Individuation. A more than modern principle The essay starts from the question of modernity, considered in its beginning and in its going beyond: Duns Scotus’ principium individuationis is interpreted in the line of Descartes’ thought, as highlight of the individual subject. The intent is to rediscover what, implied in the beginnings of the modern and largely then lost, could inaugurate a new era, which could be called more-than-modern, but not anti-modern. This would encourage, against the drifts in the so-called postmodern, an exit from the modernity, that does not entail the renunciation of its highest acquisitions, identified at a metaphysical level with the principles of individuality, freedom and development and on a legal and ethical plan with the full recognition of the value and dignity of the human person. The understanding of the individual as an active and passive subject, under all respects donated to himself, could then go hand in hand with the most genuine enhancement of non-negotiable modernity acquisitions. From this point of view, the aesthetic, ethical and religious idea of grace, not alien to the Greek world and made deeper and wider by Christianity, proves to be essential, so that it could raise the advent of an era, a time, of grace.
