Key Arguments

• Ricoeur introduces a technical grouping: “Logicians and epistcmologists group together under the common heading 'individualization operators' procedures as different as definite descriptions (e.g., the first man to walk on the moon, the inventor of the printing press), proper names (Socrates, Paris, the moon), and indicators such as I, you, this, here, now.”
• He immediately notes that “at this stage of our inves tigation, the human individual is accorded no privilege in any of the three classes of operators, not even in that of indicators,” insisting that the logical role of these operators is species‑neutral.
• The apparently anthropocentric examples are explained away as projection from later stages: “The privilege accorded the human individual in our choice of examples… comes from the fact that we are especially interested in individualizing the agents of discourse and of action. We do this by projecting the results of subse quent stages of the process of identification… back to the first stage considered.”
• In his numbered conclusions he affirms: “These procedures have no unity apart from this aim,” where “this aim” is previously specified as “To designate one and only one individual is the individualizing intention,” indicating that the only commonality across the three classes is their teleology, not a shared structure.

Source Quotes

What are these procedures? Logicians and epistcmologists group together under the common heading "individualization operators" procedures as different as definite descriptions (e.g., the first man to walk on the moon, the inventor of the printing press), proper names (Socrates, Paris, the moon), and indicators such as I, you, this, here, now. Let us stress that at this stage of our inves tigation, the human individual is accorded no privilege in any of the three classes of operators, not even in that of indicators, as we shall see in a moment.

Logicians and epistcmologists group together under the common heading "individualization operators" procedures as different as definite descriptions (e.g., the first man to walk on the moon, the inventor of the printing press), proper names (Socrates, Paris, the moon), and indicators such as I, you, this, here, now. Let us stress that at this stage of our inves tigation, the human individual is accorded no privilege in any of the three classes of operators, not even in that of indicators, as we shall see in a moment. To designate one and only one individual is the individualizing intention.

Let us stress that at this stage of our inves tigation, the human individual is accorded no privilege in any of the three classes of operators, not even in that of indicators, as we shall see in a moment. To designate one and only one individual is the individualizing intention. The privilege accorded the human individual in our choice of examples—the first man who . . . , Socrates, I, you, and so forth—comes from the fact that we are especially interested in individualizing the agents of discourse and of action.

To designate one and only one individual is the individualizing intention. The privilege accorded the human individual in our choice of examples—the first man who . . . , Socrates, I, you, and so forth—comes from the fact that we are especially interested in individualizing the agents of discourse and of action. We do this by projecting the results of subse quent stages of the process of identification, which we shall discuss in later studies, back to the first stage considered.

2. These procedures have no unity apart from this aim. 3.

Key Concepts

• Logicians and epistcmologists group together under the common heading "individualization operators" procedures as different as definite descriptions (e.g., the first man to walk on the moon, the inventor of the printing press), proper names (Socrates, Paris, the moon), and indicators such as I, you, this, here, now.
• Let us stress that at this stage of our inves tigation, the human individual is accorded no privilege in any of the three classes of operators, not even in that of indicators, as we shall see in a moment.
• To designate one and only one individual is the individualizing intention.
• The privilege accorded the human individual in our choice of examples—the first man who . . . , Socrates, I, you, and so forth—comes from the fact that we are especially interested in individualizing the agents of discourse and of action.
• These procedures have no unity apart from this aim.

Context

Middle of the section, where Ricoeur adopts and slightly reinterprets a distinction from logic and epistemology to structure his semantic account of individualization and to prepare later privileging of the person.