6. Distinct from this idea (though on certain inter-
pretations an application of it) is a doctrine which has
come to be known as methodological individualism.
This asserts that all attempts to explain social phenom-
ena are to be rejected (or, according to a current, more
sophisticated version, rejected as “rock-bottom” expla-
nations) unless they are couched wholly in terms of
facts about individuals. Thus, according to its chief
contemporary exponent, Sir Karl Popper: “... all so-
cial phenomena, and especially the functioning of all
social institutions, should always be understood as re-
sulting from the decisions, actions, attitudes, etc., of
human individuals, and... we should never be satisfied
by an explanation in terms of so-called 'collectives'
...” (The Open Society and its Enemies [1945], Vol.
II, Ch. XIV).
It was first clearly articulated by Hobbes, for whom
“everything is best understood by its constitutive
causes” (De cive, Preface), the causes of the social
compound being Hobbesian men. It was taken up by
the thinkers of the Enlightenment, among whom, with
a few important exceptions (such as Vico and Montes-
quieu), an individualist mode of explanation became
preeminent, though with wide divergences as to what
was included, and how much was included, in the
characterization of the explanatory elements. Man was
seen by some as egoistic, by others as cooperative; some
presupposed the minimum about social conditions,
others (such as Diderot) employed a genuine social
psychology. As we have seen, many reasoned as though
the “individuals” in question were “prior” to society,
that is, undetermined by features of their social context.
Methodological individualism was confronted, from
the early nineteenth century onwards, by a wide range
of thinkers who brought to the understanding of social
life a perspective according to which collective
phenomena were accorded priority over individuals in
explanation. In Germany this was a pervasive trend,
encompassing all the social sciences, such as history,
economics, law, psychology, and philology (from, say,
Adam Müller onwards). In France, this tradition passed
from Saint-Simon and Comte through Alfred Espinas
to Émile Durkheim, whose whole sociology was
founded on the denial of methodological individualism.
Marxists and Hegelians have likewise always been
committed to such a denial, as is the mainstream of
modern American sociology. Many, however, have
continued to uphold it. The utilitarians were at one
with John Stuart Mill in maintaining that the “laws
of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing
but the actions and passions of human beings,” namely,
“the laws of individual human nature” (A System of
Logic [1843], Book VI, Ch. VII, 1). Similarly, many
social scientists have been methodological individ-
ualists, most obviously all those who have appealed
to fixed psychological elements as ultimately explana-
tory factors—such as Pareto (“residues”), McDougall
(“instincts”), Sumner (“drives”), and Malinowski
(“needs”).
The debate over methodological individualism has
recurred in many different guises—in the dispute be-
tween the German “historical” school in economics and
the “abstract” theory of classical and neo-classical
economics (especially as expounded by Carl Menger
and the Austrian School), in endless disputes among
philosophers of history and between sociologists and
psychologists, and above all in the prolonged contro-
versy between Durkheim and Gabriel Tarde (in which
most of the issues were most clearly brought out).
Among others, Georg Simmel and Charles Horton
Cooley tried to resolve the issue, as did Georges
Gurvitch and Morris Ginsberg (Ginsberg, 1954), but
it constantly reappears, for example in reactions to the
macroscopic theorizing of Talcott Parsons and his fol-
lowers, and in the debate provoked by the wide-
ranging methodological polemics of Popper and
Hayek on behalf of methodological individualism.
Briefly, it may be said that methodological individ-
ualism acquires a range of different meanings in ac-
cordance with how much of “society” is built into the
explanatory “individuals.” At one extreme stand think-
ers such as La Mettrie and H. J. Eysenck, who seek
an ultimately physiological, even physical explanation
of social phenomena; then there are those, such as
Pareto and Freud, who ultimately appeal to psycho-
logical variables, but with no social reference; next,
there are those, from Tarde to George Homans, who
seek explanations in terms of general and “elementary”
forms of social behavior, but with the minimum social
reference; and finally, there are those who appeal to
concrete, unabstracted individuals who incorporate all
the relevant features of the social context. (For further
elaboration and discussion of the above, see Lukes,
1968.)
