Methodological Individualism

2 BackgroundThe individualist theory of society has a long history in Western thought. Since Iwill try to tell this history in another volume, I will not go into details here. Mypurpose in this chapter is merely to provide a brief background to the rise of thespecifically methodological version of individualism. For this purpose, I will firstpresent the two main versions of the individualist theory of society whichpreceded methodological individualism; the theory of the social contract and thetheory of spontaneous order, as it took shape in Adam Smith’s idea of themarket as an invisible hand. This idea laid the foundation of economics and it isoften assumed that classical economics was not only the first social science, butalso the first example of methodological individualism. I am going to arguebelow that, as such, it was not an altogether clearcut example, although I agree,of course, that it was more individualistic than the views of most of its critics.Classical economics was mainly a British phenomenon, but in Germany, and toa lesser degree in France, there was a massive reaction against the individualismof the Enlightenment, of utilitarianism and of classical economics. The mainexpression of this reaction is the cultural movement known as Romanticism,whose most significant manifestation in the human sciences is German historicism.In France there emerged a doctrine which shared some elements with bothBritish and German thinking, namely the positivist sociology of Auguste Comte.Methodological individualism emerged, I believe, as an individualist counterreactionto the anti-individualist reaction of German historicism and thesociologism of positivist sociology. If this belief is correct, it becomes necessaryto include the latter two intellectual currents as important parts in any account ofthe background of methodological individualism.The social contractThe individualist theory of society goes back, as far as we know, to GreekAntiquity, where it was advanced, in particular, by the Sophists and by theEpicureans. The former invented the theory of the social contract and saw allsocial institutions as man-made conventions. The latter adopted the theory of thesocial contract and added to it an atomist metaphysics and a hedonist psychology.The individualist theory of society disappeared with Antiquity and was