Ahmed wrote:Another distinction is also to be made between the species and the individual; it is only the latter who presents himself as a sensible being worthy of consideration.
And I would say even more. "At the same time", for sexually reproducing organisms, the "basic unit" of the living is not the individual, but the species ... The mechanisms of living are based on the fact that the species MUST survive, so for it to evolve to adapt, branch out; the individual MUST die for there to be this evolution! No individual, except the mutant carrying a favorable "innovation", has a role as such in the organization of living things. It is only a "passage". It does not exist as such in the living [this would be qualified for bacteria, and probably some other microorganisms, which clone; suddenly, we no longer know very well what the individual is: such and such a bacteria - insignificant - or the clone of such and such a bacterium?]