Emile Durkheim: Individual and Society To Durkheim, men were creatures whose desires were unlimited. Unlike other animals, they are not satiated when their biological needs are fulfilled. "The more one has, the more one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs." It follows from this natural insatiability of the human animal that his desires can only be held in check by external controls, that is, by societal control. Society imposes limits on human desires and constitutes "a regulative force [which] must play the same role for moral needs which the organism plays for physical needs." In well- regulated societies, social controls set limits on individual propensities so that "each in his sphere vaguely realizes the extreme limits on individual propensities so that "each in his sphere vaguely realizes the extreme limits set to his ambitions and aspires to nothing beyond. . . . Thus, an end or a goal [is] set to the passions." When social regulations break down, the controlling influence of society on individual propensities is no longer effective and individuals are left to their own devices. Such a state of affairs Durkheim calls anomie, a tern that refers to a condition of relative normlessness in a whole society or in some of its component groups. Anomie does not refer to a state of mind, but to a property of the social structure. It characterizes a condition in which individual desires are no longer regulated by common norms and where, as a consequence, individuals are left without moral guidance in the pursuit of their goals. Although complete anomie, or total normlessness, is empirically impossible, societies may be characterized by greater or lesser degrees of normative regulations. Moreover, within any particular society, groups may differ in the degree of anomie that besets them. Social change may create anomie either in the whole society or in some parts of it. Business crises, for example, may have a far greater impact on those on the higher reaches of the social pyramid than on the underlying population. When depression leads to a sudden downward mobility, the men affected experience a de-regulation in their lives--a loss of moral certainty and customary expectations that are no longer sustained by the group to which these men once belonged. Similarly, the rapid onset of prosperity may lead some people to a quick upward mobility and hence deprive them of the social support needed in their new styles of life. Any rapid movement in the social structure that upsets previous networks in which life styles are embedded carries with it a chance of anomie. Durkheim argued that economic affluence, by stimulating human desires, carries with it dangers of anomic conditions because it "deceives us into believing that we depend on ourselves only," while "poverty protects against suicide because it is a restraint in itself." Since the realization of human desires depends upon the resources at hand, the poor are restrained, and hence less prone to suffer from anomie by virtue of the fact that they possess but limited resources. "The less one has the less he is tempted to extend the range of his needs indefinitely."
Transcript
Emile Durkheim: Individual and Society To Durkheim, men were creatures whose desires were unlimited. Unlike other animals, they are not satiated when their biological needs are fulfilled. "The more one has, the more one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs." It follows from this natural insatiability of the human animal that his desires can only be held in check by external controls, that is, by societal control. Society imposes limits on human desires and constitutes "a regulative force [which] must play the same role for moral needs which the organism plays for physical needs." In well-regulated societies, social controls set limits on individual propensities so that "each in his sphere vaguely realizes the extreme limits on individual propensities so that "each in his sphere vaguely realizes the extreme limits set to his ambitions and aspires to nothing beyond. . . . Thus, an end or a goal [is] set to the passions."
When social regulations break down, the controlling influence of society on individual propensities is no longer effective and individuals are left to their own devices. Such a state of affairs Durkheim calls anomie, a tern that refers to a condition of relative normlessness in a whole society or in some of its component groups. Anomie does not refer to a state of mind, but to a property of the social structure. It characterizes a condition in which individual desires are no longer regulated by common norms and where, as a consequence, individuals are left without moral guidance in the pursuit of their goals.
Although complete anomie, or total normlessness, is empirically impossible, societies may be characterized by greater or lesser degrees of normative regulations. Moreover, within any particular society, groups may differ in the degree of anomie that besets them. Social change may create anomie either in the whole society or in some parts of it. Business crises, for example, may have a far greater impact on those on the higher reaches of the social pyramid than on the underlying population. When depression leads to a sudden downward mobility, the men affected experience a de-regulation in their lives--a loss of moral certainty and customary expectations that are no longer sustained by the group to which these men once belonged. Similarly, the rapid onset of prosperity may lead some people to a quick upward mobility and hence deprive them of the social support needed in their new styles of life. Any rapid movement in the social structure that upsets previous networks in which life styles are embedded carries with it a chance of anomie.
Durkheim argued that economic affluence, by stimulating human desires, carries with it dangers of anomic conditions because it "deceives us into believing that we depend on ourselves only," while "poverty protects against suicide because it is a restraint in itself." Since the realization of human desires depends upon the resources at hand, the poor are restrained, and hence less prone to suffer from anomie by virtue of the fact that they possess but limited resources. "The less one has the less he is tempted to extend the range of his needs indefinitely."
By accounting for the different susceptibility to anomie in terms of the social process--that is, the relations between individuals rather than the biological propensities of individuals-- Durkheim in effect proposed a specifically sociological theory of deviant behavior even though he failed to point to the general implications of this crucial insight. In the words of Robert K. Merton, who was the first to ferret out in this respect the overall implications of Durkheim's thought and to develop them methodically, "Social structures exert a definite pressure upon certain persons in the society to engage in nonconforming rather than conforming conduct."
Durkheim's program of study, the overriding problems in all his work, concerns the sources of social order and disorder, the forces that make for regulation or de-regulation in the body social. His work on suicide, of which the discussion and analysis of anomie forms a part, must be read in this light. Once he discovered that certain types of suicide could be accounted for by anomie, he could then use anomic suicide as an index for the otherwise unmeasurable degree of social integration. This was not circular reasoning, as could be argued, but a further application of his method of analysis. He reasoned as follows: There are no societies in which suicide does not occur, and many societies show roughly the same rates of suicide over long periods of time. This indicates that suicides may be considered a "normal," that is, a regular, occurrence. However, sudden spurts in the suicide rates of certain groups or total societies are "abnormal" and point to some perturbations not previously present. Hence. "abnormally" high rates in specific groups or social categories, or in total societies, can be taken as an index of disintegrating forces at work in a social structure.
Durkheim distinguished between types of suicide according to the relation of the actor to his society. When men become "detached from society," when they are thrown upon their own devices and loosen the bonds that previously had tied them to their fellow, they are prone to egoistic, or individualistic, suicide. When the normative regulations surrounding individual conduct are relaxed and hence fail to curb and guide human propensities, men are susceptible to succumbing to anomicsuicide. To put the matter differently, when the restraints of structural integration, as exemplified in the operation of organic solidarity, fail to operate, men become prone to egoistic suicide; when the collective conscience weakens, men fall victim to anomic suicide.
In addition to egoistic and anomic types of suicide, Durkheim refers to altruistic and fatalistic suicide. The latter is touched upon only briefly in his work, but the former is of great importance for an understanding of Durkheim's general approach. Altruistic suicide refers to cases in which suicide can be accounted for by overly strong regulation of individuals, as opposed to lack of regulation. Durkheim argues in effect that the relation of suicide rates to social regulation is curvilinear--high rates being associated with both excessive individuation and excessive regulation. In the case of excessive regulation, the demands of society are so great that suicide varies directly rather than inversely with the degree of integration. For example, in the instance of
the Hindu normative requirement that widows commit ritual suicide upon the funeral pyre of their husbands, or in the case of harikiri, the individual is so strongly attuned to the demands of his society that he is willing to take his own life when the norms so demand. Arguing from statistical data, Durkheim shows that in modern societies the high rates of suicide among the military cannot be explained by the deprivations of military life suffered by the lower ranks, since the suicide rate happens to be higher for officers than for enlisted men. Rather, the high rate for officers can be accounted for by a military code of honor that enjoins a passive habit of obedience leading officers to undervalue their own lives. In such cases, Durkheim is led to refer to too feeble degrees of individuation and to counterpose these to the excesses of individuation or de-regulation, which account, in his view, for the other major forms of suicide.
Durkheim's discussion of altruistic suicide allows privileged access to some of the intricacies of his approach. He has often been accused of having an overly anti-individualistic philosophy, one that is mainly concerned with the taming of individual impulse and the harnessing of the energies of individuals for the purposes of society. Although it cannot be denied that there are such tendencies in his work, Durkheim's treatment of altruistic suicide indicates that he was trying to establish a balance between the claims of individuals and those of society, rather than to suppress individual strivings. Acutely aware of the dangers of the breakdown of social order, he also realized that total control of component social actors by society would be as detrimental as anomie and de-regulation. Throughout his life he attempted to establish a balance between societal and individual claims.
Durkheim was indeed a thinker in the conservative tradition to the extent that he reacted against the atomistic drift of most Enlightenment philosophy and grounded his sociology in a concern for the maintenance of social order. As Robert Nisbet has shown convincingly, such key terms as cohesion, solidarity, integration, authority, ritual, and regulation indicate that his sociology is anchored upon an anti-atomistic set of premises. In this respect he was like his traditionalist forebears, yet it would be a mistake to classify Durkheim as a traditionalist social thinker. Politically he was a liberal--indeed, a defender of the rights of individuals against the state. He also was moved to warn against excesses of regulation over persons even though the major thrusts of his argument were against those who, by failing to recognize the requirements of the social order, were likely to foster anomic states of affairs. Anomie, he argued, was as detrimental to individuals as it was to the social order at large.
Durkheim meant to show that a Spencerian approach to the social realm, an approach in which the social dimension is ultimately derived from the desire of individuals to increase the sum of their happiness, did not stand up before the court of evidence or the court of reason. Arguing against Spencer and the utilitarians, he maintained that society cannot be derived from the propensity of individuals to trade and barter in
order to maximize their own happiness. This view fails to account for the fact that people do not trade and barter at random but follow a pattern that is normative. For men to make a contract and live up to it, they must have a prior commitment to the meaning of a contract in its own right. Such prior collective commitment, that is, such a non-contractual element of contracts, constitutes the framework of normative control. No trade or barter can take place without social regulation and some system of positive and negative sanctions.
Durkheim's main shafts against individualistic social theories notwithstanding, he was by no means oblivious of the dangers of overregulation to which Spencer's social philosophy had been especially sensitive. Durkheim saw man as Homo duplex--as body, desire, and appetite and also as socialized personality. But man was specifically human only in the latter capacity, and he became fully human only in and through society. Hence, true moral action lies in the sacrifice of certain individual desires for the service of groups and society. But such sacrifices redound in the last analysis to the benefit of individuals, as well as society, since unbridled desires lead to frustration and unhappiness rather than to bliss and fulfillment. Modern society seems to contain, for Durkheim, the potentialities for individualism within social regulation. In contrast to earlier types of social organization based on mechanical solidarity that demanded a high degree of regimentation, modern types of organization rest on organic solidarity obtained through the functional interdependence of autonomous individuals. In modern societies, social solidarity is dependent upon, rather than repressive of, individual autonomy of conduct.
Though Durkheim stressed that in modern societies a measure of integration was achieved through the intermeshing and mutual dependence of differentiated roles, he came to see that these societies nevertheless could not do without some common integration by a system of common beliefs. In earlier social formations built on mechanical solidarity, such common beliefs are not clearly distinct from the norms through which they are implemented in communal action; in the case of organic solidarity, the detailed norms have become relatively independent from overall beliefs, responding as they do to the exigencies of differentiated role requirements, but a general system of overall beliefs must still exist. Hence Durkheim turned, in the last period of his scholarly life, to the study of religious phenomena as core elements of systems of common beliefs.
One of the old ways of stating the relation between the individual and society was in the form of an antithesis: the individual versus society. Herbert Spencer entitled one of his books "Man versus the State." Recent sociologists have shown that this antithesis is not correct. The essential point to their objection is that the individual is himself a part of society and so cannot be set over against it. And yet these recent refutations are not entirely satisfactory. There is something in the individual's relation to his surroundings which constitutes antithesis - a contrast, an opposition. The trouble is, perhaps, that the old antithesis is not so much false as incorrectly stated. We may begin our analysis of the problem with two very obvious propositions.
(1) Society is not a thing which exists apart from the individuals of which it is composed. A society or aninstitutionis merely a group of individuals. What we study under the name of sociology is the relations which bind the group together or relate it to other individuals or groups as parts of a still larger group. We may study these relations apart from any concrete group and so make an abstraction of them; we thus get the generalized relations of science.
(2) Each individual is distinct from every other individual in both body and mind. All are related, of course, and any two of us may be much alike in bodily form or mental content; we may be identical in some respects, even may conceivably be identical in all respects; yet each is perfectly distinct from every other. Every man's consciousness is just as certainly his own as is his body. Of all the things that exist, a person is the most clearly marked off from every other.
Now the antithesis is not between the individual and society, but between one individual and another. It is you versus me; you versus the person with whom you are conversing; the orator versus the person in the audience who catches his eye for the instant; David versus Jonathan. However closely the soul of David was knit with the soul of Jonathan, yet when Saul cast the javelin at David, it was a different experience to David from what it was to Jonathan. You and the person with whom you are talking are carrying on a running antithesis. Two persons look at a sunset. They do not observe the same things or have the same emotions. One speaks; the other responds with approval or disapproval, and adds his own further thought. As long as two persons are communicating with each other, their relation is an ever-changing comparison, contrast, opposition, a process of give and take like boxing or tennis.
