H51060
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY
What are we really? Are we essentially social creatures, with our
various sets of interpersonal and social relations going to the core of who we
really are? Or are we on the other hand
essentially individual creatures who undergo various adventures and enter into
various relationships, but are what we are pretty much apart from all these
relations and adventures? Is society and
community essential to us as human beings and human persons? Or are they at best a more or less necessary
nuisance?
Exercise:
Which
communities are the most important for you?
Think of occasions where you felt very much a part
of some community (if there were any).
Are there any occasions where you felt you could
have done without a particular interpersonal or communal relationship? Where it was or felt much more trouble than
it was worth?
Could you live for long on a desert island? Would you like to some times?
In what circumstances, if any, would you approve a
person giving up his/her nationality for purely economic reasons?
Our problem or problems fairly obviously depend on
1) what the nature of the human person actually is; and 2) what communities
including 'society' really are, whether they have any reality anyway beyond the
individuals which compose them. These
are both rather difficult issues, and between them go to the heart of social
and political philosophy: various political solutions often express both
different conceptions of human nature and different conceptions of what
communities really are.
The notion of the human person as essentially a
social or political animal is fairly old, in 'Western' philosophy going back to
Plato and Aristotle. It is only in
society, for Plato and Aristotle the ancient Greek polis or city-community,
that we can realize our full potential as human beings. Communities in practice can be less than
ideal, sometimes even to the extent that a wise person might be better off
withdrawing from them for a while.
Still, good communities and human fulfillment essentially go
together. For this very reason, it is
essential for human happiness to try to get our communal structures right.
This view was in its essentials taken over by the
medieval doctors and also the medieval monasteries. Indeed, it is to be found in lots of
contemporary christian social theory.
While the individual person, made in the image of God, is crucially important,
it is usually recognized that human persons are communal and social by
nature. Precisely for this reason, we
need just and participative social structures.
Governments exist for the ‘common good’ and should do their best to
facilitate circumstances in which individual persons and families and other
such natural communal groups may thrive.
Hegelian philosophy, Marxist social theory and
much 20th century Sociology (including structuralism) goes one step
further. The human being, for all
intents and purposes, is no more or not much more than the ensemble of his or
her social relations (Marx, Theses on Feuerbach). We are essentially social in a rather deep
sense. Even the very notion of a human
'individual' is a social and historical 'construct', something that could only
exist in a particular kind of society. A
particular human person may be subjected to all kinds of local causal
influences that make his or her individual behaviour difficult to predict in practice. But such individual peculiarities typically
balance out. Statistically and in large
enough samples, once we understand the social forces at work it is all pretty
predictable. This is because human
beings are socially and historically determined, even if we can’t always access
all the determining factors.
Much liberal political theory since the
Enlightenment, however, has gone in precisely the opposite direction. For Hobbes and Locke and their liberal
individualist descendents, it is the individual which counts, not society. For convenience and for the sake of a modus
vivendi with the others, the individual enters into society via a kind of
social 'contract', and submits him or herself to government. But beyond providing security of life and property,
playing the role of a good night-watchman so to speak, we should not expect too
much from governments or indeed from our membership in society as such. This conception, then, is taken over and
taken for granted in our economics, wherein human beings are reduced to
individualistic consumers of products and services.
These three families of views we will see mapped
again in respect of our other question.
This second question meanwhile will allow us to explore our problem or
problems at a somewhat greater depth.
Statement of problem: people, including ourselves,
engage in lots of talk about Humanity, the Human Race, Australia, New Zealand,
the German race, Israel, the Arab Nation, History (as in 'the march of
History'), the Universe, the State, the Commonwealth, the College, the School,
Society, the community, the family. To
what do these refer? Do they refer to
any reality apart from or in addition to the individuals that compose
them? If so, what? Is there really such a thing as the
Commonwealth of Australia, or only lots and lots of Australians?
