Levando o indivíduo a sério: a relação indivíduo-sociedade na teoria dos sistemas

One of the most original contributions of systems theory to contemporary sociology is the idea that individuals are not part of society, but that they belong to its environment. If we consider the individual as a body and a consciousness, then we cannot conceive society as a set of billions of bodies and consciousnesses. According to systems theory, society can only be conceived as communication. On the other side every individual is a system on its own, an autonomous, self-observing and self-reproducing consciousness. Taking individuals seriously means then to understand how individuals observe themselves and how they face the social dimension of their life – and this means, that every discourse on “colonization”, emancipation, meaninglessness, etc., aiming to take the part of individuals, is not only theoretically questionable, but contradictory, representing only the societal, not the individual point of view. Analyzing the modern forms of social inclusion like the career, the paper argues that observing individual as such means starting from its paradox – being unique like everyone else.