Social philosophy

As it was told, a human can become human only among other people, i. e. in society. There are different forms of human society such as family, tribe, nationality, nation etc. (Race isn’t included in their number because any of them virtually may consist of different races representatives). Family is the smallest cell of social life, further kin or clan and tribe follow. Kin is a group of people connected with each other by blood relationship. Several kins compound a tribe and a group of kin tribes may form a nationality or a nation. Nation is one of the main forms of the now living people organization. It’s defined as a community of people arising on the ground of common politic and economic life, common territory, language, culture, traditions, psychics peculiarities. Nationality is the same as nation, excluding usually such elements as common political and economical life. There may exist also supranational or international communities, the existence of which is connected with some or other economic or culture peculiarities. Thus the Europeans may be classified as a supranational community on the ground of common economical, political and especially cultural life. An example of international group may be different close business groups consisting of different countries representatives. The ethnic groups (the above-mentioned nation, nationality and tribe) are conditioned not only by business and economic relations but also by cultural, historic and similar peculiarities. There may be also the groups whose existence is conditioned with the purely economic and politic factors, for example: social classes, estates, professional groups etc. Their existence is objective in the same or even more measure than that of ethnic groups. However, in a normal state they keep off irreconcilable contradiction and confrontation and are laid more or less harmonically in the frame of the social organism, whose outer boundary is that of the corresponding ethnic group.

The outer form of the big group organizations is state. State may be defined as a set of different social institutes whose authority is legitimated and recognized on the corresponding territory. When and why states arise? The question interested thinkers for a long time ago. Thus in the 17th century the theories of the so-called natural condition appeared. Thomas Hobbes the English philosopher, the founder of one of them asserted that the natural condition, people had lived before the appearing of state, was a state of the war of all against each other. The war had continued until the people got tied of it and decided to concert. Thus they gathered together and concluded an agreement, according to which they disavowed their rights in favor of the created structure or state and became this state’s subjects. So the state, according to Hobbes, is means against war. Hobbes also compared state with a fantastic giant-man Leviathan, whose main aim is self-preservation. An inner disorder in a state means decease for Leviathan and a civil war ─ his death. The best form of state power, according to Hobbes, is a monarchy, for it’s like a man, who knows what he wants and uses his mind, being convinced in his purpose. A republic is much worse, for it’s similar to a man in whose head chaos and disorder reigns. In monarchy the only man ─ the king possesses rights, all others, being his subjects, possess no rights at all but only duties. Thanks to it the state can function as a unite organism. Different estates are its organs: king is its will, parliament its mind, warriors its arms, peasants its feet, financial system its blood etc. In short Hobbes may be considered a convinced royalist and adherent of totalitarianism [12].

Another English philosopher and Hobbes’ junior contemporary, the earlier mentioned J. Locke appreciated the natural condition little differently. He determined it as a state where the so-called natural law acts. It consists in not doing harm to life, property, health and so on of other people. This law is used till it’s sufficient for regulating human affairs. That’s possible until people accumulate so much property that the natural law can’t deal with. In order to solve the problem of regulating relations of property inheriting, granting, sharing etc. people gathered and create a state, delegating to it some of their rights. The emergence of state doesn’t mean that its subjects are deprived of all their rights. No, they are not. They get deprived of the only delegated rights, all other rights remain theirs. Thus a state is an institute called beforehand to regulate property relations. In order to avoid abuses from the state’s side Locke suggested the dividing of power into the royal and parliament ones. So king and parliament, controlling each other, don’t permit abuses in the state. This idea was realized still during the life of Locke and later was put into the ground of all democratic states’ constitutions (Now the dividing of power into the legislative, executive and judicial is accepted) [3].

What about the state in the modern conditions, it ought to be added that now a state fulfills besides the economic and politic also legislative, executive (including defensive, police, administrative), cultural, (at least partly) religious and other functions. The economic element is certainly one of the most important. It conditions all other constituents of human life, including those concerning the forms of family life, very much. There are known such forms of family life as polygamy, monogamy, polyandry etc. All of them are to some extent conditioned by the economic factors. E. g. polygamy was spread more among nomadic nations. It may be explained with that a man-nomad, possessing a property (herd of cattle) sufficient for providing several wives, could deal better with it than a farmer with a field necessary for it. The cultivation of the necessary quantity of ground is much harder than the looking after a herd. The cases of polyandry are rare enough (Tibet, some regions of India) and also may be connected with the property relations. So, if several brothers inherit one little field, that is impossible to be divided further (for the parts couldn’t feed up nobody), they take one single wife for all and live further by one common family ─ one wife and several husbands.

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1728