The Individual: Comparison between Durkheim's and Weber's view

This paper compares Emile Durkheim's and Max Weber's view about the individual. Interpreters and commentators of classical sociologists usually throw these two thinkers to a dualism of individual or social base of analysis. It's used to say Durkheim's unit of analysis is society but Weber's is the individual. Here we try to clear the meaning of ''the individual'' for both of them from surfing all of their writings, deleting the repetitions, categorizing the gist of their meanings, then, comparing them. This paper tried to say that the dualism between the individual and the social like agency/structure although is one of the mostimportant dilemmas in social sciences, Classical sociologists, with their difference methodological approaches faced to this problematicdifferently. But it seems that every classical sociologist such as Durkheim and Weber tried to move beyond this dualism. Finally, thispaper tried to show the key propositions of Weber and Durkheim is about the society/the individual relations mentioning these propositions and show the synthesis between individual/social explanations.

The Individual: Comparison between Durkheim's and Weber's view Keywords:

the individual , the social , Weber , Durkheim , Agency , structure