General and Individual

A pair of categories that reflects the diversity and unity of things and their relationship. The individual refers to a really existing concrete and single thing which can be felt perceived by human senses, and also refers to the individuality of things. The general refers to the commonality of same kind of things or concrete things. General and individual is a relation of dialectical unity. Firstly, the individual and the general exists in connection with each other. The general can only exist within and through the individual. There is general within the individual, and any individual is also general, everything is a unity of the individual and the general, the individuality and the commonality. Secondly, the individual and the general exist in difference from each other. To a certain extent, the boundaries between the individual and the general are clearly defined and cannot be confused. Any general is individual (a part, an aspect or essence). Any general includes, more or less, every individual thing. Any individual cannot be completely included in the general. Thirdly, under certain conditions, the individual and the general can transform into each other. What is individual in one case may become general in another, and vice versa. For example, as far as apples, oranges, and pears are distinguished, they are all individual; but as far as there are different varieties of apples, oranges, and pears, they are all general. Starting out from the dialectical relation between the general and the individual, Marxism opposes both dogmatism which acknowledges the general and not the individual, and empiricism which acknowledges the individual and not the general. The motion of human knowledge is always first from individual to general, and then from general to individual, thus repeating itself in cycles, rising in spirals, until infinity.