Interest in the self and its formation pervades scholarly studies of late antique religion, society and culture. The present collected volume brings much-needed conceptual clarity to a dimension of the self often overlooked and misunderstood, the problem of individuality. The editors, Alexis Torrance and Johannes Zachhuber, aptly remark that the transformation of the self involves not only the tension between interior and exterior, body and soul, but also between commonality and individuality. Understanding where this tension lies, in what it consists and how it functions helps unravel the significance of the individual, in particular, and of the self, more generally. While the notion of individuality might sound anachronistic to some readers, the editors and contributors handle the topic judiciously. Our post-Enlightenment interest in uniqueness and assumptions about selfhood are never imposed upon the texts. Instead, the ancient authors are permitted to speak their own truths, even when they refuse to address some of our most pressing contemporary questions.

Christoph Markshies's treatment of the Valentinians is a case in point. Individuality for the Valentinians was apparently a mythical or literary category, rather than an ontological one. Built into their mythology is an idea they borrowed from the Platonists that individuality is a temporary stage along the path toward merging into an idealized unity. The notion of individuation, therefore, exists for the Valentinians, but they do not value it. Markshies situates this preference for communal existence over individual uniqueness in the context of Judeo-Christian eschatology, where the collective involvement in the eschaton seems to have overshadowed the individual experience of it.

The rôle that self-determination plays in shaping the individual emerges in Mark Edwards's study of astrology. We are invited to consider how a late antique pagan such as Firmicus Maternus could have imagined that mastering the alignment of the stars shaped the knowledge of the self and contributed to its autonomy. Where Christian opponents of astrological determinism complained of its tendency to undermine individual freedom and moral responsibility, Firmicus Maternus, and the pagan philosophical position he championed, saw the potential for autonomy and personal virtue. The individual trained in the calculations of the stars acquired the tools needed to negotiate the difficult terrain of the inevitable. It let him manage life's challenges with the equanimity of a sage.

Riccardo Chiaradonna's contribution on sensible particulars and individual essences in Plotinus raises questions about the meaning and purpose he ascribes to individuality as a philosophical category. While Plotinus certainly has a developed theory of the individual (‘he suggests that the whole structure of each individual should be seen as the corporeal expression of an individual formative principle (logos)’ (49)), it apparently serves the deeper commitment to integrating the Platonic theory of forms, and its relevance to personal identity, into his metaphysics. The nature of individual uniqueness, as such, was not really the question that occupied him. Only when pressed in the right direction, as Chiaradonna does here, does Plotinus yield to contemporary issues. Julie Brumberg-Chaumont confirms in her chapter on logico-grammatical reflections that individuality was actually a marginal topic among ancient philosophers. Not until the Middle Ages did individuation become a philosophical priority. She suggests considering the philosophical movement in stages, by examining the developing interest in ‘the “peculiar quality” and the signification of proper nouns in grammatical texts’ (90) alongside Aristotelian, Stoic and neo-Platonic sources.

Johannes Zachhuber demonstrates that articulating the philosophical significance of individual uniqueness acquired a new sense of urgency in the context of the Christological debates of the fifth century. Whereas the Cappadocians in the fourth-century Trinitarian context had emphasized, consistent with Porphyry, the hypostatic existence of the individual, they were not all that interested in the problem of uniqueness. That came with the Christological challenge of defining the god-man Jesus Christ as one unique individual. It meant that the Miaphysite opponents of Chalcedon were no longer committed to the universal character of being, while the Chalcedonians reduced the individual hypostases of Trinitarian theology to mere existents (109). Following this trajectory, Christophe Erismann shows that John Philoponus, the Christian philosopher of the sixth century, exemplified the most radical version of particularism. He found as many natures as there are hypostases and as many essences as there are individuals.

This reconfiguration of basic philosophical assumptions rooted in pagan philosophy opened the doors to re-imagining the Christian self in a new context and under a different set of priorities. Alexis Torrance presents a vivid picture of what the monastic self, driven by such concerns, may have looked like. Through prayer, repentance and asceticism, the monk formed himself anew in the context of obedience, love and compassion. His individuality was conveyed in the tension between withdrawal from society and service to its spiritual needs. Yannis Papadogiannakis highlights the abiding interest of late antique Christians in the particular nuances of the resurrected flesh. Just as the body was the locus for the intersection of the human and the divine in Christ, its inherent uniqueness was indispensable to the developing notion of the individual. Finally, Wilhelm Gräb underscores the distinctiveness of Augustine. His prototypically modern concern with self-awareness construes the individual as a conscious being that flourishes in the context of the transcendent.