Society Versus the Individual Essay - 1766 Words

Society Versus the Individual The adage, â€Å"the proper study of man is man†, aside from its obvious gendered exclusion, describes mounds of writing and thought about society and its components. Debates rage on in virtually all fields with variations on the same theme: society versus the individual. In the writings of Durkheim, Sahlins, and Foucault, the individual as coherent, persistent, and in-control dissolves and is subsumed, to different extents, within society. For the first two, society dominates the individual to a large degree - but not entirely. For Foucault, however, the entire terms of the debate seem meaningless, as both are constructs of one larger mode of discursivity: the power/knowledge game that creates the†¦show more content†¦Obviously, these philosophical distinctions do not necessarily preclude subjectivity or make ‘one’ feel any less ‘free’, but the move is important strategically. If the subject is, while not â€Å"an illusion† (Fou cault 29), fabricated by discourse, it becomes a politicized space that can have various destructive or productive effects. Beyond being merely arbitrary, Foucault offers some solid reasons ‘the individual’ may be politically undesirable. On the one hand, the concept of an individual subject with relative autonomy, coherence, persistence, and so forth is far from internally cogent. If the subject is partially determined, and partially free, the theory doesn’t say much at all because â€Å"free† remains undefined. If the freedom has behavior, patterns, or rules then it is not free, but if it is random, it is just as meaningless to call it free. Further, if the subject is only free in certain cases, but is not free to determine what those cases are, then it cannot control its own freedom, and is thus again unfree. Even if the self were considered entirely free, which can only be established of course by non-falsifiable decrees such as the Sartrean insistenceShow MoreRelatedIndividual Culture Versus Society Culture Essay904 Words   |  4 PagesAlthough living in a multicultural society might bring disadvantages like isolation and racial judgements, the benefits are more powerful resulting in an adapting society where individuals are free to live any culture. When an individual has a culture than the prevailing society they can be affected in either a positive way or a negative way. There have been in many instances were people change their culture due to joining the societies culture and others just use the culture for benefits like inRead MoreEssay about The Individual versus Society in the Scarlet Letter1005 Words   |  5 PagesThe Individual vs. Society in the Scarlet Letter The society we live in today grants us a variety of freedoms. No one tells us how to think or what to believe in. 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