People and Community
Are we social beings?
What is community and what should be its role?
The Issues
•Issue 1: various conceptions of human nature:
what are we really? Social animals?
Rugged individualists? The ensemble of
our social relations?
•Issue 2: various conceptions of community and
society: does society have a reality in its own right, apart from or in
addition to the individuals in it?
Issue I: Various conceptions of human nature
•1st View: human persons as social, even
political animals. Cf. Plato, Aristotle, the Medievals. Consequence: only in society can we realize
our full potential as human beings. It’s
of positive significance for human flourishing (Aristotle’s “the good life”),
and it is important that it be so designed that it so contribute.
Issue I:
Various conceptions of human nature (cont’d)
•2nd View: the liberal individual, cf.
Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, through to the present day.
–It’s the individual which counts, not society
–for various reasons, the individual enters into
society via a kind of ‘social contract’, but it is not as if it is essential to
our existence as human beings
–the ‘night-watchman’ concept of government.
Issue I:
Various conceptions of human nature (cont’d)
•3rd View: we are, for all intents and purposes,
not much more than the ensemble of our social relations. Cf. Hegel, Marx, much 20th C. Sociology
including Structuralism. It’s the
social, the mass, the grand historical sweep, which counts, the individual is
merely a bit player.
Issue I:
Various conceptions of human nature (cont’d)
•Nowadays: politically and ideologically we are
into View 2, economically we are implicitly into View 3 - even nation states
are now just bit players, human beings are reduced to cogs in various
overlapping systems. The real paradox is
that the ‘cog’ which most of us are is the individualistic consumer of goods
and services.
Issue 2: Various conceptions of community and
society
•View I: Communities, societies etc. have a
reality in their own right: ‘Extreme Realism’ regarding the social
–I.e. a reality in their own right, above and
beyond the individuals which compose them, to which the individuals may relate
in various ways
–Manifested, in practice, either as Totalism or
Collectivism, or in reaction, as Anarchism.
Issue 2:
Various conceptions of community and society (cont’d)
•View II: Communities, societies, etc., do not
have any reality whatsoever in their own right: “Extreme Nominalism”
–there are only individuals, and collections of
individuals, that’s all.
–Individuals meanwhile are what they are apart
from the groups with which, for various reasons of convenience, they join
themselves
–manifests as Social Atomism and Individualism
Issue 2:
Various conceptions of community and society (cont’d)
•View III: there is a basis in reality for our
talk of communities and societies etc., even though they are not precisely
realities in their own right: “Moderate Realism” in respect of the
social.
•The big problem with View III is to specify
what exactly this basis in reality consists in.
Moderate Realist Position on Community and
Society
•1) human beings are by nature relational,
communal, social and even political animals.
Given this, they need an appropriate set of communal and social
structures for full flourishing
•2) But we are not entirely determined by our
social memberships. Individuality =
largely our peculiar way of negotiating our ensemble of social relations...
Moderate
Realist Position on Community and Society (cont’d)
•3) Our justification for our talk of
communities = we being social animals are not the same in isolation from
membership in the larger units to which we belong.
•The ‘whole’ in this sense is greater than the
sum of the pre-existent parts and yet it is nothing other than the parts in
their togetherness, each of the parts being determined by its social
environment, to which environment it in turn contributes..
Moderate
Realist Position on Community and Society (cont’d)
•4) some ensembles of units-in-togetherness have
a survival value beyond the moment and may well maintain their structure and
forms of organization through more or less drastic changes in the parts, though
not totally.
•5) This is facilitated by various physical
invariants and the existence of various documents and meaning structures.
Moderate
Realist Position on Community and Society (cont’d)
•6) the natural environment also may have a
role: we are an emergent, interacting, part of nature both in our individual
and communal dimensions
•7) the strange thing is that structures and
forms of social organization, once they come into play, have effects which are
independent of the will of the participants...
Concluding Comments
•The two issues are obviously closely linked.
•The key idea is probably that, if we really are
social animals, we are differently placed for human flourishing inside
societies than in isolation.
•This also means that individual fulfillment and
interpersonal, social, political and environmental commitment are in long term
not at all opposed to each other.
Concluding
Comments (cont’d)
•It may however be that we need eventually to
get beyond ‘human fulfillment’ as a direct goal, towards something like
‘solidarity’ for its own sake
•If life is to be gained, one has to give up
seeking to gain it…
•Is this too much to expect from our fellow
citizens? Or is it, indeed, the only
thing that can save us?