This in philosophical jargon may be usefully
construed as a sub-problem of what since the middle ages has been called 'the
problem of universals', = to what do 'universal' or 'general' terms refer. We might, eventually, decide on different
solutions for different terms, but as with other varieties of 'the problem of
universals', we can define certain general positions:
I:
Communities, societies etc. have a reality in their own right: "EXTREME
REALISM":
Briefly as
follows: What the terms above refer to, are realities (thus
'realism') in their own right, over and above the individuals with compose
them, to which the individuals may relate in various ways. E.g. "
People
living out of such a view sometimes more implicit than explicit may incline to
a kind of "TOTALISM" or "COLLECTIVISM" in practice. The individual is for the most part
subordinated to the institution or totality to which he or she belongs, these
being considered as a kind of reality in their own right and a superior reality
at that, to which the membership should sacrifice their particular
interests. On the other it may manifest
itself, by reaction, as estrangement from or rejection of or rebellion against
the entity or entities in question as something alien and alienating. 'It' inhibits us, or pressures us, and we
can't stand it any more. If this feeling
is strong enough, we might include to the diametrically opposite of totalism,
i.e. some version of 'ANARCHISM', involving a rejection of all authorities.
II:
Communities, societies etc. do not have any reality whatsoever in their own
right: "EXTREME NOMINALISM":
This is the view that the State, etc. have no existence
apart from or in addition to the individuals which compose them. There are no
general things, only general names (thus ‘nominalism’). There are only
individuals, concrete, individual physically real human beings. All the above are names for numbers or groups
of individuals who get into such associations for mutual benefit but are what
they are apart from the social 'units' to which they happen to 'belong'. Membership in such groupings may be useful,
and perhaps even necessary (political society) but they have no more to do with
our inner nature than e.g. our freely chosen membership in clubs.
This
option theoretical-explicit or practical-implicit manifests in practice as
SOCIAL ATOMISM or INDIVIDUALISM. This is
very common nowadays especially. All the
emphasis is on individual rights.
Everyone has rights, no one apparently has obligations, and there is a
demise of public spirit and concern for the collectivity or for other members
of the collectivity. Cf. Margaret
Thatcher, who is reported as saying: there is no such thing as Society, the
highest and only social unit is the Family.
In addition to these two extreme or groups of
extreme positions, we may define an in-between family of positions, which by
analogy with other sub-problems in the problem of universals, we might dub
'moderate realism'.
III: there
is a basis in reality for our talk of 'communities', 'societies' etc., even
though they are not precisely realities in their own right: "MODERATE
REALISM".
This is 'moderate' in so far as it does not
require the substantial existence of 'things' like States, Churches, Colleges
etc. It is still a 'realism' however in so far as there is still a basis in reality for our use of these terms.
The
big problem, of course, is to specify what exactly this basis in reality might
be.
One
variety of this position might be defined as follows:
1)
Human beings are by nature
relational, communal, social and even political animals (cf. Aristotle for the
last). Which is to say, 'individuals'
are characterized by what Karol Wojtyla calls "participation": they
are such as by nature to need, and to find their fulfillment partly by,
interaction with others in communities of various kinds. Furthermore, they define their identity as
the people they are and want to be, to a large extent in terms of the ensemble
of their social relations. This makes
communal and social structures and care for communal and social structures
quite important.
2) In spite of this, human beings are not entirely determined by their
social memberships. That would get us into another form of Totalism, reducing
people to nodes or junctures in overlapping systems. They are individual self-products taking more
or less creative account of what they receive.
Eventually, society exists for the sake of these individual
self-products, rather than the other way around. It is just that self-production,
intrinsically and necessarily, is very largely a taking into account of social
and natural environments.
3) The State, the Church,
etc., do have existence in so far as the parts or units of which they are
composed are not the same as what they would be in isolation apart from
membership in the large units. The
'whole' in this sense is greater than the sum of the parts, yet it is nothing other than the parts in their
togetherness, each of the parts determined to some extent by its social
environment to which environment it in turn contributes.
These three points can be easily made sense of in
terms of 20th Century Process-Relational metaphysics: each individual, indeed
each actuality in the universe, is in and of it's very nature a more or less
creative taking into account of its total environment, to which environment it
in turn contributes. The individual is
not reducible without remainder to the composition of forces in the
environment, however, because (a) an important part of the past environment is
the past of that particular individual, and (b) the taking into account of the
total past environment is always a little bit creative. These communal and social 'environments' are
nested one inside the other, sometimes with a degree of overlap.
4) The State, etc., may be said to have existence in the
further sense that the ensemble of units-in-togetherness will frequently be of
such a kind as to maintain its structure of modes of relating and its forms of
organization largely as it is through more or less drastic change of the parts,
though not completely. But at no stage
is it a reality apart from some set of units or parts in their
togetherness. It is just that certain
structures or habitual modes of relating seem to have a sort of bulkiness and
survival value.
