Methodological Individualism

Background 39[1926] 1936: 101f). The difference, then, is that the parts of genuine wholes areinternally related. This makes them different also from mechanical composites,whose parts are only externally related. ‘It is the very essence of a whole thatwhile it is formed of its parts, it in turn influences the parts and affects their relationsand functions. This reciprocal influence underlies the internality or interiorcharacter of the whole’ (p. 103).The picture of the world painted by the doctrine of emergent evolution is that ofthe universe as a hierarchic order of different levels, where each level has emergedfrom, but is supervenient upon, and irreducible to, the level immediate below.We have a progressive superposition of level on level. Higher kinds of relatedness– chemical, vital and conscious – are each in turn supervenient on thosethat stand lower in the scale; but they do not supersede them in the sense that,when some higher kind of relatedness comes, the lower kinds go.(Morgan, 1923: 278)According to the idea of social holism, society is the highest level of organisationin this hierarchic order. It is supervenient upon, but irreducible to, humanindividuals and their actions. This is the meaning of Emile Durkheim’s claimthat society is sui generis. Actually, however, there are two distinct, though relatedclaims made by Durkheim and by most social holists and both claims can betraced back to German Romanticism.In the section on German historicism, above, I made a distinction betweenorganicism and objective idealism. According to the first doctrine, societies arewholes made up of interdependent and functional parts. If we assume that theparts of societies are individuals, the relation between individuals, according toorganicism, is that of part-whole. According to objective idealism, on the otherhand, social organisms have minds, or souls, which are expressed in theirlanguage, customs, laws, literature, etc. In this case, the relation between individualsand folk souls is not that between part and whole, but rather something theyhave in common, something they share. The relation here is more akin to that ofparticular-universal. Emile Durkheim’s distinction between mechanic and organicsolidarity was an early attempt to catch this difference (Durkheim, 1893: 70ff).More recently, Philip Pettit ([1993] 1996: chs 3–4) has suggested that the oppositeof individualism is collectivism, but not holism, which is instead the oppositeof atomism. I agree with Pettit that there is a difference between collectivism andholism, but I do not agree with his rendering of this difference. 30The ideas of social organisms and social minds are metaphors, which weresoon abandoned by social scientists, although they remain as root ideas aboutsocial life, even in contemporary social science. Organicism turned into structural-functionalism,which combines two holistic ideas: structure and function.The ideas about folk souls, national spirits and collective consciousness haveturned into the social scientific idea of culture.Now, I suggest that it is possible to make a distinction between holism andcollectivism. Holism is the idea that there are wholes made of social parts, which