with each other.
An individual is a definition that has several meanings. In particular, it implies any particular representative of the human race, regardless of his personal qualities and experience. Thus, an individual is not always a person. He may not have the necessary knowledge, experience, skills.
On the other hand, sometimes an individual is considered on a par with a person. Indeed, from the point of view of jurisprudence, a person is any person, even a newborn.
But a professional psychologist, teacher and philosopher take a different look at this definition. For them, a newborn is only a potentiality of a future personality, he still needs to achieve this level.
From the foregoing, one can easily understand that each discipline has its own interpretation of this concept.
Do not confuse the concept of "individual" with the term "individuality". In general, individuality is a combination of qualities that distinguish people from each other. However, this term can also mean a person who differs from other people in any qualities that emphasize his uniqueness and uniqueness. And the individual is, as already mentioned, any individual person, without taking into account his qualities.
Personality is a much narrower concept than both of the above. A person is a person with consciousness, having the ability to cognize 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 development process, and it is impossible without the education 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 proved by the following example.
There were times when a person grew out 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 young age, in maturity they could no longer teach him to speak.
However, those "skills" that were instilled in him by animals (meowing, hissing, barking, climbing trees, etc.) remained with him for life. Therefore, such an individual is not a person, since he did not go through the process of socialization and he lacks consciousness.