What we call society is this personal antithesis multiplied many times. The tennis game of doubles is played by two persons on a side: A and B against C and D. There is first the antithesis between A and B, and sometimes it amounts to opposition: both start for an approaching ball, but one strikes it and deprives the other of the chance. A similar antithesis goes on between C and D. Then the A-B combination is in opposition to the C-D combination. In the same way a literary society, a city, a political party, a nation, even the whole human race, is only an intricate compounding of such personal antitheses. What we sometimes call the opposition between the individual and society is only the opposition between A and B, or between A and C-D, or between A and some larger group of which he is not a member. A student, for instance, opposes some officer of the school, or some teacher, or those persons in authority who are responsible for a certain policy. But no one of these or all of them together constitute the entire school; he himself is a part of the school. If the student severs his connection with the school, then he may possibly set himself in opposition to the entire school. That, however, is not likely, for, among all the people connected with it, there are probably some against whose work or policy he has no antagonism; any wholesale condemnation which he may utter is not literally true.
And so, although the individual is always a part of society in the broad sense and cannot be placed in antithesis over against it, yet the individual always stands in an antithetical relation
to some other person or group of persons. This antithesis is of every degree, from friendlycooperation, a reciprocal interchange of services to the advantage of both parties, to mortal antagonism such as exists between two duelists.
"I haven't anything against you," said a boy to a teacher, when he was leaving school, "and I haven't anything against the school, but I can't get along with old X" (the principal).
"Society is a plexus of personal reactions." - American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 18, p. 206, A. W. Small.
Dialectical Materialism (A. Spirkin) Prev Chapter 5. On the Human Being and Being Human Next
Man and Society The human being and the group. The problem of man cannot be
solved scientifically without a clear statement of the relationship between man and society, as seen in the primary collectivity—the family, the play or instruction group, the production team and other types of formal or informal collectivity. In the family the individual abandons some of his specific features to become a member of the whole. The life of the family is related to the division of labour according to sex and age, the carrying on of husbandry, mutual assistance in everyday life, the intimate life of man and wife, the perpetuation of the race, the upbringing of the children and also various moral, legal and psychological relationships. The family is a crucial instrument for the development of personality. It is here that the child first becomes involved in social life, absorbs its values and standards of behaviour, its ways of thought, language and certain value orientations. It is this primary group that bears the major responsibility to society. Its first duty is to the social group, to society and humanity. Through the group the child, as he grows older, enters society. Hence the decisive role of the group. The influence of one person on another is as a rule extremely limited; the collectivity as a whole is the main educational force. Here the psychological factors are very important. It is essential that a person should feel himself part of a group at his own wish, and that the group should voluntarily accept him, take in his personality.
Everybody performs certain functions in a group. Take, for example, the production team. Here people are joined together by other interests as well as those of production; they exchange certain political, moral, aesthetic, scientific and other values. A group generates public opinion, it sharpens and polishes the mind and shapes the character and will. Through the group a person rises to the level of a personality, a conscious subject of historical creativity. The group is the first shaper of the personality, and the group itself is shaped by society.
The unity of man and society. A person's whole intellectual make-up bears the clear imprint of the life of society as a whole. All his practical activities are individual expressions of the historically formed social practice of humanity. The implements that he uses have in their form a function evolved by a society which predetermines the ways of using them. When tackling any job, we all have to take into account what has already been achieved before us.
The wealth and complexity of the individual's social content are conditioned by the diversity of his links with the social whole, the degree to which the various spheres of the life of society have been assimilated and refracted in his consciousness and activity. This is why the level of individual development is an indicator of the level of development of society, and vice versa. But the individual does not dissolve into society. He retains his unique and independent individuality and makes his contribution to the social whole: just as society itself shapes human beings, so human beings shape society.
The individual is a link in the chain of the generations. His affairs are regulated not only by himself, but also by the social standards, by the collective reason or mind. The true token of individuality is the degree to which a certain individual in certain specific historical conditions has absorbed the essence of the society in which he lives.
Consider, for instance, the following historical fact. Who or what would Napoleon Bonaparte have been if there had been no French Revolution? It is difficult or perhaps even impossible to reply to this question. But one thing is quite clear—he would never have become a great general and certainly not an emperor. He himself was well aware of his debt and in his declining years said, "My son cannot replace me. I could not replace myself. I am the creature of circumstances."[1] It has long been acknowledged that great epochs give birth to great men. What tribunes of the people were lifted by the tide of events of the French Revolution— Mirabeau, Marat, Robespierre, Danton. What young, some times even youthful talents that had remained dormant among the people were raised to the heights of revolutionary, military, and organisational activity by the Great October Socialist Revolution.
It is sometimes said that society carries the individual as a river carries a boat. This is a pleasant simile, but not exact. An individual does not float with the river; he is the turbulently flowing river itself. The events of social life do not come about by themselves; they are made. The great and small paths of the laws of history are blazed by human effort and often at the expense of human blood. The laws of history are not charted in advance by superhuman forces; they are made by people, who then submit to their authority as something that is above the individual.
The key to the mysteries of human nature is to be found in society. Society is the human being in his social relations, and every human being is an individual embodiment of social relations, a product not only of the existing social system but of all world history. He absorbs what has been accumulated by the centuries and passed on through traditions. Modern man carries within himself all the ages of history and all his own individual ages as well. His personality is a concentration of various strata of culture. He is influenced not only by modern mass media, but also by the writings of all times and every nation. He is the living memory of history, the focus of all the wealth of knowledge, abilities, skills, and wisdom that have been amassed through the ages.
Man is a kind of super-dense living atom in the system of social reality. He is a concentration of the actively creative principle in this system. Through myriads of visible and invisible impulses the fruit of people's creative thought in the past continues to nourish him and, through him, contemporary culture.
Sometimes the relation between man and society is interpreted in such a way that the latter seems to be something that goes on around a person, something in which he is immersed. But this is a fundamentally wrong approach. Society does, of course, exist outside the individual as a kind of social environment in the form of a historically shaped system of relations with rich material and spiritual culture that is independent of his will and consciousness. The individual floats in this environment all his life. But society also exists in the individual himself and could not exist at all, apart from the real activity of its members. History in itself does nothing. Society
possesses no wealth whatever. It fights no battles. It grows no grain. It produces no tools for making things or weapons for destroying them. It is not society as such but man who does all this, who possesses it, who creates everything and fights for everything. Society is not some impersonal being that uses the individual as a means of achieving its aims. All world history is nothing but the daily activity of individuals pursuing their aims. Here we are talking not about the actions of individuals who are isolated and concerned only with themselves, but about the actions of the masses, the deeds of historical personalities and peoples. An individual developing within the framework of a social system has both a certain dependence on the whole system of social standards and an autonomy that is an absolutely necessary precondition for the life and development of the system. The measure of this personal autonomy is historically conditioned and depends on the character of the social system itself. Exceptional rigidity in a social system (fascism, for example) makes it impossible or extremely difficult for individual innovations in the form of creative activity in various spheres of life to take place, and this inevitably leads to stagnation.
The relationships between the individual and society in history. To return once again to the simile of the river. The history of humankind is like a great river bearing its waters into the ocean of the past. What is past in life does not become something that has never been. No matter how far we go from the past, it still lives to some extent in us and with us. From the very beginning, the character of the man-society relationship changed substantially in accordance with the flow of historical time. The relationship between the individual and a primitive horde was one thing. Brute force was supreme and instincts were only slightly controlled, although even then there were glimpses of moral standards of cooperation without which any survival, let alone development, would have been impossible. In tribal conditions people were closely bound by ties of blood. At that time there were no state or legal relationships. Not the individual but the tribe, the genus, was the law-giver. The interests of the individual were syncretised with those of the commune. In the horde and in tribal society there were leaders who had come to the fore by their resourcefulness, brains, agility, strength of will, and so on. Labour functions were divided on the basis of age and sex, as were the forms of social and other activity. With the
development of the socium an ever increasing differentiation of social functions takes place. People acquire private personal rights and duties, personal names, and a constantly growing measure of personal responsibility. The individual gradually becomes a personality, and his relations with society acquire an increasingly complex character. When the society based on law and the state first arose, people were sharply divided between masters and slaves, rulers and ruled. Slave society with its private property set people against one another. Some individuals began to oppress and exploit others.
Feudal society saw the emergence of the hierarchy of castes, making some people totally dependent on others. On the shoulders of the common toiler there grew up an enormous parasitic tree with kings or tsars at its summit. This pyramid of social existence determined the rights and duties of its citizens, and the rights were nearly all at the top of the social scale. This was a society of genuflection, where not only the toilers but also the rulers bowed the knee to the dogma of Holy Scripture and the image of the Almighty.
The age of the Renaissance was a hymn to the free individual and to the ideal of the strong fully developed human being blazing trails of discovery into foreign lands, broadening the horizons of science, and creating masterpieces of art and technical perfection. History became the scene of activity for the enterprising and determined individual. Not for him the impediments of the feudal social pyramid, where the idle wasted their lives and money, enjoying every privilege, and the toilers were kept in a state of subjugation and oppression. At first came the struggle for freedom of thought, of creativity. This grew into the demand for civil and political freedom, freedom of private initiative and social activity in general.
As a result of the bourgeois revolutions that followed, the owners of capital acquired every privilege, and also political power. The noble demand that had been inscribed on the banners of the bourgeois revolutions—liberty, equality and fraternity—turned out to mean an abundance of privileges for some and oppression for others. Individualism blossomed forth, an individualism in which everybody considered himself the hub of the universe and his own existence and prosperity more important than anyone else's. People set themselves
up in opposition to other people and to society as a whole. Such mutual alienation is a disease that corrupts the social whole. The life of another person, even one's nearest, becomes no more than a temporary show, a passing cloud. The growing bureaucracy, utilitarianism and technologism in culture considerably narrow the opportunities for human individuality to express and develop itself. The individual becomes an insignificant cog in the gigantic machine controlled by capital. Alienation makes itself felt with particular force.
What is alienation? It is the conversion of the results of physical and intellectual activity into forces that get out of human control and, having gained the whip hand, strike back at their own creators, the people. It is a kind of jinn that people summon to their aid and then find themselves unable to cope with. Thus, the state which arose in slave society, became a force that oppressed the mass of the people, an apparatus of coercion by one class over another. The science that people venerate, that brings social progress and is in itself the expression of this progress, becomes in its material embodiment a lethal force that threatens all mankind. How much has man created that exerts a terrible pressure on his health, his mind and his willpower! These supra-personal forces, which are the product of people's joint social activity and oppress them, are the phenomenon known as alienation.
The thinkers of the past, who were truly dedicated to the idea of benefiting the working folk, pointed out the dangers of a system governed by the forces of alienation, a system in which some people live at the expense of other people's labour, where human dignity is flouted and man's physical and intellectual powers drained by exploitation.
The individual is free where he not only serves as a means of achieving the goals of the ruling class and its party but is himself the chief goal of society, the object of all its plans and provisions. The main condition for the liberation of the individual is the abolition of exploitation of one individual by another, of hunger and poverty, and the reassertion of man's sense of dignity. This was the kind of society of which the utopian socialists and the founders of scientific socialism dreamed. In contrast to bourgeois individualism, socialist collectivism
starts off from the interests of the individual— not just the chosen few but all genuine working people. Socialism everywhere requires striking, gifted personalities with plenty of initiative. A person with a sense of perspective is the highest ideal of the creative activity of the socialist society.
Notes [1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men, London, Bell and
Daldy, 1870, p. 113. !
Society and the Individual in
Nietzsche's The Will to Power
Travis J. Denneson
I. Introduction
In The Will to Power, specifically the section entitled "The Will to Power as Society and Individual," Nietzsche's ideas concerning how his doctrine of the will to power is manifested in both societies as a whole and in individuals within a society are presented. This particular selection from his posthumously collected notes provides insights into Nietzsche's views on states, institutions, and individuals that cannot be found in his other works. At the same time, however, there are a number of ideas herein which an understanding of his other works can help illuminate. The purpose here is to examine the aphorisms contained within this section in an attempt to shed some light on Nietzsche's ideas regarding society, the individual, and the will to power.
