The author seeks to justify the possibility of conceptualising an event as unique, while showing its place in the system of causal relations. The article considers the contradiction between the treatment of an event as an atom of social life, an element of a cluster and an event as a turning point that divides what happens into ‘before’ and ‘after’. The basis for the operation of qualification could be causality, the properties of the event or the role of the observer; the event, being an element of a class, can be included in causal series and act as a manifestation or justification of some universal regularities, and the social order can be considered as an order of unequal probability of events. However, this line of thinking does not allow the comprehension of specific events, those that change the social order, and also limits the analysis of causality only to the context of universal regularities. The second approach, which emphasizes the unique aspects of the event, levelling these shortcomings, makes it impossible to comprehend the place and role of a particular event in causal chains and to identify any regularities, and the absence of the figure of the observer makes it difficult to comprehend the event as a social one. These shortcomings can be overcome by the narrative approach. The event in the narrative has significance in itself, but is linked to the narrative, i.e. it is possible to talk about the event in the system of cause-and-effect relations, preserving the idea of the significance of a single event; the temporality of the narrative allows us to comprehend aspects of the interaction of agency, social structure and dynamics, continuously occurring in time. In contrast to Ricoeur’s interpretation, and in accordance with D. Carr’s ideas, narrative has no author and represents the experience of time, and the narrative nature is characteristic not only of texts, but also of reality itself; this thesis allows us to talk about social events, the significance of which is determined not by the figure of the observer, but by the narrative nature of reality.