What is the dividual?

The idea of seeing a person not as an "individual" that cannot be divided further, but as something made of many parts. The book Plurality introduces it through two lines of thought: the sociologist Georg Simmel, and Ken Suzuki, who drew on the philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

Have you ever stood at an election feeling drawn to one candidate's policies, yet partly drawn to another's? The ballot still lets you pick only one. The "dividual" is a way of thinking that takes a person who holds such mixed feelings as they are.

In short

The English word individual originally means "that which cannot be divided." The dividual turns this around and treats a person as something that can be divided into many parts[1].

The book ⿻ Plurality presents this idea along two lines. One is the "(in)dividual" of the sociologist Georg Simmel. The other is the "dividual" (分人, bunjin) of the Japanese researcher and entrepreneur Ken Suzuki, who took his inspiration from the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze[2][7].

For example

The vote of someone who is torn. In a 2024 lecture in Japan, Ken Suzuki asked: what if a person torn between two options could split their single vote in the same proportions as their feelings? They would be freed from the pressure of having to decide on one side. He uses the word "dividual," he explained, in the sense of something that can be divided[1]. This voting system is "dividual democracy," or "divicracy"[3].

Conflict inside the body. In the same lecture Suzuki noted that each of us is made of some 60 trillion cells, and that when the brain makes a decision, some cells are in favor while others sympathize with the other side[1].

A city dweller's affiliations. Simmel's example is a person in a city who works in one circle, worships in another, supports a political cause in a third, and so on. The more circles a person's affiliations are divided among, the more that person becomes an "individual" unlike anyone else[4]. → Intersectional identity

In more detail

Where the word comes from

In Suzuki's explanation, individual combines the negating prefix in- with dividual, meaning "divided." An individual is therefore "that which cannot be divided." Making it divisible gives you the dividual, he says[1].

Simmel's (in)dividual

According to chapter 3-2 of the book, as societies become urban, people's affiliations divide, and a sense of being "unique" — what Simmel called "qualitative individuality" — emerges[4].

Here the book points to an irony Simmel noted: "such 'individuation' occurs precisely because and to the extent that the 'individual' becomes divided among many loyalties and thus dividual." Methodological individualism treats the "(in)dividual" as the irreducible element of social analysis. Simmel instead suggests that individuals become possible "as an emergent property of the complexity and dynamism of modern, urban societies"[4].

Ken Suzuki's dividual

Chapter 3-3 takes up the dividual in its section on Suzuki's "Nameraka Society." The book writes: "In a Nameraka Society, individuals no longer exist as such, but rather as 'dividuals' (分人) - multi-agent systems constructed through the collaboration of multiple cells, including neural networks in the brain"[5].

The book continues that Suzuki, drawing on Carl Schmitt's concept of friend and enemy, argued that a Nameraka Society must overcome the boundaries between friend and enemy through the smooth technological management of violence. As a result, people can belong to multiple communities at once without society expecting them to maintain a single identity[5].

How the two dividuals differ

The footnote to this passage says that Suzuki's dividual has things in common with Simmel's intersectional (in)dividual. It then distinguishes them: Simmel looked at the dividual from social relationships, while Suzuki took his inspiration from the dividual of Deleuze, who approached it from a more biological perspective[2]. In the English edition, this footnote appears in Japanese, untranslated[5].

Dividual democracy

A footnote in chapter 5-6 introduces dividual democracy, or "divicracy," as originating with Ken Suzuki. It calls it "a political extension of the concept, 'dividual', by the influential 20-century French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, allowing diverse and potentially contradictory ideas within a person as opposed to the 'individual' concept of identity"[7].

According to the book, unlike liquid democracy (where you can hand your vote to someone you trust), divicracy lets you not only delegate your vote to others but also split it across multiple political issues. Suzuki introduced the concept in the 2000s and elaborated it in his 2013 book The Nameraka Society and Its Enemies[7].

Suzuki's official website explains that one vote can be divided, cast for policies as well as people, that delegated votes can be re-delegated, and that votes can be changed at any time. Like his PICSY currency system, it is realized with matrix calculations. He proposed it in 2009, but there is not yet any literature on it in English; an academic paper is in preparation[3].

