The significance of the political: individuality and public happiness

The paper argues that individualist (liberal and conservative) views of the individual and the state are contradictory in regard to each and to the relation between them. In failing to give substantial content to the individual and to the state, they make the former a nonentity, and the latter either unlimited or nonexistent. By contrast, the view of plural individuality, according to which individuals are constituted through relations with one another, offers an adequate account of the individual in which the political plays a substantial role especially through the necessity of public happiness.