The life of man, he came to feel is a constant struggle between the individualist and the collective but at its highest stage "the individual is submerged in the family … the family in the nation … and so the Nation … in the highest attainment of human collectivity the world has yet seen … the empire".
Whilst Hartmann asserts that human beings, collectivities and history are stratified formations (e.g., A.55a), he never discusses the nature of these complex formations in detail.
But "I is another" is exhilarating, a revelation, which, at the very least, acknowledges one's undifferentiated human substance or collectivity, as for a child... On a blue summer evening I shall go down the path And, brushed by wheat, walk on the fine grass.
It does not deal with the gradation of the total formations of thing, living being, human being, and collectivity.
Hartmann also states that higher levels do not present themselves as soul and spirit, but as human being and collectivity, or as human being and history (A.52c).
Two developments never considered by Hartmann are (1) the distinction between individual and collective forms of intentionality, and (2) a principled distinction between the complexes that are individual human beings and the complexes that are collectivities.
In contexts in which the human race can itself be viewed as a collectivity, loyalty to it may sometimes be attributed.
The body becomes a manifestation of a collectivity to be obliterated, its manipulation rendering what was once a human person into an "abominable stranger".
When we study different historical epochs, do we learn something about unchanging human beings or do we learn about fundamental differences of motivation, reasoning, desire, and collectivity?
For administrative purposes, Madagascar is divided into a system of decentralized territorial collectivities: provinces, regions, and communes.