Suzuki's own view

In his commentary for the Japanese edition of Plurality, Suzuki lists the concepts of social networks and the dividual among the things the two books share, and calls them all but "twin books" (in Japanese)[8]. In the slides for a 2025 talk, he also put "Social Network, Dividual" on his list of commonalities, next to the names of Simmel and Deleuze[9].

What is debated

Hiroki Azuma's criticism. According to the announcement for a 2023 event at Genron Café, the Japanese philosopher and critic Hiroki Azuma criticized Suzuki's vision, which includes dividual democracy, in his book The Philosophy of Correctability (訂正可能性の哲学). His point, as the announcement summarizes it, was that the vision erases the uniqueness (固有性) of human beings from politics and may be dangerous[10].

Not the same as Keiichiro Hirano's bunjin. In Japanese, the novelist Keiichiro Hirano also proposes a concept called bunjin (分人). In a dialogue with Yuko Tanaka, Sunji Lee, an associate professor at Hosei University, linked the idea that "without others, there is no self" to Hirano's bunjin[11]. Plurality, however, cites Simmel and Deleuze (via Suzuki), and Hirano's name does not appear. In the context of the book, it is safest to read the word in Suzuki's and Simmel's sense.

The Japanese edition translates them differently. In the English edition, both the Simmel section and the Suzuki section use the same word, dividual. The Japanese edition translates Simmel's as （非）個人 ("(non-)individual") and Suzuki's as 分人 (bunjin)[6][2]. In Japanese discussion, though, bunjin is also used in a sense close to Simmel's. Sunji Lee calls it a "dividual view of the human" (分人的な人間観) that the same post may be controversial at one's workplace yet a matter of consensus in the party one supports[12].

Where it fits in Plurality

The dividual appears in three places in the book.

Chapter 3-2, "Connected Society," in the section on Simmel. This is the foundation of the book's view of the human being[4]. → Intersectional identity · Monist atomism
Chapter 3-3, "The Lost Dao," in the section on Ken Suzuki and the Nameraka Society[5]. → Ken Suzuki · Nameraka Society
Chapter 5-6, "⿻ Voting," in a footnote placed next to liquid democracy[7].

Outside the book, Vitalik Buterin, who created Ethereum, wrote in his review that plurality is not just at the level of society but also within each individual, allowing each individual to be part of multiple tribes at the same time[13].

Sources

Ken Suzuki, "300年後の読者に向けて ―なめらかな社会とその敵―" lecture transcript (Hirosaki University Press, 2024-06-28; Japanese) — https://hupress.hirosaki-u.ac.jp/special-page/hupress-20th
Plurality, Japanese edition, 3-3 "失われた道," note 197 (Japanese) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/jpn/ ［CC0］
Ken Suzuki, official website, "BOOK SUMMARY (EN/JA/ZH-TW)" — https://nameteki.kensuzuki.org/book-summary-enjazh-tw
Plurality, 3-2, section "Georg Simmel and the intersectional (in)dividual" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-3, section "Quality Control and Nameraka Society" and its footnotes — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, Japanese edition, 3-2, section "ゲオルク・ジンメルと交差的（非）個人" (Japanese) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-2/jpn/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-6 "⿻ Voting," footnote Divicracy — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-6/eng/ ［CC0］
Ken Suzuki, "Plurality日本語版解説" (2025-05-01; Japanese) — https://note.com/digitaldemocracy/n/nb8b59a6b775d
Ken Suzuki, slides "Pluralityとなめらかな社会" (Plurality Tokyo Namerakaigi, 2025-02-25; Japanese) — https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Snsu2eQJ_vAWgmk3_9eyJnBQ9l8wfpgKfKufkIAkDH4/
Genron Café, event announcement "なめらかな一般意志は可能か" (2023-04-04; Japanese) — https://genron-cafe.jp/event/20230404/
Yuko Tanaka × Sunji Lee, "江戸文化が『あたらしい専制とＡＩが支配する社会』を救う？" (Shueisha Shinsho Plus, 2025-06-16; Japanese) — https://shinsho-plus.shueisha.co.jp/interview/tanaka_lee/30694
Sunji Lee, "SNSの真の問題とは？プロソーシャルなメディアエコシステム構築のために" (2025-07-06; Japanese) — https://note.com/chic_borage2648/n/nd766c8101e79
Vitalik Buterin, "Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell" (2024-08-21) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/08/21/plurality.html

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