II. The Will to Power
Before we begin, however, it should prove helpful to explain what Nietzsche's doctrine of 'the will to power' actually is. A psychological presupposition of Nietzsche's is that humans are always attempting to inflict their wills upon others. Every action toward another individual stems from a deep-down desire to bring that person under one's power in one way or another. Whether a person is giving gifts, claiming to be in love with someone, giving someone praise, or physically harming someone, the psychological motive is the same: to exert one's will over others. This presupposition entails that all human beings are ultimately and exclusively egoistic by nature. Therefore, according to Nietzsche, there are no truly altruistic actions. The will to power is not, however, limited to the psychology of human beings. Rather, the it is the underlying noemenal reality of the universe, which manifests itself in various ways in everything and everyone. Growth, self-preservation, domination, and upward mobility are some of the basic elements of this will, which everything in the world exhibits, according to Nietzsche. This is not to be confused with Schopenhauer's "Will," however, though one could argue that there are residual qualities of it in Nietzsche's "will to power." The fundamental differences between the two are that the "Will" is not concerned with power; rather it is blind striving and unintelligent. Ideas and representations are the outward manifestations of the "Will," while the "Will" itself is the inner nature or essence of the universe. This "Will," according to Schopenhauer, is never satisfied. Taking the form of desires, aspirations, lusts, and cravings in human beings, the unsatiable nature of the "Will" makes a burden out of one's existence. Once one desire is satisfied, it merely gives rise to another, and then another, and so on. The "Will" is thus the source of all of the evil and suffering in the world. These ideas lead Schopenhauer to adopt a life-denying view of the world, since it contains nothing but suffering and the burden of satisfying unrelenting desires. Nietzsche's "will to power," on the other hand, is a life-affirming view, in that creatures affirm their instincts to acquire power and dominance, and suffering is not seen as evil, but as a necessary part of existence which is to be embraced. Lasting pleasure and satisfaction come about as a result of being able to live according to
one's instincts--the ability to exert one's will to power. So, as Nietzsche concludes in the very last lines of The Will to Power:
. . . --do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?--This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!1
We will now look at how Nietzsche sees this will to power as being manifested both in societies and in individuals.
III. The Will to Power in Society and State
Nietzsche begins,2 in §716-719, by arguing that in the modern world, societies as a whole tell us a great deal more about the nature of mankind (as will to power) than do individuals. States act in ways toward each other for which individuals do not have the strength or courage, because states do not feel responsible for their actions as do individuals. The external behavior of the state is that of conquest and war, acting in accordance with the will to power. The state is able to engage in this behavior by dividing up the labor and executive powers among its individuals, so that no one individual can feel as though one bears significant responsibility for the state's actions. It instills in its people values such as obedience, duty, and patriotism, while it outwardly exudes values such as strength, pride, and revenge. The former values are instilled by the state's overpowering of the individual, so that one is compelled to serve in its interests.
As I understand these passages, individuals do not have the courage or strength to act in violent ways toward one another because of the Judeo-Christian ethical/moral code that has become ingrained in them. In other words, they cannot exert their will to power in the violent ways which they otherwise would naturally. Instead, the will to power can be found in individuals in certain disguised forms, as we will see when the will to power as individual is explicated. Feelings of potential guilt and fear of punishment (whether institutional or in a life beyond) for breaking moral and legal rules prevent them from acting in such a manner. The state, however, is not bound by Judeo-Christian-type moral duties and imperatives, so it is therefore unrestrained in the exertion of its will to power, which comes in the natural forms of violence and conquest. Nietzsche writes in §716:
The whole of 'altruism' reveals itself as the prudence of the private man: societies are not 'altruistic' towards one another--The commandment to love one's neighbor has never yet been extended to include one's actual neighbor.3
By "actual neighbor," I take Nietzsche to be referring to bordering states or societies, as the context would indicate. It seems then, that Nietzsche is trying to say that the violence inherent in the way a society exerts its will to power is evidence that the true nature of man is one of violence also. What Nietzsche reveals about the nature of states in these passages is interestingly similar to some of the political views which Noam Chomsky has professed--that states are fundamentally violent
institutions and a state's internally espoused values have no bearing whatsoever on its external behavior.4 This is not to say, however, that Chomsky subscribes to Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power, but Nietzsche does seem to anticipate Chomsky and others who have said similar such things regarding the nature of states and societies. Other than that, however, their views differ considerably. Nietzsche seems to approve of the violent conquest of others while Noam Chomsky, of course, does not.
What Nietzsche certainly does not approve of, however, is the fact that the state suppresses the natural, violent instincts of the individual to acquire power in an effort to keep one at the level of the herd. This keeping-in-check of the individual is done through the aforementioned values which are instilled and enforced by the overwhelming power of the state (which represents the herd). The herd/state's maintenance of its power over individuals is done out of fear of those who would attempt to act upon their most natural instincts to seek power and 'freedom', wherein freedom, to Nietzsche, means sovereignty--to be at the top of the heap, in other words (see §770, pp. 404). This instinct to fight one's way to the top in search of power and freedom is thus kept in check by the herd through the machinery of the state. Those who do try to act upon these instincts are branded as criminals and are removed from society. Therefore, in this respect, all truly great men, according to Nietzsche, are criminals in some respect, in that they are individuals who are courageous enough to act in a way that goes against the conformity of the herd. Nietzsche expresses this sentiment in §740:
Crime belongs to the concept "revolt against the social order." One does not "punish" a rebel; one suppresses him. A rebel can be a miserable and contemptible man; but there is nothing contemptible in a revolt as such--and to be a rebel in view of contemporary society does not in itself lower the value of a man. There are even cases in which one might have to honor a rebel, because he finds something in our society against which war ought to be waged--he awakens us from our slumber.5
The criminal is thus someone to be valued by a society, as Nietzsche would have it, instead of looked upon with moral derision. The criminal points out something about society that is in need of change, helping to jolt the rest us out of our complacency. The concept of "punishment" for criminals then, simply amounts to the "suppression of a revolt,"6 in that it is nothing more than an attempt to maintain the mediocre status quo of the herd by imprisoning (or in some cases, executing) those who deviate from it.
That the society looks upon the punished in a derogatory manner is a terrible mistake to Nietzsche. Punishment, in ancient times, was meant as a way to purify someone; to make them feel as if their debt to society had been paid. The suffering of a punishment was something which was done willingly, in order to help one to feel a sense of relief and restored dignity. Today, however, punishment does not purify in this manner; rather it heaps more indignity upon the individual due to the derogatory aspects it has taken on in modern society. Instead of making one's peace with society like criminals in the past were able to do, an individual now comes out of a punishment as an enemy of society. Nietzsche attributes this derogatory evaluation
of punishment to a time when it "became associated with contemptible men."7 Since most of those who were seen enduring punishments were of the low classes, such as slaves, punishment itself began to take on an air of the derogatory. Nietzsche's point here, as I understand it, is that once one is finished with his punishment, he should no longer be considered a criminal and looked upon with moral contempt. For doing so does not help the criminal to be less of a contemptible man:
One can enhance only those men whom one does not treat with contempt; moral contempt causes greater indignity and harm than any crime.8
In a nutshell, then, the moral contempt which modern society feels for those individuals who attempt to gain an advantage over their herdly counterparts is still felt long after the crime has been committed and even long after the punishment has been served. In this way, society (the herd) keeps its individuals strongly in check.
Nietzsche seems to touch on something which is rather true of modern society's treatment of criminals. Specifically, those who are punished are looked upon with moral contempt even after they have served their sentences. Once one gets out of jail, he is simply referred to as an "ex-con," and carries around with him a police record of his past transgressions against society for the rest of his life. Every time such a person fills out a job application, he must answer the question: "have you ever been convicted of a felony?" It would seem that we do not regard those who have been punished for crimes as really having "paid their debt to society," as it were, to say nothing of being perceived as "purified" individuals.
Nietzsche argues further that finding a punishment which will cause as much suffering as the suffering inflicted by the criminal is impossible, since every criminal experiences different degrees of pain and pleasure. Being that it is not possible to measure these degrees, how are we supposed to determine a punishment for such a person which would be fitting for the nature of the crime? Nietzsche suggests here that the institution of punishment thus fails to do what it sets out to do, in that it cannot possibly provide punishments which offer the same amount of pain to the criminal as the crime did to its victim. All this seems to suggest to Nietzsche that punishment as a practice should be abolished, but at the same time, he laments that it would be a great loss. By this statement, it is likely that he means it would be a loss of the pleasure one gets in being able to inflict suffering on those who have wronged one, as he discusses in On The Genealogy of Morals, second essay, section five: in ancient Rome, creditors were able to inflict painful punishments on their dilatory debtors in the form of removing body parts. They were legally given free reign to cut off as much as they felt would satisfy their loss. In the case of a society's penal code, the relationship between creditor and debtor can be put in terms in which the debtor is someone who owes a debt to society, and only the amount of suffering which seems "fitting" for the crime (debt) will suffice as payment.
Overall, however, Nietzsche sees the criminalization of those who go against the grain as simply the herd keeping people down to their level through the use of the state. As he states in §746, such people should not be locked up, but allowed to roam free, since they would help us break out of our shared mediocrity:
Schopenhauer wanted rascals to be castrated and silly geese to be shut up in convents: from what point of view would this be desirable? The rascal has this advantage over many other men, that he is not mediocre; and the fool has this advantage over us, that he does not suffer at the sight of mediocrity. It would be more desirable that the gulf should be made wider; so rascality and folly should increase. In this way human nature would be expanded--But, after all, this is dictated by necessity; it does not depend on whether we desire it or not. Folly, rascality increase: that is part of "progress."9
What helps to maintain such mediocrity among individuals is the present type of society or state in which most societies presently function. Nietzsche highly disapproves of any society which is operated on the premises of equal rights and/or universal suffrage, or in other words, any society in which the majority maintains power in one way or another. Socialism, democracy, and anarchism all rest on the idea that there are no great or superior individuals, and therefore Nietzsche rejects them all. These forms of society represent nothing more than the rule of the herd; the rule of mediocrity. Nietzsche rejects such forms of society in favor of the aristocratic ideal, which values a higher form of man; a model for society which does in fact demonstrate a belief in great and talented individuals and an elite class. For here the herd does not have any power, and therefore does not keep in check those who stand out among them who deserve rank and recognition, or in other words, individuals are free to act upon their will to power in the natural ways.
Nietzsche then goes on, in §765, to discuss what he calls the "innocence to becoming." He rejects the idea that the weak and weary are in such a condition because of the long period of domination and oppression that they have endured at the hands of the ruling classes. The blaming of others for the condition that one happens to be in is nothing more than the act of searching for a scapegoat. People feel this need to find others responsible for their miserable condition because they do not want to feel as though there is no reason that they are what they are. This attribution of responsibility to others for one's condition creates a pleasurable feeling of "sweet" revenge. Nietzsche attributes this practice to the Christian instinct for revenge. This instinct has taken the innocence out of existence itself, in that it has attempted to find responsibility for everything in some past intentional act. A psychological presupposition thus arose that every action has a conscious origin, and that a punishment is thus appropriate. Nietzsche sees this idea as a product of the priestly class, who wanted to invent a right for themselves to take revenge upon those who were their oppressors. In other words, responsibility for one's station in life and one's actions (in that they are in accordance with one's instincts) is a product of the revenge and ressentiment of those in a state of subjugation. The fact of the matter, as Nietzsche claims, is that no one is responsible for the situation into which a person finds oneself born, or the qualities that a person has:
We others, who desire to restore innocence to becoming, would like to be the missionaries of a cleaner idea: that no one has given man his qualities, neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself--that no one is to blame for him. There is no being that could be held responsible for the fact that anyone exists at all, that anyone is thus and thus, that anyone was born in certain
circumstances, in a certain environment.--It is a tremendous restorative that such a being is lacking.10
Thus, the innocence to becoming is the idea that all existence is innocent. To hold someone or something responsible for one's happen-to-be condition is merely to make sour grapes out of those who find themselves in more favorable circumstances. Thus, actions which stem from a healthy (not revengeful or out of ressentiment) exertion of one's will to power must be regarded as innocent, in that they are actions that are in accordance with one's true instincts.
