Occidental Studies

Individuality as the Foundation of Law; A Narrative of the Birth of the Modern State

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Hadi Salehi 1
Emad Safar nejad Broujeni 2

1 Assistant Professor of Public Law at Shiraz University

2 PhD Candidate of Public Law at Shiraz University, Graduate of Philosophy at Tehran University

10.30465/os.2025.52254.2050
Abstract
Introduction
This study aims to examine the philosophical and historical foundations of the modern state by exploring the relationship between individuality and law—a relationship that has become the central axis of modern legal and political order. The core question of the article is how modern law came to be grounded in an individuality devoid of any metaphysical content, and what historical and conceptual transformations enabled the individual—who held only a marginal position in the Greek and Christian worlds—to become the very foundation of law and the state. To address this question, the paper reconstructs the trajectory from the Greek polis to the Christian ecclesia and finally to the emergence of modern individuality. It demonstrates that this trajectory is not merely historical but represents a profound transformation in the fundamental configurations of the material and human worlds. Such theoretical reconstruction is essential for understanding why the modern state ultimately assumes a neutral, value-empty form and why law, instead of guiding human life, functions merely as the guardian of individual freedom.
Materials and Methods
This article employs a theoretical analysis combined with historical interpretation, relying on library-based research and a close reading of classical and modern sources in three domains:
1.       Ontology of action (Arendt and Heidegger): for analyzing the concepts of natality, finitude, and the relation between action and world.
2.       History of Western political thought: for reconstructing the conceptual transition from Greek nomos to divine law and subsequently to the modern individual-centered legal order.
3.       Theology and modern philosophy: for tracing the roots of individuality in nominalism and the Cartesian cogito.
The research methodology follows a conceptual–historical analytic approach, in which core concepts are understood not descriptively but through their historical and semantic contexts. To ensure theoretical coherence, a comparative analysis among the three major configurations of law—Greek, Christian, and modern—is conducted to illuminate points of rupture and continuity. This method allows the study to reconstruct the evolution of law and individuality not as scattered historical events, but as a unified semantic chain.
Discussion and Results
The ontological foundation of law: between freedom and necessity
According to Arendt and Heidegger, human action is grounded, on the one hand, in natality and the capacity to begin anew, and on the other, in the finitude imposed by being-in-the-world. Law, at a level deeper than its juridical meaning, emerges as a response to this tension and makes free action possible within the constraints of the world.
Law in the polis: nomos as humanity’s refuge against evil
In the Greek world, law—nomos—functioned as a symbolic wall separating the human world from the realm of natural necessity and the indifference of nature. The polis was a tragic response to the problem of evil: a space where human action could appear freely, even though its ultimate vulnerability was always presupposed.
The transformation of law in the Christian community: from the external world to the inner world
With the collapse of the polis and the inadequacy of the tragic response, law was reconstituted as “divine law”, which was no longer grounded in political action but in salvation in another world. This transformation displaced law from the realm of political order to the realm of individual conscience and provided the theological basis for the emergence of a spiritual form of individuality.
The birth of modern individuality: from nominalism to the cogito
Nominalism, by rejecting universals and affirming the radical omnipotence of God, placed every individual entity in an immediate relation to its creator and dismantled the metaphysics of universals. Descartes reconstructed this shift through the cogito, positioning individuality as the foundation of both theoretical and practical reason. The modern individual that emerges from these developments is foundational yet epistemically opaque and devoid of inherent essence. Modern law is built upon this individual: a neutral, egalitarian, and value-independent legal framework. In the modern state, the task of government is not the cultivation of virtue but the provision of material conditions that preserve individual autonomy. Thus, the state assumes the economic function of the ancient household, while the true public realm is internalized within the individual. The individual assumes the very role that the polis once held in the Greek world.
Conclusion
The study demonstrates that the modern state is the product of a long conceptual evolution of law and individuality—a trajectory that leads from nomos to divine law and eventually to the neutral legal order of modernity. Modern individuality, emptied of any natural or divine essence or telos, forms the juridical foundation of the modern state; and law, within this order, serves merely to safeguard the boundaries of individual freedom. Yet this very emptiness gives rise to a fundamental question: How can an order grounded in an essence-less individual remain stable in the face of crises of meaning, the erosion of collective participation, and the challenges of the contemporary world? This question—an inherent consequence of the modern legal foundations—opens new horizons for future research.

Keywords

Modern Individuality
Genealogy of Law
Modern State
Nomos and Divine Law
Radical Freedom
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