Sociologist Emile Durkheim and linguist Ferdinand de Saussure suggest that there is a collective mind above the individual mind. This is not just a sum of individual minds, but something that is not reducible to them.
The assumption that there is a collective mind is contradictory, especially in Anglo-American contexts, where methodological individualism dominates as a point of view.
According to this view, only individuals are real, and nothing other than them (such as society or culture) is reducible to what individuals neglect, do, think, feel.
But Durkheim and Saussure, as well as many other thinkers, insist that in their communication, individuals exhibit qualities that are not observed if they are isolated. It is even emphasized that the dichotomy in methodological individualism forces us to ignore subordination, but also the relevance of the ways in which social tensions and forces operate below the level of individual consciousness and beyond the control of the individual will, shaping factual experience, actions, thoughts and feelings of individuals.
