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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 6 page paper considers the nature of the individual and the theories that support different views. This paper relates some central questions, including: Who is the individual? To what extent does an individual have the ability or right to influence society? Is man really capable of being an individual? These questions and others were argued by social scientists in the early twentieth century. The arguments seem to have become divided into two separate camps, Structuralists and Humanists. Bibliography lists 8 sources.
Page Count:
6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: MH11_MHIndSo2.rtf
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These questions and others were argued by social scientists in the early twentieth century. The arguments seem to have become divided into two separate camps, Structuralists and Humanists. These arguments
seem to hinge on the very definition of the term "subject." William Wordsworth in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads addresses the idea
of the term "subject" by stating, "Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they
can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language"(Wordsworth). The subject, then, is the expression and ability of language to express more candidly
the real essence of the human condition. Wordsworth suggests, then, that the rustics and peasants who knew very little social pretense were more likely to have a truer ability to
speak "a plainer and more emphatic language." This is at the heart of the divide between Humanists, such as Wordsworth, and Structuralists, including T.S. Eliot, Jonathan Culler, and Michael
Foucault. The issue dividing Humanists and Structuralists is the extent to which the "true purpose of language" can be achieved. Structuralists believed in the dichotomy of opposites to give meaning
to language. For example, there would not be the idea of darkness without an understanding of what it means to have light. Therefore, meaning is derived through the identification of
the subject with an object in the real world or some pre-existent concept. T.S. Eliot, in his work Tradition and the Individual Talent, attacks the ideas of Geist, pure
origin and universality that Wordsworth and other Humanists seemed to embrace. In the Humanist philosophy, Geist was viewing the subject as a whole entity whereas the Structuralists saw the whole
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