Figures of individuality: from Marx to contemporary sociologies : Between scientific clarifications and philosophical anthropologies

Abstract

This article proposes a synthetic vision of the sociological treatment of the question of individuality. It deals, firstly, with the traditional debate between methodological individualism and methodological holism, with the aim of proposing a third way: methodological relationalism.(in terms of social relationships). He then stops at a classic and little known approach, that of Marx, comparing it with that of Durkheim. Finally, he is interested in the new problematizations presented by contemporary sociology, describing three great figures also approached by philosophy: identity-selfhood (Paul Ricoeur) / habitus (Pierre Bourdieu); identity-ipseity (Paul Ricoeur) / "as to oneself" (François Dubet); and finally, the moments of subjectivation (Jocelyn Benoist) / the states of agapè (Luc Boltanski). In the last part, he orients the projector on the contributions and limits of one of the most dynamic sociological paradigms: dispositional sociology (and, more precisely, on Pierre Bourdieu and Bernard Lahire). In this regard, it shows what this heuristic framework can scientifically lose by amalgamating "dispositions" and "competencies" with each other. Throughout this sociological itinerary, the author strives to clarify anthropological presuppositions (in the sense of philosophical conceptionsa priori of the properties of the human and of the human condition) that feed the different sociological procedures, from the perspective of a cross-border dialogue between sociology and philosophy. At the end of the itinerary, the possibility of a multidimensional reading of individuality opens up, against the exclusive readings of one-dimensional sociologies.