Discussion

IT has seemed to me that men can in general be divided into two classes according to whether their predominant outlook on life falls into what may be called the sociological point of view or the psychological point of view. Those with the sociological point of view see the forces operating on man as external to himself. The course of a man's life is determined by the social institutions and the values they transmit which impinge on it, such institutions as government, church, schools, corporations, the media, etc. Those people with this outlook who attempt to alter the way men live direct their efforts towards changing the offending institutions. The primary arena for their actions is politics.

The person with the psychological point of view sees the forces which propel man to do what he does as originating from within himself. He will not deny that institutions greatly influence the way people live, but he will claim that in order to change those institutions man must first change himself. His attitude is introspective. The arena of his actions is ethics. There is no essential conflict between the two points of view, though it may be difficult for both to exist simultaneously in the same person. Introspection raises doubts which may impair the will towards action and action may interfere with the attitude of introspection. Don Quixote cannot be Hamlet. Nor can we place a higher value on one point of view or the other. History will probably never be able to determine who has more influenced the course of human events, Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud.

The difference between the psychological and sociological point of view is interestingly expounded by the principal characters in Peter Weiss's play, “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.” Jean Paul Marat was a renowned physician who threw himself wholeheartedly into the French Revolution and came to be remembered