It's always in a substantialist way, that we understand the notion of difference: there would be differences, they would be given, and our responsibility is to adapt to them. Whether we like it or dislike our postmodern societies, they seem to put at the heart of their projects this concern for individual differences.
The purpose of this article is to contest both the valuation that this criticism. Building on Montaigne, it endeavors to show that the individual is in no way comparable to a substantial and stable reality and if we want to think about what may be the concern of individuality in the éducation, we must take an other direction. What is a "princely education" if we admit that this classic theme of philosophy of education is the theme in which philosophy reflects this concern for the individual, especially in Montainge, but also Emerson, Nietzsche, Dewey, and even Kant? To what extent then, the education of the individual, such understood, can be articulated with culture and his works, to allow us our conditions of subjectivation?
Paulo Freire; school education; democracy