Comments on Fitcher's "Concept of Man in Social Science"

In his challenging paper, in June 1972 sociologist Joseph Fichter asks social scientists to redefine man as an "authentic human being" and to put this human being "in the center of social studies." As a proponent of Weberian sociology, the author agrees with these objectives and endorses the critique of the physicalist determinism of behaviorist psychologists and positivist sociologists. Neither the thesis of the emergence of "human nature" nor the theory of the development of the conception of "self" in an individual have to be subjected to determinist interpretations. Man is not merely but also an organism and social scientists concerned with `human nature,' have to take account of this basic fact. Attempting this, in itself, does not deny Man's fundamental humanity which is embedded in his original potentialities. But it takes not simply physical care but love, attention, and "training" by others to bring these potentialities to their realization. Fichter argues that "a human baby, raised in a family of monkeys," would not "become nonhuman."