Individuality and Social Development
In order to understand the interaction between the individual and the society we must first understand the nature of the relationship between these two. Man is a gregarious species and likes to live in groups rather than alone. Early in his history he seems to have realized that being part of a group confers many advantages such as physical safety, accomplishment of bigger works than he can do by himself and better prospects of finding a mate and raising a family, etc. For these reasons men seem to have consented to form collective societies and seem to have been willing to sacrifice some individual privacy and individual comforts, etc.
So we understand that the relationship between these two is of a complementary nature. The society helps individuals to take better care of themselves and individuals in turn help the society maintain itself by contributing some share of their income and labor for the common welfare. Though theoretically society is there for the benefit of the constituent individuals, at some stage it acquires a personality of its own and at that point its own development acquires more priority than the development of the individuals who are part of it. Therefore it restrains those individuals who do not conform to the existing social standards and who deviate for better or worse. Criminals who do not obey the laws of the society are thrown in jails and thereby prevented from causing any changes in the outer society.
Those who deviate and differ from society’s existing social customs, beliefs and standards due to their originality, enterprise and pioneering mentality are also considered deviant and many times persecuted as it happened to Galileo, Socrates, Jesus, Martin Luther and Karl Marx. If they are brave and powerful enough to survive the social opposition, then they become leaders of the very same society and lead it to higher stages in knowledge and accomplishment, as evidenced by the events in the life of Darwin, Luther, Gandhiji, etc.
Individuality
much of what is being written echoes the positioning of both Sen and Nussbaum - though they have different takes - in relation to capability - and this suggests that all individuals have a range of capabilities and entitlements, and that under optimum conditions, make extraordinary contributions. Structural barriers, poverty, constraints on individuals for reasons of association or inherent factors all strip people of capability ...
Lenore Manderson