IV. The Will to Power as Individual within Society Nietzsche takes it to be a fundamental error to place the goal of society in the masses, and not in the individual, as democracy and socialism do. Rather, in Nietzsche's opinion, the masses are the means to an end. He also considers it a mistake to treat sympathy as the most valuable trait in human beings, because, as he clearly states in section seven of The Antichrist, pity asks for the multiplication of suffering (I take Nietzsche to be using pity and sympathy interchangeably enough).11 Pity makes us weak as individuals, sapping us of our ability to exert our will to power in the natural, instinctive (violent) ways that we normally would. It helps foster the herd, by guilting us into helping to preserve those who would otherwise perish of their weakness and life-denying attitudes. The most redeeming quality of humans is, of course, their instinctive will to power. In §768, Nietzsche writes about this nature of humans in the form of its "ego":
The "ego" subdues and kills: it operates like an organic cell: it is a robber and it is violent. It wants to regenerate itself--pregnancy. It wants to give birth to its god and see all mankind at his feet.12
As he says in §769, however, simply using violent force to bring another under one's power, though it is the most natural and instinctive method, is not always the most successful. Bringing other individuals under one's power (subjugating them) is not the same thing as simply causing them physical harm. It takes much more than that:
Every living thing reaches out as far from itself with its force as it can, and overwhelms what is weaker: thus it takes pleasure in itself. The increasing "humanizing" of this tendency consists in this, that there is an ever subtler sense of how hard it is really to incorporate another: while a crude injury done him certainly demonstrates our power over him, it at the same time estranges his will from us even more--and thus makes him less easy to subjugate.13
As we have discussed, the Judeo-Christian-type moral imperatives of the herd in democratic and socialist societies prevent the individual from acting upon one's will to power in the normal, instinctive ways. The individual also has this "subtler sense" that physical violence alone will most likely make others resentful and indignant toward us, and may actually drive them farther away from being truly under our power. This keeping of the individual's more violent instincts in check through the state and the "subtler sense" described above does not, however, keep one's will to power in check as a whole. Rather, the ego learns to find other ways to exert its will
to power than through the violent or forceful domination of others. No matter what type of situation individuals find themselves in, their will to power comes through in some way or another. Nietzsche calls these different ways the disguised forms of the will to power, meaning that they appear to stem from something else, such as altruism or sympathy, when they really originate in one's instinct to bring someone under one's own power. The first of these disguised forms of the will to power is a desire for freedom, independence, and peace. What this is at bottom, according to Nietzsche, is simply the will toward self-preservation and existence in general. One wants peace and independence so that one is not at risk from the possibly violent actions of others. Also, one does not want to become enslaved or subjugated by others. The second disguised form is that which Nietzsche calls enrollment. This form involves submission to those in power in order acquire a certain aspect of control over them. To achieve this control, one makes oneself indispensable to one's superiors in order to obligate them into gratitude. One simply does what his superior asks and does it to the best of his ability, so much that his superior begins to see him as vital and irreplaceable. This is the kind of power that one feels over one's employer when one is highly skilled and experienced at a certain job position that few others are willing or capable to perform at all, to say nothing of performing as proficiently. Love is also a form of enrollment, according to Nietzsche, in that it is also a way in which one gains control over the other person, while at the same time appearing to be submissive. The way in which Nietzsche talks about love is also one of the many examples of his poor attitude toward women. We are already aware that Nietzsche sees sympathy and pity as weaknesses, but he also lumps love in with this assessment as well. He looks upon women as the epitome of these "weaknesses," and often refers to love and sympathy as "effeminate" virtues. Nietzsche attributes to women exclusively, it seems, this use of love as a cunning way to gain control of others. In §777, he expresses this idea that women have used love as a means to get control of their men:
Love.--Look into it; women's love and sympathy--is there anything more egoistic?--And if they sacrifice themselves, their honor, their reputation, to whom do they sacrifice themselves? To the man? Or is it not rather to an unbridled urge?-- These desires are just as selfish even if they please others and implant gratitude--To what extent this sort of hyperfetation of one valuation can sanctify everything else!!14
Nietzsche seems to display the attitude that women can find no other way to exert their will to power but by throwing themselves at men. It is strange that he does not attribute love to people in general; rather just women. Based on his conception of love as a way of attaining dominance over another, one might conclude that, in Nietzsche's opinion, men do not love in this way, since they are dominant over women to begin with. Aside from these concerns, however, we could say that Nietzsche's conception of love can be attributed to both men and women, seeing as Nietzsche's attribution of it to women exclusively is merely the result of a bias of the time in which he is writing. Anyhow, a third disguised form of the will to power is that of a sense of duty and conscience in which one feels a type of superiority over those who are really in power. Here one, or rather a group, creates and abides by a new set of values to which they hold even those who are in power accountable. This sort of thing is exactly what Nietzsche claims the Jews did during the occupation of
Palestine by Rome. Being the oppressed, they inverted the noble values to make a virtue out of their own condition and an evil out of the standing of their oppressors. In this way, even though they appeared to be subjugated, they got control of the Romans through shaming and guilting them. To understand this idea better, it would be necessary to read Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, specifically the second essay, in which he describes his theory of how the Jews accomplished this revaluation of the "noble" values. This particular disguised form of the will to power can also be interpreted as a way of mastering oneself, in that one forces oneself to adopt a new system of values and dutifully abide by them as well. In this way, one inflicts one's will to power not only on others, but also on oneself, having a mastery over one's instincts and passions. Yet another disguised form lies in the act of praising others. When a person praises another, he/she appears to be conceding the superiority of the other in the area of whatever has been accomplished by that person. However, as Nietzsche argues in §775, what the person is doing by praising is actually affirming his/her own power in having the aptitude and qualification to assess what the other has done:
What, then is praise? A sort of restoration of balance in respect of benefits received, a giving in return, a demonstration of our power--for those who praise, affirm, judge, evaluate, pass sentence: they claim the right of being able to affirm, of being able to dispense honors. A heightened feeling of happiness and life is also a heightened feeling of power: it is from this that man praises (--from this that he invents and seeks a doer, a "subject"--). Gratitude as virtuous revenge: most strenuously demanded and practiced where equality and pride must both be upheld, where revenge is practiced best.15
Therefore, praise seems to be a way of getting back at someone for doing something that makes one feel as though one has been put under another's power by being obligated into gratitude. In effect, it restores one's sense of lost power at the hands of another. To sum up, the aforementioned actions are not what they appear to be on the surface, but rather they are the will to power in disguised form. Individuals are fundamentally egoistic in their pursuits, whether those pursuits look as though they are in the interests of others or not. Altruism is not possible, according to Nietzsche, and therefore neither is morality. For to even have a theory of ethics at all, one must presuppose that a psychological egoism is not essential to human nature. As Nietzsche puts it, the idea of there being selfless actions is a psychological error, out of which the concepts "moral" and "immoral" have arisen. He attributes this error, of course, to the Judeo-Christian priestly type, who professed the sinfulness of man and the accompanying instinctual drives that govern his actions. Since man's actions and drives are egoistic by nature, as Nietzsche believes, the priestly types were compelled to prescribe actions that were selfless and unegoistic, if one wanted to act in a way that would be free from sin. Thus it became moral to act in ways that are outside of one's own interests, and immoral to act self-interestedly. In other words, a profound value had been placed on actions that are absolutely impossible for a human being to perform, vis-à-vis, altruistic actions. Nietzsche, in these passages, is trying to wake us up to the fact that these so-called "selfless" actions have always proceeded from egoistic motives; that is, from the will to power.
V. Conclusion
The purpose of this study has been to try and illuminate what I believe to be the central ideas and themes of Nietzsche's in the section of The Will to Power entitled "The Will to Power as Society and Individual." It is plain to see that Nietzsche is quite concerned with the damaging effects of society and the Judeo-Christian moral tradition on individuals. These overpowering forces suppress a human being's natural instincts toward the acquisition of power, thus keeping a person at the level of the herd, left to make peace with mediocrity. Nietzsche sees this keeping-in-check of the individual's instincts as nothing less than a revolt against nature.
Endnotes
1 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Vintage. New York. 1968. pp. 550.
2 I will refer to the work in this manner from here on out for the sake of simplicity, while we keep in mind that it is really the editors who have arranged the book in this way.
3 Ibid. pp. 382.
4 From an excerpted lecture in the documentary film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Necessary Illusions Productions. 1992.
5 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Vintage. New York. 1968. pp. 391.
6 Ibid. pp. 392.
7 Ibid. pp. 393.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid. pp. 394.
10 Ibid. pp. 402.
11 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Antichrist. Reprinted in The Portable Nietzsche. Penguin. 1954. pp. 573.
12 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Vintage. New York. 1968. pp. 403.
13 Ibid. pp. 403-404.
14 Ibid. pp. 407.
15 Ibid. pp. 406-407.
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Society and the Individual: an Irreducible Relationship?
Evan Stratford
This paper examines the the relationship between modern society and the individual, which is found to be fundamentally antagonistic. The imposition of power structures - government, law, economy, etc. - that are ideologically, teleologically, and physically separate from the individual create a social clime in which individualism is able to be subordinated. In this way, we observe the alienation of the modern individuals from their society, with observable and tangible losses that manifest themselves in the form of a pervasive "social sickness". This sickness causes the individual to become nothing more than an abstraction. The antagonism, then, as a figure of difference expresses the denial and suppression of an individual nature by societal forces.
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For reference:Evan Stratford (2005), ‘Society and the Individual: an Irreducible Relationship?’, online article, The Difference Site, http://www.dif-ferance.org, date of access.
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In recent times, we have seen the drive to "modernize" society, to make it ever more efficient in all areas of endeavour. While the machines of economy, bureaucracy, and technological progress march on, where is the individual? Is the individual to be merely a dependant of the "social machine", or is there still room for individual expression and will? What, I ask, is the relationship between modern society and the individual? In posing this question, I argue that it is fundamentally antagonistic. The imposition of power structures - government, law, economy, etc. - that are ideologically, teleologically, and physically separate from the individual creates a social clime in which individualism is able to be subordinated. In this way, we observe the alienation of the modern individual from their society, with observable and tangible losses that manifest themselves in the form of a pervasive "social sickness". This sickness causes the individual to become nothing more than an abstraction; the antagonism, then, is the denial and suppression of an individual nature by societal forces.
To examine this claim, I will consider various social theories; most notably, the theories of Rousseau and Marx will be discussed. As we explore humanity as placed ex machina, I will pose this auxiliary question: What are the specific outcomes of the "social sickness" as described above? We will deconstruct the original claim as well as the question itself, demonstrating it as valid and logical from principles both theoretical and experiential. Then, we will consider this concept of "social sickness" from the standpoint of political and moral philosophy; this will, of course, entail an adequate definition thereof. Finally, we will delve briefly into the potential resolution of this "sickness".
Let us first discuss Rousseau for the purpose of observing a particular attempt to reconcile individual freedom and political association. For Rousseau, individuals form society through the creation of a "Social Contract"; this contract is formed of the "General Will" of the people, which is assumed to work in the best interests of the body politic, i.e. of the public as a whole. (Rousseau, 1993) One exigency of this contract is the "total alienation" of the individual to the community; it would seem, then, that Rousseau's philosophy negates the individual altogether in favour of a collective mindset. However, a more careful reading will reveal the importance of individual thought and deliberation to Rousseau:
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"If, when the people...held its deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be good." (Rousseau, 1993)
He argues that, for the "General Will" to accurately reflect the best interests of all, it must take into account individual opinion; the "General Will" is, for him, the consensual medium between all personal differences. Rousseau sees the perils of private association; in subdividing the body politic along faction lines, the diversity of opinion is inevitably reduced. Rousseau equates this reduction with the "contraction" of the State, whereby the power and duty of government is concentrated in the hands of ever fewer people. Of key importance here is the tendency for the political intervention of private interest to increase; for Rousseau, this intervention is the root of societal degeneration. (Rousseau, 1993) To take a modern parallel, consider the existence of political parties; often, people will vote for a certain candidate out of party loyalty - "I will vote for party A, as I have always voted for party A." This is consequent on the standardization of thought; the political realm becomes dominated by rational bureaucracy as the Weberian "ideal-type" (Elwell, Online 9) for the achievement of a specific goal.
The rationalization of politics distils the panoply of disparate opinion into a limited number of organizational arguments, creating a political discourse "stripped of...its capacity for meaning" (Jensen, Online 10) as these arguments are simplified to meet the necessity of efficiency. Simultaneously, individual opinion is subordinated to the organizational values and stances within the political party; in stating affiliation with a given party, we surrender our position in Foucault's "economy of discourse" (Peterson, Online 11) to these organizations. In this sense, we divide votes between a certain number of factions; votation systems that exclude smaller organizations from representation serve to reinforce this division. The argument is given thus: "I would prefer to vote for party X; they have no chance to represent me; therefore, I will not vote for party X." As the variety of opinions is homogenized and distilled to certain mass-marketable 'core values' - as politics is, to borrow a term from Ritzer, subjected to 'McDonaldization' (Jensen, Online 10) - the individual is forced to suppress facets of their own belief that find themselves without sufficiently influential voice. Rousseau himself responds to the problem of factions within society:
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"But when factions arise...the will of each of these [factions] becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation to the State: it may then be said that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are associations." (Rousseau, 1993)
As the number of disparate organizations decreases, the ability to express individual opinion is seriously hampered; relative to any given faction, the independent individual has significantly less power insofar as 'power' can be equated with position within the 'economy of discourse'. This is not necessarily limited to power in the political sense; Barry Allen notes that, in any system constructed upon specialized knowledge, "modern ways of pursuing, qualifying, testing and teaching knowledge are not possible apart from reciprocating patterns in the exercise of power." (Peterson, Online 11) These 'reciprocating patterns' come in the form of paradigm, so that the bureaucratic organization constructs another level of systematic belief alongside the societal: organizational paradigm. In the case of modern democratic systems, the faction might compel its constituents to vote en bloc; against the force of this organizational paradigm, the individual vote is worth very little indeed.
