EXPLANATION OF INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR AS THE FIRST ANALYTICAL STEP

Disentangling the mystery of human nature is the most difficult task for anybody who aspires to deal with human affairs. It is this great difficulty that social scientists often try to surpass by not analyzing individual action and behavior directly, but instead by focusing exclusively on aggregates or collective schemes. This technique often proves to be impossible to use consistently, though, since at some stage of analysis the author is forced – by the nature of the subject – to refer, in a direct or indirect way, to assumptions of individual behavior. These assumptions are then made in an unsystematic and often ad hoc way.

Since sooner or later every analysis of society and economy must use explanations of individual activities, it is preferable to start explicitly with the observation and explanation of individual action and behavior. One can hope, then, that more clarity in this manner can be provided. It is better to handle an issue, however difficult, directly and with all available means than to try – in the end unsuccessfully – to avoid it. Because, if this issue is important for the study, then it will appear in another form later in the analysis and will lead to complications or theoretical mistakes.

This methodological doctrine of starting any social analysis with the individual, known as methodological individualism, has so far proved to be successful.