The Collective As an Ideational Entity

As actors in a social world, we are well aware of the existence of collectives. Families, communities, organizations, social and political movements, businesses, states and so on can be considered collectives. We know that various social entities in our social world are not mere aggregates of individuals; they are more than the sum of their parts and transcend the individuals who form them. These entities act like other individual actors, welcome or reject us, ask us to act for them, and give meaning and a sense of direction to our lives.

However, the existence of collectives is no longer self-evident when we take a step outside the everyday world. Viewed from the outside, collectives seem to be mere aggregations, or relationships among individuals, the simple sum of their parts. Unlike its individual members, a collective itself cannot have a material body, a thinking brain, or a warm or cold heart. If collectives exist, they cannot exist in the same sense that an individual body does so.

How can we reconcile these two perspectives? This paper argues that such a reconciliation is possible by revisiting the nature of our social world, which is essentially a field of meanings. In this field, collectives exist as “ideational entities” in the words of Japanese sociologist Seiyama Kazuo. They do not exist in the same way as a material entity exists; instead, they exist as elements in a particular field of meanings. To the extent that this field is intersubjective, the collective acquires a unique ontological status for those sharing it. Thus, collectives are ideational but, nonetheless, real.