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Article: Reflections on how to study and understand the human being. (Sixtieth Anniversary, 1934-1994: The Legacy of Our Past.)
- Article from:
- Social Research
- Article date:
- December 22, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 New School for Social Research. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Creative minds are hungary for significant problems. It is this hunger which, with its own force, drove Leon Festinger towards new horizons in research. He was, one should say, magnetically attracted to those problems which, even though no longer a mystery, still keep the echo of a riddle, or, in any case, those problems which have never ceased to interest people. The problem of origins is one of those problems. Those familiar with the work of Leon Festinger cannot be surprised that he would have dedicated a profound book, The Human Legacy, to that problem.
Indeed, his first theories concerned the origins of the social bond. More precisely, why individuals ...