For joint consideration, mathematician Kenneth Arrow "proved" - by mathematical standards of proof - that "there is no consistent method of making a fair choice among three or more candidates." (Bowen, Online 6) Paraphrased, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem states that it is impossible to construct a voting system that will accurately represent the combination of individual preferences within a society. This could be viewed as supportive of Rousseau's maxim of "maximum strength"; he argued that every State has an optimal size, and that smaller States - smaller, presumably, to be taken in both the demographic and geographic senses - are politically more robust than larger States. How so? If no voting system can fairly represent the people, then it follows that the only way to minimize misrepresentation is to minimize government size. To do so, there are two principal approaches: centralization and decentralization. In the former, the end result is an oligarchy of powerful interests, whereas the latter relies on forming smaller societal units. Through examination of the individual-state separation as outlined in the thesis, we will see that centralization merely serves to aggravate the problem of misrepresentation; it is a 'non-solution'. By
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elimination, the implication is that decentralization is the only means by which to overcome this separation.
We tend to think in terms of nation-states today; I live in Oakville, the Greater Toronto Area, the Great Lakes Region, Southern Ontario, and Ontario, to varying degrees of precision. Nevertheless, I am considered a Canadian citizen, rather than an Oakvillian citizen; the term "citizen" is reserved for nations alone. This is a distinction I share with roughly 30 million others, of whom I know but a tiny fraction; the rest, I am effectively isolated from. We will now consider this isolation by means of comparison with the Marxist conception of alienation.
In Marxist social theory, the problem of economic alienation is raised; not only is the worker alienated from that which they produce, but they are also alienated from others through the 'commodification' of time. (Marx, Online 4) The fundamental change in society, one indicative of the transformation into modernity, is the introduction of wage-labour made possible by schemes of industrial-scale production. For Marx, the sale of labour as a commodity produces an equivalency between wage-labour and labour-time, i.e. between money and time. Once the time is given by the labourer, the wage-earner controls neither their productivity nor the "surplus value" created thereby. (Kuhn, Online 1)
I have stated that modern power structures are separate from their subjects in three main ways: ideologically, teleologically, and physically. Let us deal with the last of these first; it is all but evident that someone living in Vancouver, B.C. is physically distant from the federal government in Ottawa. The critic says, "But what of technology? Do advanced communication technologies not make it possible to connect, regardless of distance?" Here, a certain distinction must be made between communication and input, between what I will term "political information" and "political productivity". The former is apparent knowledge of political systems, whereas the latter is the ability to directly influence that system. To take a hypothetical example, I might read the newspaper and learn that, in the country of Philosophia, a law has been passed banning philosophers from shaving. Leaving aside questions of a priori knowledge, did I influence this result in any empirically observable way? Did I have any "politically productive" input
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into this decision? The problem, I would say, is that the legislative and executive power of the Canadian government is tied to the parliamentary buildings. To pass a law, it must be deliberated in the House of Commons. In our terms, the "political productivity" is limited to a specific group of people in a specific location, whereas the "political information" is easily transmissible via various means of communication.
Now, let us tackle the concept of teleological separation, or separation of purpose. According to Marxist thought, alienation begins when the individual and societal purposes of work are no longer the same. (Cox, Online 5) The societal purpose of work is to produce a product, whether it be material-based (e.g. computers, books, etc.) or service-based (e.g. police force, maintenance, etc.) In pre-currency societies, the individual also works to produce, and has the means to direct the exchange of that product, so that there is no such teleological removal. In "modern" societies, the individual works to receive a wage, whereas society takes the productive output of that work to meet its purpose; here arises the separation. Extend this consideration to modern society; the purpose of individual vote is to elect a candidate for a given office. The purpose of the political system as a whole, however, is to provide for the administration of the society; the productive output of this system - legislative, infrastructural, judicial, etc. - is removed from the individual, who has no control over these things. In centralizing these structures, we ensure that their purpose must be separate from individual purpose by removing them from the sphere of human scale and thereby creating a separation by purpose.
Ideological separation, then, is exacerbated by the other two; its expression lies in particular modes of thought, made peculiar to the individual and to the society. The individual thinks, "I want to have my personal views and opinions voiced." The society thinks, "I want to be maintained." We have seen that, by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, it is impossible to represent fairly all individuals; therefore, there will certainly be some group of individuals inadequately represented by any given voting system. The real problem, however, is when the societal thought is separate even from prevailing thoughts. Let us consider an example. The public might prefer that food-producing companies be required to clearly label foods containing genetically modified by-products as such. In fact, repeated polls have
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indicated that 70-80% of Canadians are in favour of this proposal. (Milani, Online 8) However, to the best of my "political information", no such law exists in Canada. When the government is physically separated from the vast majority of its subjects, it hardly comes as a surprise that it is not aware of all individual opinions; perhaps, it is not even aware of certain prevailing opinions. Teleological separation provides the appearance of necessity to whatever ideological separation is created; if a law is passed against the will of the people, the government can say, "You have elected us; it is our job to pass laws; we must pass this law to protect society; therefore, this law is an extension of your will!" Centralized structures are the "General Will" of our social paradigm; to them, we confer more or less absolute power to decide. We reinforce the separation between the individual and modern society by attaching to these structures the 'justifiability' of legal and social support.
Having established the existence of the individual-society separation, we will now examine the idea of "social sickness". A regular sickness, we say, is one where the living body exists in an adverse condition; we diagnose it via observation of certain symptoms. The adverse condition of modern society is alienation, this being rooted in separation from its constituent individuals. Rationalist society becomes an extension of the technological apparatus as described by Heidegger; it is part of the 'herausfordern', of the imposition upon the individual from without. (Xuanmeng, Online 13) It serves to perpetuate itself by adding the weight of apparent necessity to the paradigm of 'centralism' and 'bureaucratism'. What, then, are its symptoms? Dehumanization and loss of community are among the most evident; we will discuss those here.
The individual-society separation makes it effectively impossible to deal with the individual on a human scale; in a system where time is money, it is economically unfeasible to account for millions of citizens without reducing them to mere identifiers. The name itself becomes an identifier, a way to track and store information within a heavily centralized system. I am identified by, among other things, a Social Insurance Number, a passport number, and a driver's permit number; the bank knows me as a credit card number, an account number; my employer knows me as an employee number. Whereas it might be argued that this constitutes a new identity for the modern individual, I charge that it neglects
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the aspects of 'uniqueness' implicit to identity. Any person can see that I am a 5' 9" male weighing about 180 pounds and, with some effort, can access many of the particulars listed above; having done so, however, they will have perfectly failed to deduce anything of my individual nature. These numbers and data are disconnected from my personal identity; if I had applied for my Ontario Health Card perhaps three seconds after I did, I might have received a different number, so that the specific number is attached to me by formality alone. As the scale of society increases, its ability to relate to the individual decreases; an ever-increasing amount of time must be spent organizing, delegating, administrating. Then, as these activities are determined to require money, the society becomes increasingly dependent on economic activity, to the virtual exclusion of all else. From this is produced a vicious circle of sorts, whereby societal alienation contributes to economic isolation and vice versa.
I argue, then, that the loss of community - or, rather, of the sense of communitas - is but a product of this alienation. Let us define community as society on a human scale, confined to a limited and clearly definable area. This is much like the concept of "neighbourhood" in that the community is here limited in geographical size, except that the social dimension is here made explicit. As the individual becomes isolated from their society and perceives their dehumanization by that society, so they begin to feel isolated even from fellow individuals; they become unable to conceive the concept of community, unable to create society on this human scale. Society comes to be viewed as something that must be distant and removed from the individual, something that must have certain standards of legislative and economic power. In response to these societal paradigms, the individual creates something to stand in between themselves and a society with which their identity and individual nature cannot interface, a sort of meta-individual. Mills demonstrates the 'rational' extension of the meta-individual within an extreme social paradigm:
"The atrocities of our time are done by men as "functions" of social machinery--men possessed by an abstracted view that hides from them the human beings who are their victims and, as well, their own humanity." (Elwell, Online 9)
In seeking to always standardize and centralize, we create a society bereft of its
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"social capital".
What is "social capital"? It is the will and ability of the individuals that comprise a society to participate in its "political productivity", and to benefit thereof. (Online 7) It is an inverse measure of the separation between individual and society; as this separation decreases, the "social capital" simultaneously increases. Why is "social capital" desirable? From a utilitarian moral principle, one could argue that an individual is happiest in society when they feel that their needs, wants, opinions, beliefs, etc. are addressed. To allow them the means to ensure this, then, must surely increase both individual and overall pleasure, thus meeting the "Greatest Happiness Principle" referred to by Mill and Bentham (Zamaros, 2004); this fits also the consequentialist moral principle. Consider also Foucault's concept of power:
"Power would be a fragile thing if its only function were to repress...power is strong...because, as we are beginning to realise, it produces effects at the level of desire - and also at the level of knowledge." (Quel Corps?, Online 12)
Foucault argues that power need not be conceived by the individual in the negative. The individual desires to participate in the 'political productivity' of their society because of the power that this confers, a power to have direct input upon decisions that affect them. The danger of power arises from Weberian "formal rationalization" (Elwell, Online 9), wherein all aspects outside of the organizational goal to which that power is applied are ignored. When the meta-individual is constructed, aspects of the individual are lost, and "substantive rationalization" becomes impossible in that those lost aspects lie outside the subsequent rational construct. 'Social capital' depends upon the capacity to consider both community and individual, and thus cannot be adequately dealt with by 'formal rationalization'.
At the same time, the displeasure of the individual is seen to stem partly from alienation; perceiving the three modes of separation previously discussed, the individual comes to understand themselves as inconsequential to the society. This is reflected in the downward trend of voter turnout in elections at all levels (Milani, Online 8); on the federal level, it is not uncommon to have fewer than
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half of eligible voters placing ballots. The average citizen of the modern nation-state is in a state of perpetual discontent with their political leaders; having no means of bridging the separation of physical and mental distance, they become disaffected with the political system. Then, by mitigating this 'between-ness', we must necessarily decrease the displeasure of the individual; by giving them the means to participate more directly in society, we build the will to do so. Sadly, this is not the case in most "modern" representative democracies, where the individual's only chance for "political productivity" comes once every few years. We are caught in the divisive nature of this 'between-ness', and neglect to embrace its possibilities for connection.
How, then, can we bring about an increase in "social capital"? We must reverse the centralizing tendencies of modern society. Despite Rousseau's adamant belief in the impossibility of this reversal - he argues that it is the nature of society to degenerate power onto the few (Rousseau, 1993) - I believe that it is possible. The essence of decentralization lies in the formation of smaller social units or, within the context of modern society, the subdivision of larger existing units. We thus return to the Rousseau-ian concept of "optimal size"; what is the best size for these units? To this, I apply the criterion of human scale; they must be sufficiently large so as to be effective and diverse, yet small enough to allow each individual to deal with all others on a human scale. Attaching a precise size limit to this is counterproductive; it may be something that can only be determined in practice, something unique to various sets of individuals and various circumstances. This philosophy of political decentralization is adamantly supported by many within the environmental movement, as it coincides with the aims of sustainability theory. (Roberts; Bacher, 1995) David Suzuki and Robert Hunter have both stood in the defence of decentralization, and it is among the stated policies of the worldwide Green Party. To eliminate distance and separation is to eliminate bureaucratic sources of inefficiency and abstraction, so that the citizen is once more able to become aware of certain aspects - social and natural environment, socioeconomic problems, human concerns within society - on an experiential level. Once this experiential link is established, the impetus to sustain the 'positive' aspects gains a certain rationality; removing the abstraction of large-scale economy from consideration, there is no longer any reason for, say, the exploitation of human and natural resources.
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We have seen here that the relationship between modern society and the individual is, indeed, characterized by irreducible difference; the two are seen as opposites of a spectrum, however related, wherein the individual existence and will is denied by societal forces that tend to centralize, standardize, and automate the structures of society. To this, we have added the concepts of "social sickness" and of "social capital", posing the latter as a remedy to the former. It has been demonstrated that "social capital" can be increased by the reversal of those societal forces that suppress individualism. What is the reader to derive from all this? This is a philosophy of hope in human nature; I believe that, once we learn to recognize what is lost by dehumanizing society, we can once more search for the humanity within society. In a society of human scale, the separation of individual and society will be minimized, if not altogether eliminated; this should be seen as desirable, and should never be neglected as impossibility.
11 / 13
Bibliography
Book Sources
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. (1993). The Social Contract. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., As translated by (orig. French): Cole, G.D.
Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich. (1955). The Communist Manifesto. Harlan Davidson, Inc.
Suzuki, David. (2003). The David Suzuki Reader: A Lifetime of Ideas from a Leading Activist and Thinker. Greystone Books.
Roberts, Wayne; Bacher, John; Wilson, Brian. (1995). Get a Life: A Green Cure for Canada's Economic Blues. Get a Life Publishing.
