| Summary: | Was Jesus a deviant? The abnormals who are legislators of the world in Florian Znaniecki's conception
The aim of this article is to remind us the still current conception of ‘deviants’ by the classical sociologist – Florian Znaniecki. Znaniecki has distinguished three types of people: normal, ‘subnormal’ and ‘overnormal’. Normal people are just ordinary people who live according to social rules and norms. The ‘subnormals’ are, simply speaking, different types of offenders. And the ‘overnormals’ are the people who enrich their socio-cultural system. ‘Deviants’ are extreme and the most interesting type of ‘sub’ - and ‘overnormal’ people. They are the men of genius, such as Socrates, Jesus Christ, Descartes, Napoleon, Lenin and Piłsudski. They are often perceived as anarchists and in fact they transform the social order totally or at least the way of thinking about it. We can take a risk with the idea that the future always depends on ‘deviants’.
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