Methodological Individualism

Notes 359social phenomena (Aristotle used the term ‘spontaneous generation’, but notabout social phenomena). Since Friedrich von Hayek did read Comte, it is, at least,possible that he picked up the term from him.17 Friedrich von Hayek, wrote two critical essays, which deal to a large extent withComte: ‘The Counter-Revolution of Science’ (1941) and ‘Comte and Hegel’ (1951),both included in Hayek (1955). Comte is also a principal target of critique in Popper’sThe Poverty of Historicism (1957).18 Comte’s advocacy of social engineering is most manifest in his early works (Comte[1819–26] 1974), written while appointed as secretary to St Simon. The main workfrom this period is ‘Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for ReorganizingSociety’ (1822), which contains most of Comte’s later ideas in embryo.19 The best treatment of the role of statistics in the rise of social science that I know ofis Ian Hacking’s The Taming of Chance (1990). It is a common, and probably correct,observation that the main impetus to the rise of systematic empiricism was the needon the part of state administrations for official statistics (Österberg, 1988: 18ff;Desrosières, 1991).20 See, however, John Goldthorpe (2000: 266–74), who does not at all share the opinionthat Durkheim’s Suicide was a masterpiece.21 Spencer’s political views are most clearly expressed in the The Man Versus the State([1884] 1982) and other essays included in the volume with this name.22 ‘I have very emphatically expressed my belief in a subjective science of the mind, bywriting a Principles of Psychology, one half of which is subjective’ (Spencer [1864] 1984:18).23 In his Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of M. Comte, Spencer ([1864] 1984: 15)avoids the organism analogy and uses that of mechanism instead. In his later works,society is once again a social organism, but the analogy between the individual andsocial organism is played down. What they both have in common is that they areorganised entities with mutual dependency among the parts (Spencer [1873] 1961:52–4, 298ff; [1876] 1985, vol. 1: 437ff, 580f).24 See, e.g. Buchanan (1949) and Benn and Peters (1959: 290) on the contrast betweenindividualism and organicism.25 See Taylor (1989; 1992: 137ff) and Gray (1985: 245f; 1996: ch. 13). Other examplesare the American sociologist William Graham Sumner (see Sumner, 1992) and theEnglish jurist Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1889), both of whom were influenced bySpencer. Sumner rarely used the term ‘social organicism’ but there is little doubt thathe was an organicist, and even more of an evolutionist. Donisthorpe, on the otherhand went farther in his organicism than Spencer. According to him, also the state isan organism (p. 2) and, like other, social organisms, it is endowed with a group mind(p. 276). Even so, he was a political individualist.26 If there is a debt to Spencer on the part of Hayek, it is unacknowledged. It has beenargued by Paul (1988), that there is an even greater similarity between Hayek andSumner, but Sumner is not even mentioned by Hayek.27 It should be mentioned that Durkheim was not an enemy of all versions of individualism.On the contrary, he was a strong supporter of Kantian individualism, with itsidea of the autonomy of the individual and he was an equally strong supporter of theidea of human rights derived from Kantian individualism. This fact, casts strongdoubts upon some interpretations of Durkheim, especially that of Philip Pettit([1993] 1996: 112, 127ff), who suggests that Durkheim was a collectivist, who deniedany autonomy to individuals.28 Distrust of psychology, subjectivism and humanism has turned into something of atrademark of that type of French structuralism, which conceives of Durkheim andthe Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure as its founding fathers.29 See, e.g. Durkheim ([1895] 1982: 39f, 45, 128f; [1897] 1951: 319f; [1898] 1974: 31;[1900] 1973: 16ff; [1911] 1974: 90–93).