"Un individuo es la unidad más pequeña de la sociedad."

Translation: An individual is the smallest unit of society.

[siebolt]

Duolingo: an individual is the smallest unit of a society. I left out "a" > "the smallest unit of society". I chose that because of the "universal" character of the phrase. Is my solution really an error?

[AndreasWitnstein]

You're correct. Report it.

[ozespanol]

Why is it: of "a" society and not of "the" society. Should it not be "un" or "una" for "a"?

[Fluent2B]

For the word unidad to signify both of the nouns, unit and unity, seems kind of confusing, but I suppose that, again, context is everything.

[hielo16]

Por Rousseau. Aristotle dijo que la familia es la unidad mas pequena de la sociedad.

[neogerot]

How to say smaller unit of anything?

[AndreasWitnstein]

‘una unidad más pequeña’ = “a smaller unit”

‘la unidad más pequeña’ = “the smallest unit”

[circumbendibus]

Is that the only difference? What if you want to say "the smaller unit"? Is it just about context?

[AndreasWitnstein]

Yes, it's just about context. Unlike English, Spanish doesn't distinguish between “the smaller [of two]” and “the smallest [of more than two]”.

[skipstavros]

How about "lo mas pequena?