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Common Law 79
view the key explanatory factors in society and history as
the product of social or other nonindividual forces, of which
individual actors are merely the instruments. Examples of
such collectivist views include the ideas that Divine
Providence acts through history, which has been held by any
number of religious philosophers; that the World Spirit
realizes itself through history, as in Hegel; that individuals
are merely the bearers of particular social positions, as in
some interpretations of Marxism such as that of the French
philosopher Louis Althusser; and that societies are possessed
of certain mechanisms by which individuals can be
imposed on to act in keeping with social needs, more or less
willy-nilly. By contrast, some weaker forms of methodological
collectivism, among them those that follow Durkheim
in stressing the significance of the social or some interpretations
of Marx, may, at bottom, be ultimately compatible
with the view that it is individual actions that play the crucial
role in shaping all social phenomena, although these
views direct our attention to other things. Other views—
such as, say, the noneconomic structuralism of Claude Lévi-
Strauss and various kinds of poststructuralism, need to be
considered on a case-by-case basis.
During the 1950s and 1960s, there was some broad discussion
in the sociological literature of the relative merits
of methodological individualism and collectivism, to which
John O’Neill’s collection, Modes of Individualism and
Collectivism, is a useful guide. However, the reader of
O’Neill’s work might well conclude that the arguments for
and against one view or the other would be better pursued
by way of discussion of the relative merits of these contending
theories.
With respect to questions of ethics and social philosophy,
the situation is equally complex. The ethical individualist
takes individuals to be the bearers of moral value.
What is valued about them may differ, from an emphasis on
the satisfaction of their preferences, their pleasures and
pains, to ideas about self-development after the fashion of
J. S. Mill’s ideas about individuality and autonomy. In addition,
there is debate among a range of egoist and eudaimonistic
views, which focus on the particular individual, on
the one hand, and views of a utilitarian kind, on the other
hand. While valuing the happiness of each individual, these
views allow for trade-offs within which the welfare of a
single individual is sacrificed to that of a collectivity of
other individuals (although what counts, in such a calculation,
is the well-being of each individual).
The literature provides both stronger and weaker versions
of ethical collectivism. Plato’s Republic is a particularly
dramatic version of the strong version. Plato’s concern
centers on the well-being of society and on the functional
role that each individual should play within it. Although
some have found these ideas attractive, others have taken
strong exception to the fact that, in Plato’s scheme, members
of the society who appear to make no contribution are
simply to be eliminated, and the welfare of slaves, although
they serve a social function, is “beneath consideration.”
Other theories of ethical collectivism have offered the view
that societies, states, or particular nations may be accorded
ethical priority over the individual, as was the case with
various political regimes in the first half of the 20th century,
whether fascist, national socialist, or communist.
Weaker forms of ethical collectivism tend to be those in
which the values that underlie their collectivism are ultimately
individualistic. Consider Marx’s early writings, in
which a picture of a fulfilled life is painted in terms of individual
flourishing that is not all that dissimilar to Mill’s
ideas about individuality. However, Marx’s substantive
social theory, and his practical political impact, placed a
priority on working-class solidarity in a manner that seems
ethically collectivist. But if what underpins his social theory
are his earlier ideas, there is a kind of ethical individualism
at work here. Its form, however, is distinctive. For in
Marx’s account, the conditions for individual flourishing
have reference to individuals being engaged in creative
activities that meet the needs of other people. Ideals that
depict an individual’s happiness as intrinsically involving
participation in some shared form of life—from Aristotle’s
view of us as political animals who flourish only when participating
in civic life, through contemporary communitarianism—may
likewise be ambiguous. These ethical views,
which seem to be forms of collectivism strongly opposed to
individualism, may rest on possibly mistaken ideas about
the conditions for individual flourishing.
See also Communism; Individualism, Methodological;
Individualism, Political and Ethical; Marxism; Nationalism;
Racism; Socialism
Further Readings
JSh
Greenleaf, William H. The British Political Tradition. 3 vols.
London: Methuen, 1983–1987.
Marx, Karl. Karl Marx: The Essential Writings. Frederic L. Bender,
ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986.
O’Neill, John, ed. Modes of Collectivism and Individualism.
London: Heinemann, 1973.
Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies. London:
Routledge, 1945.
Vincent, Andrew. Modern Political Ideologies. 2nd ed. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1995.
COMMON LAW
Law consists of the rules and mechanisms through which
disputes are resolved. Although either can be provided privately,
most modern societies rely, at least in part, on state
institutions to provide both. The term common law has