1. Kuhn, Rick. 20 May 2004. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Original text: Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich. <http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html>
2. Talmon, Hans. 16 Dec. 2004. Social Criticism Review. <http://www.socialcritic.org/>
3. Javaid, Imran. Thomas Kuhn: Paradigms Die Hard. <http://web.archive.org/web/19990202234401/www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hsr/hsr/winter97/kuhn.html> Date of last update unknown.
4. Author unknown. Das Kapital. Original text: Marx, Karl. <http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/261/1294/frameset.html> Date of last update unknown.
5. Cox, Judy. 1998. An Introduction to Marx's Theory of Alienation. <http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj79/cox.htm>
6. Bowen, Larry. 2001. The Mathematics of Voting. <http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/Voting/mathemat.htm#The%20Mathematics%20of%20Voting>
7. The Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership. 2004. Staff Development & Organizational Capacity Glossary. <http://www.nonprofitbasics.org/TopicAreaGlossary.aspx?ID=6&curLetter=S>
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8. Milani, Brian. 2004. Green Economics Website. <http://www.greeneconomics.net/>
9. Elwell, Frank W. 1996. Verstehen: Max Weber's Home Page. <http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm>
10. Jensen, Derrick. 23 Jun. 2002. The Disenchanted Kingdom: George Ritzer on the Disappearance of Authentic American Culture. <http://www.derrickjensen.org/ritzer.html>
11. Peterson, Ryan. 11 Dec. 2001. Michel Foucault on Power/Knowledge. <http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Speech/rccs/theory54.htm>
12. Quel Corps? editorial collective. June 1975. Body/Power: Interview with Michel Foucault. <http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpfoucault6.htm>
13. Xuanmeng, Yu. Heidegger on Technology, Alienation, and Destiny. <http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-11/chapter_ii.htm> Date of last update unknown.
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CURRENT THEME (/FEATURES/CURRENTTHEME/) PAST THEMES (/FEATURES/PASTTHEMES/)Features (/features/) > January (/january-2/) > Individual andSociety: The Dialectical Conception of HistoryIndividual andSociety: The Dialectical Conception of History
by: IVONALDO LEITE (IVONALDO-LEITE)december 22 2010tags: theory (/features/tag/theory), marxism (/features/tag/marxism), dialectics (/features/tag/dialectics), society(/features/tag/society), history (/features/tag/history)
Human beings and the process of production
The premise of all human society is the existence of living human individuals. Thefirst fact to be established, therefore, is the physical constitution of individuals andtheir consequent relation to the rest of Nature. All historiography must begin fromthese natural bases and this modification in the course of history by human activity.
According to Marx in his critique of political economy, the conception of historyrests on the exposition of the real process of production. It starts from the simplematerial production of life and the form of intercourse, created by this mode ofproduction, i. e., at civil society in its various stages as the basis of all history. Lifeinvolves before anything else – eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and manyother things. So, the first historical act is the production of material life itself.
Work is humanity’s basic form of self realization. We cannot live without work. Theway in which human's produce their means of subsistence depends in the first placeon the nature of existing means which they have to reproduce. It is a definite formof activity of these individuals, a definite way of expressing their life, a definitemode of life.
According to that perspective, history may be divided roughly into several periods,for example, ancient civilization, feudalism and capitalism. Each of these periods is
characterized by a predominant mode of production and based upon it a class structure consisting of a ruling and oppressed class. Thestruggle between these classes, determines the social action and relation among the human beings. In particular, the ruling class which owesits position to the ownership and control of means of productions, controls also the whole moral and intellectual life of the people.
As the materialist dialectic affirms, people enter into definite relations that are independent of their will. In other words, we can follow themovement of history by analyzing the structure of societies, the forces of production, and the relations of production, and not by basing ourinterpretation on people’s ways of thinking about themselves. Secondly, in every society there can be distinguished the economic base orinfra-structured as it has come to be called, and the superstructure within which figures the legal and political institutions as well as ways ofthinking, ideologies and philosophies. Thirdly, the mechanism of the historical movement is the contradiction, at certain movements inevolution, between the forces and relations of production. The forces of production seem to be essentially a given society’s capacity toproduce, a capacity which is a function of scientific knowledge, technological equipment and the organization of collective behavior or labor.
Society and social classes
The relations of production which are not too precisely defined seem to be essentially distinguished by relations of property. However,relations of production need not be identified with relations of property; or at any rate relations of production may include in addition toproperty relations, distribution of national income which is itself more or less strictly determined by property relations.
Now it is easy to introduction the class struggle. A social class in Marx’s terms is any aggregate of persons who perform the same function inthe organization of production. For instance, free person and slave, oppressor and oppressed. These classes are distinguished from eachother by the difference of their perspective positions in the economy. A social class is constituted by the function, which its membersperform in the process of production.
The position which the individual occupies in the social organization of production, indicates the class to which he or she belongs. Thefundamental determinant of class is the way in which the individual cooperates with others in the satisfaction of his basic needs of food,clothing and shelter. Other index such as income, consumption, occupation are so many clues of his prestige symbols. Hence, according toMarx, the income or occupation of an individual is not an indication of his class-position i.e., of his or her role in the production process.
Marxism.Fresh.Daily.
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1/16/12 Individual and Society: The Dialectical Conception of History » pa
The separate individual forms a class only in no so far as others have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they areon hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the other hand, the class in its turn achieves an independent existence.
The development process of a social class depends upon the development of common conditions and upon the realization of commoninterests. Only when the members of a potential class enter into an association for the organized pursuit of their common aims, does a classin Marx’s sense exist. Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The determination ofcapital has created for this mass a common situation and common interests. This makes it already a class as against capital, but hot yet foritself. In this struggle this mass becomes united and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests.
So, in that vision of history, revolutions are not political accidents, but the expression of historical necessity. Revolutions perform necessaryfunctions and they occur when conditions for them are given. Capitalists relations of productions were first developed in the womb of feudalsociety. The French Revolution occurred when the new capitalists relations of production had attained a certain degree of maturity.
Dialectic and social change
It is not my consciousness that determines reality. On the contrary, it is the social reality that determines their consciousness. But thedialectical conception of history affirms that the law of reality is the law of change. There is a constant transformation in inorganic nature aswell as in the human world. There is no eternal principle. Human and moral conceptions change from one age the next. Natural and socialchange occurs in accordance with certain abstract law. Beyond a certain point, quantitative changes become qualitative. The transformationsdo not occur imperceptibly a little a time, but at a given moment there is a violent, revolutionary shift.
As Marx wrote in his preface to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, at a certain stage of their development, the materialproductive forces of society come in conflict with the exiting relations of production within which they have been work hitherto. From formsof development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of revolution social.
The dialectic conception of history comprehend the changes in the scope and social structure of advanced capitalism and the new forms ofthe contradictions characteristics of the latest stage of capitalism in its global framework.
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I wish to make one addition: the individual is wholly socialized, yet consciousness does matter. It is the idea that one has come up with his or herconsciousness by oneself that is an error, a false consciousness. Marx addresses this issue with the concept of class consciousness. It is the realization of one'ssocialization and an understanding of material power that leads to class consciousness and revolution.
Thank you for this excellent work. I am reading your other article next.
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1
THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY By MARK BEVIR
I. CONTACT INFORMATION
Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Mark Bevir is an Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of
California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Logic of the History of Ideas (1999),
and New Labour: A Critique (2005), co-author, with R.A.W. Rhodes, of Interpreting
British Governance (2003) and Governance Stories (2006). He is editor, with Frank
Trentmann, of Critiques of Capital in Modern Britain and America (2002), and
Markets in Historical Contexts (2004), and, with Robert Adcock and Shannon
Stimson, of Modern Political Science (2006).
2
ABSTRACT
What is the relationship of the individual to society? This paper argues it is one of mutual dependence. Individuals can not hold beliefs or perform actions apart from against the background of particular social structures. And social structures only influence, as opposed to restricting or deciding, the beliefs and decisions of individuals, so social structures can arise only out of performances by individuals. The grammar of our concepts shows it is a mistake to postulate a moment of origin when either individuals or social structures must have existed prior to the other. Our concepts of an individual and a social structure are vague, and this allows for their existence being dependent on one another.
3
THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
What is the relationship of the individual to society? This oft asked question remains as important as ever it has been. One of the most disputed issues in the philosophy of history and the social sciences, and indeed in literary theory, concerns the rival merits of explanations in terms of social structures and explanations in terms of agency (structuralists and their successors debate with agency theorists).1 And one of the most disputed issues in moral and political philosophy concerns the relative claims of the community and the individual as objects of value (communitarians debate with liberals).2 Of course, no straightforward path leads from an understanding of the general relationship between the individual and society to solutions to these particular issues.3 Nonetheless, it is worth our while standing back from these particular issues, and considering the general matter of the relationship of the individual to society. Quite apart from anything else, doing so enables us to avoid the problems of interpretation awaiting all attempts to address these particular issues directly. We can abstain from debates about what Foucault, Rawls, and others actually meant, and concentrate instead on developing our own theory.4
We will find the relationship of the individual to society is one of mutual dependence. Individuals always adopt their beliefs and perform their actions against the background of particular social contexts. And social contexts never decide or restrict, but only ever influence, the beliefs and actions of individuals, so they are products of performances by individuals. The grammar of our concepts - in the Wittgensteinian sense of grammar - compels us to accept individuals exist only in social contexts, but social contexts are composed only of individuals.5
On The IndividualThe claim that individuals adopt their beliefs and decide on their actions
against social backgrounds might seem more or less obviously true. We adopt the beliefs we do during a process of socialisation in which the traditions of our community invariably influence us, and we act in a world where the actions of others already have created patterns of behaviour and institutions we can not ignore. Few people would deny the empirical claim that as a matter of fact the beliefs and actions of individuals usually are informed by their social contexts. In contrast, many people would deny the philosophical claim that as a matter of principle the beliefs and actions of individuals can not but be informed by their social contexts. Whereas the empirical claim states only that as a contingent fact people are embedded in social contexts, the philosophical claim states that we can not conceive of anyone ever
4
holding a belief or deciding on an action apart from in a social context. The logic, or grammar, of our concept of a person implies individuals exist only in social contexts; individuals never can make themselves entirely according to their choosing.6 The contentious nature of this claim appears in its exclusion of a view widely regarded as the core of agency theory and liberalism; namely, the very possibility of our conceiving of individuals, even as a group, coming before society. No matter how far we push our concepts back, we can not reach a state of nature, a realm of pure reason, an existential freedom, or a space behind a veil of ignorance, where individuals operate outside of, and so unaffected by, particular social contexts. It is the contentious, philosophical claim we will defend.7 We can not make conceptual sense of an individual acting except in terms of their holding a set of beliefs, and we can not make sense of their holding a set of beliefs except in terms of their doing so against a social background, so the grammar of our concepts implies individuals always must be embedded in particular, social contexts. There is nothing especially controversial about the idea that we can conceive of an individual acting only in terms of their holding a set of beliefs. The standard philosophical analysis of actions unpacks them by reference to the desires and beliefs of actors: for example, if we want to explain why John went into the pub, we might say he wanted to talk to his brother and he believed his brother was in the pub. Individuals act as they do for reasons of their own, so if we are to conceive of their acting, we must conceive of their having reasons for acting, and if we are to conceive of their having reasons for acting, we must assume they have a set of beliefs in which something can count as a reason for acting. Again, an individual who acts must be capable of holding reasons for doing so which make sense to them, and reasons can make sense only in the context of a set of beliefs, so an individual who acts must hold a set of beliefs. The idea that we can not conceive of an individual holding a set of beliefs except in terms of their doing so against a social background is much more controversial. Nonetheless, it follows inexorably from an acceptance of semantic holism; that is, the claim we can ascribe truth-conditions to individual sentences only if we locate them in a wider web of theories. Although semantic holism is a premise of our argument, this is not the place to defend it at any length because doing so would require a major detour from our main theme. Instead, it must suffice to note that the vast majority of philosophers now accept holism. Indeed, holism constitutes a meeting point for many of the most important developments in modern, analytical philosophy, including the rejection of pure observation by philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn, the analysis of meaning and interpretation by philosophers of knowledge such as W. V. O. Quine and Donald Davidson, and, to a lesser extent, the
