On Interobjectivity

The discovery of the social complexity of primate societies other than Homo sapiens, although it was made some 20 years ago, does not yet seem to have been fully taken on board by social theory (De Waal, 1982; Kummer, 1993; Strum, 1987). Violent arguments for or against sociobiology have taken center stage, as if it were necessary to defend the autonomy of the social against the danger of excessive reduction to the biological. In fact, the development of sociobiology, as of ethology, indicates quite another path: the extension to animals, even to genes, of classical questions of political philosophy about the definition of the social actor, the possibilities of rational calculation, the existence or not of a social structure standing above the level of interactions, the very defmition of interaction, the degree of intelligence necessary for social life, and the role of power and dominance relationships. Far from being displaced from all these questions by a biology presumed triumphant, sociological theory must play its part and must to new ends tackle the problem of the defmition of society, extending its comparative base to other than human sociallives.