Methodological Individualism

8 Backgroundreplaced by a more holistic and collectivist view of society in the Middle Ages. Itreappeared in the Renaissance and culminated with the Enlightenment. Themost important figures are Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke(1632–1704), at least from an individualist point of view. Of these, I believeHobbes is the most important as a representative of a theoretical, and perhapsalso methodological, individualism, while Locke is more important as a representativeof political individualism.The point of departure of most theories of the social contract, and Hobbes’stheory is no exception, is the ‘state of nature’. In Hobbes’s version, the state ofnature is characterised by a war of each individual against all other individuals.In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof isuncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no navigation, nor useof the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building;no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force;no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no Account of Time; no Arts; noLetters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual feare, and danger ofviolent death; and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short.(Hobbes, [1651] 1968: 186).The reason for this sad state of things is that there is no law and no commonpower to fear. But why is there need for a power to fear? Do people abide by lawonly for fear of consequences? According to Hobbes: Yes! Human nature is suchthat individuals seek only their own gain, and above all, glory, without regard forothers. Without a law to prevent them, they will invade one another in order totake what they want, or to prevent others from taking what they want.Happily, human beings are not only self-interested, they are also rational, andthis is their salvation. Hobbes’s state of nature is no place you would choose toinhabit, if there were an alternative. Now, since human beings are rational theyrealise that they would all be better off in a state of society where there is law andjustice and, therefore, peace. Hence, they enter a contract where they give up theirnatural right to everything and authorise an absolute sovereign to institute justice.This is a schematic version of Hobbes’s theory of the social contract. It is atheory, which is extremely individualistic, in the sense that it starts with natural, orpre-social individuals and explains the institution of society, or the state, solely interms of the human nature of these individuals (Peacock, 1986: 11–13; Pizzorno,1991). Since human beings, according to Hobbes, are rational egoists, it is possibleto see his theory of the social contract as a piece of rational choice analysis (see, e.g.,Hechter, 1989: 60). It has been suggested by Steven Lukes (1968: 119; 1973: 110)that Hobbes was also the first to articulate the principle of methodological individualist(see also Watkins, 1955b: 132f; [1965] 1973: 34), but this is more doubtful. Theclosest you get to an articulation of methodological individualism, in the writings ofHobbes, is his advocacy of the method of resolution and composition, which issimilar to the synthetic method suggested by Friedrich von Hayek (see p. 117).After Hobbes, the theory of the social contract was propagated by Benedict