5
analysis of intentions and beliefs by philosophers of mind such as David Lewis.8
Crucially, if our observations are not pure, if they embody theoretical assumptions, then what observations would show a proposition to be true or false must depend on its theoretical context (semantic meanings must be holistic), so properly to explicate a proposition someone holds true we must refer to its theoretical context (beliefs must be holistic). Once we reject the logical empiricist idea that at some level our observations are given to us devoid of all theoretical content, we have little alternative but to adopt holism. The important point for our purpose is: holism implies our concept of an individual holding a set of beliefs only makes sense if we assume they do so against a social background. Because individuals can not have pure observations, they necessarily construe their observations in terms of a prior set of theories, so they can not reach beliefs through observations except in the context of a prior set of theories. Individuals reach the beliefs they do through their experiences, but they can not have experiences except in a theoretical context, so they can not come to hold the beliefs they do except against the background of a theoretical context. Thus, we can not conceive of individuals coming to hold sets of beliefs unless we take them to have done so, at least initially, in the context of a set of theories already made available to them by their community. Holism implies our concept of an individual holding a set of beliefs presupposes they reached their beliefs against a social background. The only way anyone could make sense of the idea of someone coming to hold a set of beliefs outside of a social context would be to assume they had done so through their experiences alone, that is, their experiences understood as pure observations. But holism shows this is conceptually impossible. Experiences can generate beliefs only where there already exists a prior set of beliefs through which to construct the experiences. Our experiences can lead us to beliefs only because we already have access to theories through the heritage of our community. The grammar of our concepts shows individuals necessarily arrive at their sets of beliefs by way of their participation in the traditions of their communities. Semantic holism implies we can not conceive of individuals holding beliefs apart from against a social background. Moreover, because we can not conceive of individuals acting apart from in the light of their beliefs, we also can not conceive of individuals acting apart from against a social background. In this way, semantic holism undermines common interpretations of things such as a realm of pure reason, a space behind a veil of ignorance, a state of nature, and existential freedom. Semantic holism implies the very idea of individuals holding beliefs presupposes they came to do so against a prior social background, and this excludes the very possibility of individuals coming before society. No matter how far we push our concepts back, we
6
can not properly make sense of the idea of individuals holding beliefs, and so acting, outside of, and so unaffected by, particular social contexts. Our concepts imply individuals always form their beliefs, and so perform their actions, under the sway of particular social structures. Thus, we can not make sense of a realm of pure reason, or a space behind a veil of ignorance, where individuals arrive inexorably at such and such beliefs because they are liberated from the superstitions foisted on them by society, or the biases created by knowledge of their particular social contexts. Individuals can not adopt beliefs through their individual reasoning alone outside of the allegedly corrupting effects of society. Likewise, we can not make sense of the idea of a state of nature in which individuals exist outside of society, or an existential freedom where individuals exist unaffected by society. If individuals exist, they must act on beliefs they must have adopted under the influence of a social context. Let us describe the belief that we can conceive of individuals existing, reasoning, and acting, outside particular social contexts as a belief in autonomy. We have found a belief in autonomy to be mistaken. Individuals are not autonomous beings capable of governing their own lives unaffected by external social forces. Of course, they might be able to obey self-imposed dictates of reason, but the reason by which they decide to adopt the dictates they do necessarily will be a particular reason influenced by a particular social background, not a pure or universal reason. Our concept of an individual is a concept of an individual embedded within society. However, none of this suggests the individual is an illusion, or a mere function of a social structure; a rejection of autonomy does not entail a rejection of agency understood as the ability of people to adopt beliefs, and to decide to act, for reasons of their own. Although individuals always reach their beliefs against a social background, they still can have reasons of their own (reasons deriving from their set of beliefs) for adopting beliefs that go beyond, and so transform, this background. Individuals necessarily arrive at their beliefs through the heritage of their community, but this does not imply their beliefs are given by their community: the fact that they start out from within a given social context does not establish they can not then adjust this context. On the contrary, individuals are agents who are capable of extending and modifying the heritage of the community into which they are born: they can reflect on the social structures they inherit, and they can elect to act in novel ways which in sum might transform their community beyond all recognition. For example, imagine Mr Victorian is born into a community governed by a belief in a wages-fund according to which if workers combine in an attempt to increase their wages beyond a natural, near-subsistence level, they will not only fail, but also bring doom on their own heads in the form of unemployment. Because the community is governed by this belief,
7
trade unions are condemned roundly, and the government of the day has no difficulty defending legislation making it difficult for workers to combine. Next imagine he reads a number of articles by social statisticians, and thereby concludes the emergence of trade unions in certain sectors of the economy actually has been accompanied by rising wages. He reaches this conclusion not on the basis of a universal reason or pure experience, but because the statistics count as a reason for doing so within his existing set of beliefs, including, say, a belief that the inductive use of statistics provides a better basis for a science of economics than does a deductive method. In this way, Mr Victorian might come to modify the heritage of his community by rejecting the wages-fund doctrine. Moreover, if a sufficient number of his contemporaries came to modify their intellectual heritage in a similar way, the community as a whole would come to look more favourably on trade unions, and this might facilitate legislative reform making it easier for workers to combine. The fact that we are not autonomous beings is quite compatible with the fact that we are agents who reflect on our beliefs and actions and adjust them for reasons of our own. On Society
Although our rejection of autonomy accords with a structuralist and communitarian emphasis on the importance of society over the individual, a defence of human agency excludes a view widely regarded as the core of structuralism and communitarianism.9 If individuals are agents who modify their beliefs and decide to perform novel actions for reasons of their own, then the way social structures develop, the form they take, must be a result of the undetermined agency of individuals, not the internal logic of social structures.10 Social contexts must be as much a product of individuals as individuals are of social contexts. Structuralists and communitarians often claim the nature of individuals derives from their social contexts. But this claim fails to distinguish between three different conceptions of the relationship of the individual to society. First, the social context might influence individuals but the nature of its influence might preclude our identifying limits to the forms their individuality can take. Second, the social context might restrict individuals by establishing identifiable limits to the forms their individuality can take. Third, the social context might decide the nature of individuals, not just setting limits to their individuality, but actually determining every detail, no matter how small, of their particular natures. We will find the social context can neither decide nor restrict either the beliefs individuals adopt or the actions they decide to perform. There is nothing especially controversial about the idea that social contexts do not decide the nature of individuals. Critics often complain an over-emphasis on
8
society precludes an adequate account of change, and this is indeed so if the claim being criticised is that social contexts decide the nature of individuals. Social contexts change over time, and we can not explain this change unless we allow for individuals altering the social contexts they inherit by adopting novel beliefs and electing to act in novel ways. Social contexts are products of the past and contemporary beliefs and actions of individuals, so if they decided the future beliefs and actions of individuals, we would have a closed circle ruling out the very possibility of change. Imagine the totality of beliefs and actions at work within a society is such and such, so the social context is as it is; because the social context arises out of the beliefs and actions, it can not alter unless they do, but if it decides their nature, they can not alter unless it does; we would have a closed circle in which nothing ever could change. Besides, we can not accept social contexts decide the nature of individuals because we can not individuate the beliefs and actions of individuals by reference to social contexts alone. Different people adopt different beliefs and decide to act differently against the background of the same social structure, so there must be an undecided space in front of these social structures where people can adopt this belief or that belief, and decide to perform this action or that action. The social context can not decide the nature of the individual because there is an undecided aspect to the beliefs individuals come to hold, and the actions they elect to make; we can not specify each and every detail of their nature in terms of their social context. It is not enough for structuralists and communitarians to suggest some beliefs and actions are common to everyone who exists in a given social context: it is not enough because this leaves other beliefs and actions which are not decided by the social context; it is not enough because this implies social contexts restrict, but do not decide, the nature of individuals.11
The idea that social contexts do not restrict either the beliefs individuals adopt or the actions they attempt to perform is much more controversial. Nonetheless, this idea follows inexorably from the impossibility of our ever identifying a limit to the beliefs an individual conceivably can come to hold, and so the actions an individual conceivably can attempt. If social contexts restrict the individual, they impose limits on what beliefs and choices can be adopted. Here we can not allow that such limits exist unless we can recognise them if they do; we can not recognise them if they do unless we can have criteria for distinguishing necessary limits individuals can not cross because of the effect of a social context from conditional limits individuals simply happen not yet to have crossed; and we can not have such criteria if, as a matter of principle, we can not identify any such necessary limit. Thus, we can prove social contexts do not restrict the beliefs and choices of individuals by showing that we never could identify a necessary limit to the beliefs individuals can come to adopt.
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Imagine we can identify necessary limits imposed by social contexts on the beliefs individuals can adopt. Because the social contexts impose these limits, they can not be natural limits transcending all contexts, as is the natural limit to how fast I can run. What is more, because we can identify these limits, we can describe them to individuals within the relevant social context, so, assuming they can understand us, they can come to recognise these limits, and so understand the sorts of beliefs they can not adopt. But because they can recognise these limits, and because these limits can not be natural limits, therefore, they can transcend these limits, so these limits can not really be limits at all. Because they can understand the sorts of beliefs these limits preclude, and because there can not be any natural restriction preventing them from holding these beliefs, therefore, they can adopt these beliefs, so these beliefs can not be beliefs they can not come to hold. For example, if we can recognise that such and such a community of monarchists can not possibly form a republic because of the social context, we can explain the nature of a republic to them, so they can become republicans, and, if enough of them in sufficiently powerful positions do become republicans, they then can found a republic. There are two features of our argument which seem to need defending. The first is the apparent proviso that we can describe a limit to the people it effects only if we are their contemporaries. This appears to leave open the possibility of social contexts imposing limits we can recognise as such only after they cease to operate. Actually, this proviso does not apply because our argument concerns the conceptual, not empirical, pre-conditions of limits. Any limit would have to be one we could not recognise. Here our argument takes the form of a thought-experiment: if we imagine someone who is aware of the limit entering into the relevant context, this person can describe the limit to the relevant individuals at which point it ceases to be a limit for the reasons given. The fact that we envisage the limit being transcended in this way shows it is a contingent, not a necessary, limit. After all, if it was a necessary limit imposed by the social context, we would be able to envisage people transcending it only after the social context had changed so as to stop it operating. It is possible a critic might complain that the social context changes as soon as someone who is aware of the limit arrives on the scene. But this will not do. It will not do because it extends the social context to include people's awareness or lack of awareness of the purported limit. Thus, it makes the purported limit a mere description of the facts. It replaces the claim 'people can not come to believe X because of the social context' with the claim 'people can not come to believe X for so long as they do not believe X', and this latter claim really is not very illuminating. The second feature of our argument which seems to need defending is the assumption that the individuals who a limit effects can understand our account of it.