5) The maintenance of structures of
modes of relating and forms of organization may be facilitated by the existence
and even architectural qualities of certain physical invariants, e.g. college
buildings, parliament houses, churches.
Also the existence of certain documents and meaning structures, e.g.
'constitutions' and institutions or accepted forms of organization. But the State, the School, the Church is not
the buildings: it is the units-in-their-togetherness habitually maintaining a
certain structure of modes of relating to other membership and to individual
people and other units in togetherness outside.
6) Something might be said also of the importance of habitat and the
influence of the environment in the biological sense of the word. We are an interacting part of nature, and are
not what we are apart from the physical and biological environment to which we
belong. It is intrinsic to us, where we
are, where we come from, where we live.
This is something very important to indigenous peoples, but also to many
a farmer and many a homemaker. Also to
members of older cultures: but even nowadays to us Australians. The land determines us and who we are,
intrinsically, though not totally. We
belong to it, quite as much as it 'belongs' to us. This is also the case with features of
climate and natural flora and fauna, or lack thereof.
7) Structures and forms of organization and physical and natural
environments have effects that are independent of the will of the participants.
This is just another illustration of the
fact that participants are determined by their place as much as vice
versa. It does not mean that there
exists anything other than various participants relating to each other in
various ways.
Points
4) to 7) might be worked out differently.
The important idea is probably 1),the relational view of a human person,
the conception of the human person as characterized in his or her inner nature
by what Karol Wojtyla one-time philosopher present Catholic pope calls 'participation'. Which is to say, it turns out that our two questions are fairly closely related. If human 'individuals' are by very nature
social, then they are not what they
are in isolation from the various social units to which they might belong. It is this that gives a basis in reality to
our talk of social units. Individual
fulfillment and interpersonal, social and even natural commitment are no longer
opposed where the 'individual' is intrinsically relational or characterized by
'participation'. Indeed an appropriate interpersonal, social and environmental
commitment is required for individual fulfillment, and it may be that in
certain cases the more intense the interpersonal, social and environmental
commitment and involvement the more intense the individual fulfillment.
It
should be obvious from the above exposition that the present writer prefers
some version of the so-called 'moderate' position. He finds it difficult to avoid the feeling,
however, that at least some of the communal structures we are subjected to have
a reality in their own right independently of us. Is this feeling really nothing more than a
kind of 'social construct’?
In
conclusion and by way of a little bit of critique of one of the assumptions of
our moderate position, there are at least two ways of working out the idea of
the social nature of human beings:
(i) Being kind to widows and orphans (or whoever)
meets a need in me towards self-development or fulfillment - compare the above;
and
(ii)The intention to self-development or
fulfillment or happiness is eventually self-contradictory, in the sense that
aiming for it in any direct fashion is the surest way not to achieve it. In which case we need to move beyond
self-development to something like 'solidarity', for its own sake. We eventually need to get to the position of
love of neighbour and dedication to the social good for their own sake. Paradoxically, solidarity gives personal
self-development and fulfillment, but if life is to be gained one has to give
up seeking to gain it. Compare the
Christ: "Who seeks to gain their life will lose it..." Compare the
Buddha. Or even the original Plato/Socrates: the philosopher, having emerged
with difficulty from the cave of illusion and prejudices and found the life of
sunshine and true reality, has to go back down into the cave for the sake of
his/her fellows. True fulfillment
requires, paradoxically, that we give up on the very idea…
In
contemporary philosophy in support of the latter idea, see especially the
French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.
Levinas subsumes much of our social interaction under (i). (i) however shows itself to be unsustainable;
we are called out of it by what he calls, "the face of the
other". Only then do we
paradoxically find salvation. The call
of the face of the other (Other) however is unconditional, not part of our
drive for self-fulfillment.
That
the drive for self-fulfillment is finally self-defeating is worked out by
others as well. For example, Herman De
Dijn and Arnold Burms at the Katholieke Universiteit te
This
is really thinking things through at a rather deep level however. Whatever else it does, it does not take us
back to either of the other more extreme positions.
This lecturer’s input will be accompanied by a
Video, all being well.