Individual And Society

The relationship between individual and society is a basic relationship of society, other relationships are all deepening, extension or outspread of it. Thinkers, politicians and scholars ever had had their best to eliminate the tension between individual and society. Unfortunately, it is a historical task which had not been solved in the past, which is being solved at present and will being solved in the future.Socialism and liberalism were both callings of society and era, both path-selections to try to solve the relationship between individual and society. Since middle 19^th century, there have been controversies, oppositions or dialogues between socialism and liberalism. This dissertation chooses the two thoughts to review, and chooses their theories and standpoints on individual and society as the core. In its discussion, there are both string and surface: discussing the development of both and analyzing contrastively their argumentation of the relationship between individual and society.The source and development of theoretical divergence between socialism and liberalism will be clarified sketchily in Chapter One. It can be seen that socialism criticized the theoretic basic of liberalism and the capitalistic reality in most time before 20^th century. In 20^th century, because of the actualization of socialism, the main critical object turned into socialism. The main reason that socialism criticizes liberalism is the antinomy between individual and society existing in social reality under the dominance of liberalism. The main sphere of the criticism of liberalism to socialism was that it had disturbed individual liberty because of its centralization and freehand government in reality. They disputed and used for reference one another in their coexisting history.Chapter Two and Chapter Three mainly analyze contrastively about the cognitive differences and the divergence of value choices in their views on relationship between individual and society. In Chapter Two, it mainly discusses the cognitive differences which socialism and liberalism think of the relationship between individual and society. It comprises of cognitive differences of essence of human and the subject-object relationship of individual and society between Marx and Engels' and classical liberal thinkers'. Their main cognitive differences exist in their cognition about human essence, society and individuality.The third chapter mainly analyzes their different value choices between individual and society. In Marx and Engels' and classical liberal thinkers' opinions, their divergences consist of dialectic value unification and value standard of individual. Their basic value preferences keep the same as before: socialism proposed priority of social value and emphasized individual value at the same time, while liberalism also kept their classic liberal tradition of value standard of individual.Based on above analysis, the fourth chapter gains some apocalypses and conclusive judgements. It holds that liberalistic cognition of relationship between individual and society is not comprehensive because it has not laid out the panorama of the relationship between individual and society, for this reason, its value standard of individual also has not resulted in common interests. However, it is not in the least neither rhyme nor reason, its hundreds of years' history had showed its rationality. Comparatively, socialism's dissection to the relationship between individual and society is more objective and comprehensive, under whose leading, individuals could harmoniously coexist better. However, there is somewhere that is prone to lapsus in its theory. Lastly, it discusses their cognitive differences and value divergences about relationship between individual and society in the purview of systematic theory, and points out the significance of systemic method to research relationship between individual and society, and meanwhile, concludes that the view of liberal relationship between individual and society is non-systemic, but socialism's is systemic.On the basic of Marxist systemic theoretic view, this dissertation holds that individual and society contact and restrict each other in social system. On the one hand, individual is strength and headspring of social development. On the other hand, the development of individual must recur to society. The general principle used to deal with it is society first and giving attention to individual at the same time, with which, they two could unify together in opposition.