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Once again, although the possibility of translation between radically different sets of beliefs is a premise of our argument, this is not the place to defend it at any length because doing so would require a major detour from our main theme. Instead, it must suffice to note we have no reason to assume people can not translate between sets of beliefs no matter how different they are. When the individuals concerned first approach our account of the limit, they might not have the requisite concepts to understand us, but surely they will share some concepts with us, and surely they can use these concepts as a point of entry into our worldview, so surely they eventually can come to understand us.12 Indeed, if they did not share some of our concepts, we would not share any of their concepts, so we would be unable to translate their beliefs into our terms, so we would have been unable to identify any limits on the beliefs they could adopt in the first place.13
We can not identify any limits social contexts set to the nature of individuals. If we could do so, we could describe these limits to these individuals who then could transgress these limits in a way which would show they were not limits at all. Moreover, because there is no possibility of our ever identifying a restriction imposed by a social context on the beliefs individuals can adopt or the actions they can decide to perform, we must conclude the very idea of such a restriction rests on a conceptual confusion. Social structures only ever influence, as opposed to decide or restrict, the nature of individuals. This means social structures must be products of the undetermined agency of individuals. The way social structures develop clearly depends on the performances of individuals; thus, because the performances of individuals are not determined by them, they can not govern their own development. Again, social structures can not be self-contained systems because they depend on the beliefs and actions of individuals, and they do not decide the nature of these beliefs and actions. Although the nature of an individual is not restricted, let alone decided, by the social context, individuals are not autonomous beings who govern their own lives unaffected by external social forces. Individuals remain embedded within particular communities. They develop and modify their beliefs in ways that are neither given nor bounded by their social location, but this does not imply they reach the beliefs they do as a result of pure experience or pure reason unaffected by their social location. The fact that individuals can adjust the beliefs found in their community does not establish that they do not start out from the beliefs found in their community. On the contrary, individuals can exercise their agency only against a particular social background; they can have reasons of their own for modifying their beliefs or deciding to act in novel ways only because they inherit a set of beliefs within which something can count as a reason. For example, when Mr Victorian renounces the
11
wages-fund doctrine, he does so because an interpretation of certain statistics gives him a reason to do so, and this happens only because he already has a set of beliefs which allows him to interpret the statistics in this way and treat this interpretation as authoritative. He can modify his beliefs only because he has a set of beliefs which make a conclusion based on statistics a reason to reject an economic theory. His action rests on a set of inherited beliefs including, say, the beliefs that social statistics are reliable and the inductive sciences provide a powerful model for the study of economics. Of course, these beliefs might be the result of a process in which he modified an earlier set of beliefs by reflecting on them, but the initial set of beliefs that enabled the process to get going must have been one he inherited from his community. The Myth of Origin
We have discovered that the relationship of the individual to society is one of mutual dependence: individuals necessarily adopt their beliefs, and decide on their actions, against the background of, and so influenced by, their social context; but social contexts do not decide or restrict the performances of individuals, so they arise out of the performances of individuals. There appears to be an obvious objection to the idea that the individual and society are mutually dependent in this way. If individuals can exist only against the background of a social context, and if social contexts can arise only out of the beliefs and actions of individuals, then it appears neither individuals nor social contexts ever could have come into being. Individuals could not have come into being because they could do so only against the background of a social context, and yet no social context could exist prior to individuals. Likewise, social contexts could not have come into being because they could do so only as a result of individuals holding beliefs and performing actions, and yet individuals could not do these things prior to the existence of a social context. It appears there must have been a moment of origin. To rebut this objection to our position, we must explore the nature of sorites terms. The sorites paradox arises because we can start from true premises, follow a series of apparently valid arguments (arguments affirming the antecedent), and yet arrive at a false conclusion. For instance, someone with one more hair on their head than a bald person presumably is also bald. Thus, if X is bald, X' who has one more hair than X is bald, so X'' who has one more hair than X' is bald, so X''' who has one more hair than X'' is bald, and so on, in a way which will enable us eventually to show any particular person to be bald no matter how hairy they are. Although the semantic importance of sorites terms remains a moot point, their paradoxical nature clearly derives from their being vague predicates we can not specify precisely the
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circumstances in which we rightly may describe something using a sorites term. For example, we can not say exactly what constitutes baldness. Moreover, we can unpack this notion of a vague predicate in terms of the existence of borderline cases: we are uncertain whether or not we legitimately may describe a borderline case using a sorites term even when we have perfect knowledge of the nature of the case. For example, there are some people we would be uncertain whether or not to call bald even if we knew exactly how many hairs were on their head. The existence of these borderline cases means we can not accept without some qualification statements such as 'someone with one more hair on their head than a bald person is themselves bald.' Crucially, this means we can not talk of moments of origin in relation to sorites terms. For instance, imagine Peter has gone bald during the last five years. Today, at time T, he is entirely bald. Does this mean that at time T' when he had one more hair than he does now he was also bald, and at time T'' when he had one more hair than at time T' he was also bald, and so on? If we accepted it did without qualification, we would have to conclude Peter was bald five years ago which is false ex hypothesi. The problem is that because bald is a sorites term, we can not pinpoint a precise moment when Peter went bald. We can say only that during the last five years Peter has passed through a number of borderline states such that he was hairy then, but he is bald now. Peter's being bald had no moment of origin. How does this analysis of sorites terms advance our discussion of the relationship between the individual and society? 'Individual' and 'society' are akin to sorites terms in a way which undermines the need for a moment of origin, and thereby the objection to our argument outlined above. The theory of evolution suggests 'an individual' might be a vague predicate because humans evolved from creatures that were a bit less human-like and so on. More importantly, we definitely can not say exactly what constitutes holding beliefs, and, because our concept of an action relies on our concept of belief as well as desire, we therefore can not say exactly what constitutes performing an action. The holding of beliefs does not become a reality at a definite point on the spectrum of cases running from, say, purposive behaviour without language, through the use of single words, and the use of whole sentences tied to particular nouns, to basic forms of abstract theorising. Numerous borderline cases separate those cases in which beliefs clearly are not held from those cases in which beliefs clearly are held. Similarly, 'a social context' or 'an inherited tradition' does not become a reality at a definite point on the spectrum of cases running from, say, birds who migrate along established routes, through chimpanzees who cooperate to capture monkeys in a particular way, and a family of hunter-gathers who follow the rains, to a tribe who always plant their crops at a particular time of year. Crucially, because both 'an individual' and 'a social context' are vague predicates, we can not talk of a moment
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of origin when individuals came into existence as people who hold beliefs and perform actions, or when social contexts came into existence as traditions and practices which people inherit from their communities. Thus, we can say both individuals necessarily exist against the background of a particular social context, and social contexts necessarily arise out of the performances of individuals. The logic of our concepts shows individuals and social contexts came into being together, not successively. Our concept of an individual depends on our concept of a social context, and our concept of a social context depends on our concept of an individual. We can not make sense of one without the other. We can make much the same point slightly differently. Our argument concerns the logical implications of concepts. The ideas of an individual and a society which inform our current moral, political, social, and historical discourses are mutually dependent - each only makes sense given the presence of the other. The grammar of our concepts compels us both to make sense of individuals in terms of their social context and to make sense of social contexts in terms of the performances of individuals. It presents us with a cycle in which people arrive at their belief and decide to act as they do against a social background which in turn derives from people holding the beliefs they do and acting as they do. Thus, if someone wanted to undertake some sort of investigation into the origins of this cycle, they would have to develop a different set of concepts from those which currently operate in our moral, political, social, and historical discourses. Of course, if they did so successfully, the set of concepts they developed then might effect our existing set of concepts, though it also might not do so.14 At least for the moment, however, we are left with a view of the individual and society as mutually dependent. Implications
To conclude, we can make some very brief and tentative comments about what implications our general understanding of the relationship between the individual and society has for the particular issues of, first, the rival merits of explanations in terms of social structures and explanations in terms of agency, and, second, the relative claims of the community and the individual as objects of value. However, we should remember that no such general understanding can resolve these particular issues, so there will be a very real sense in which the implications we mention will leave most of the hard work of social and moral philosophy still to be done. Let us start with the implications of our argument for the philosophy of history and the social sciences. The mutual dependence of the individual and society, understood in the way we have described, suggests the following forms of explanation are the most appropriate. First, we should explain why individuals adopt the beliefs
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they do, and so act as they do, by reference to the decisions they make against the background of, and so influenced by, particular social structures. Second, we should explain the existence of social structures, and so their effect, by reference to the way the beliefs and actions of individuals coalesce to create norms, patterns of behaviour, institutions, and the like. Purely structural or contextual explanations always will be insufficient because the way in which societies develop depends not just on the internal mechanisms of social structures, but also on the performances individuals make in the spaces in front of these structures. Similarly, explanations in terms of the allegedly existential freedom of the individual always will be insufficient because the performances individuals make depend not on their pure experiences and pure deliberations, but on the ways in which they experience things and deliberate on them against the background of particular social structures. Our account of the forms of explanation appropriate to the humanities and social sciences has implications for the debate on the legitimacy of Foucault's post-structuralist use of the concept of power. Foucault argues individuals are products of regimes of power, conceived as decentred social structures; power exists throughout society in innumerable micro-situations which together form a regime of power which decides how individuals are constituted as subjects. The ubiquity of regimes of power implies the enlightenment ideal of liberating individuals from social systems is an illusion. Thus, Foucault's history of prisons traces the changing nature of power from the widespread use of public torture through the reforms of the enlightenment to the emergence of a system based on surveillance and regulation. The ideals of the enlightenment did not liberate the individual; they merely inaugurated a more subtle, but equally repressive, regime of power.15 In contrast, we have found that although the influence of social contexts is ubiquitous, there is always a space for individuals to exercise their agency, so individuals play a positive role in constructing themselves as subjects. Thus, the ideal of the enlightenment is not merely illusory. We can try to organise our social arrangements so as to improve the quality of the space in which individuals exercise their agency. How we might do this is a proper topic for social philosophy. Let us turn now to the implications of our argument for moral and political philosophy. These implications must remain on somewhat shaky ground because of the difficulties of moving from any view of what is the case to a conclusion about what ought to be the case. Nonetheless, we can proceed provisionally on the assumption that something such as a rich life is a moral good, so an understanding of the nature of a rich life has implications for our moral views. The mutual dependence of the individual and society, understood in the way we have described, suggests something like the following values. First, because agents can adopt beliefs and
15
undertake actions for reasons of their own, we should not neglect the individuality that arises from their doing so. Second, because individuals can exercise their agency only against a social background, we should value social structures where this background is as rich as possible, providing them with a wide range of opportunities and resources. Our adherence to these values has implications for the debate on the relationship of individual rights, the common good, and human flourishing. Because we value individuality, we will attempt to protect features of human life we especially value from undue social influences such as restrictive legislation. One way to mark the protected status of these features of human life is to designate them as rights: individuals have rights to various liberties and powers because this enables them to develop their individuality. There can not be natural, pre-social rights because individuals exist only in social contexts; individuals exist as rights-bearers only against particular social backgrounds. However, societies can grant rights to individuals because of the importance of certain liberties and powers to human flourishing; society can postulate rights to protect the vital interests of individuals, their freedom from certain restraints, their equal access to certain opportunities, and their need for a certain standard of welfare.16 Moreover, because a rich social background is something different individuals have in common, it provides the basis for an account of the common good. The members of a society exist in a relationship of mutual dependence because each has their being within a context composed of the others, and this suggests each has an interest in the collective well-being of the others: each depends on the others, so each benefits from the others flourishing. Here we can unpack the idea of others flourishing in terms of their developing their individuality against a rich social background. The promotion of their individuality depends on society postulating rights to protect their freedoms, opportunities, and welfare, so each member of a society has an interest in the defence of the rights of the other members of the society.17 We can try to promote human flourishing by devising a system of rights as part of a rich social background which constitutes a common good. How we might do this is a proper topic for political philosophy.
16
NOTES 1. A useful introduction to the structuralists and their successors is J. Merquior, From Prague to Paris, (London, Verso Press, 1986). On their relevance to literary theory see J. Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature,(London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).
2. A useful introduction to this debate is S. Mulhall & A. Swift, Liberals and Communitarians, (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1992).
3. cf. C. Taylor, "Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate", in N. Rosenblum, ed., Liberalism and the Moral Life, (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 159-182.
4. The difficulty of deciding questions of interpretation is indicated by S. Caney, "Liberalism and Communitarianism: A Misconceived Debate", Political Studies, 40(1992), 273-289.
5. Because our interest is in the philosophical, conceptual relationship between the individual and society, our account of their mutual dependence differs in kind from those of social scientists who have constructed more empirical theories of their entwinement: eg. A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration, (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1984).
6. Perhaps this is what communitarians are getting at when they characterise their work as "philosophical anthropology" - cf. M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 50 - although their critics rightly have noted a degree of confusion here - cf. Caney, "Liberalism and Communitarianism".
7. Here we side with structuralists in their rejection of the existential freedom preached by J-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. H. Barnes, (London, Methuen & Co., 1957); and with communitarians in their rejection of the disembodied subjects behind the veil of ignorance in J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972); and with them both in their concern to relate their opposition to Sartre and Rawls to a general critique of a tradition of liberal individualism deriving from Kant's ideal of pure reason and Hobbes and Locke's use of a state of nature.
8. T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970); W. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", in From a Logical Point of
17
View, (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 20-46; D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984); and D. Lewis, "Radical Interpretation", in Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 108-118.
9. Here we distance ourselves from the structuralists' rejection of authors in favour of epistemes in M. Foucault, "What is an Author?", in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. D. Bouchard & S. Sherry, ed. & intro. D. Bouchard, (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1977), pp. 113-138; and M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A Sheridan Smith, (New York, Pantheon Books, 1972); and from the communitarian view of individuals as constituted by their communities in Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.
10. This partial defence of the metaphysics of liberal individualism contrasts with two popular responses to communitarianism. The first emphasises the extent to which the metaphysics of liberal individualism can sustain aspects of a communitarian politics: eg. W. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture, (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989). The second argues we should adopt a liberal politics irrespective of our metaphysics: eg. C. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987). Neither of these responses has as its main focus that metaphysical critique of liberal individualism which is the crux of communitarianism in so far as the communitarians themselves recognise it does not lead straightforwardly to a particular politics: cf. Taylor, "Cross-Purposes".
11. See M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences,(London, Tavistock Publications, 1970). Here Foucault shows - or rather purports to show - everyone in a given episteme has ideas in common. This does not allow him to conclude - as he seems to think - the ideas of individuals are mere products of epistemes. If there is an undecided space in front of the episteme, we must refer to individuals to explain how they fill this space.
12. For a defence of this argument see M. Bevir, "Objectivity in History", History and Theory, (forthcoming).
13. On the dependence of translation on some shared beliefs see W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object, (Cambridge, Mass., Massachussets Institute of Technology Press, 1960); and Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation.
14. This is what is right in Foucault's suggestion that a change of episteme might lead to "man" (our concept of an individual) being "erased": Foucault, The Order of
18
Things, p. 387. However, to allow Foucault this much is neither to accept our existing set of concepts is arbitrary, and so our view of the relationship of the individual to society irrational, nor that we have any reason to think a change of episteme immanent, and so to endorse his apocalyptic tone.
15. See particularly M. Foucault, "The Subject and Power", afterward to H. Drefus & P. Rainbow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, (Chicago, University of Chicago, 1982), pp. 208-226; and M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan Smith, (London, Tavistock Publications, 1977).
16. The classic defence of a closely related view of rights is T. H. Green, "Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation", in The Works of Thomas Hill Green, 3 Vols., ed. R. Nettleship, (London, Longmans, 1885-1888), Vol. 2: Philosophical Works.
17. Green defended a closely related view of the common good: see T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, ed. A. Bradley, (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1884).
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