INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

2ND QUARTER

TOPIC: THE HUMAN PERSON AND SOCIETY

LESSON TITLE: The Origin of Society

Introduction
We are all the products of society which we created. We cannot escape its influence
even for an individual who wants to be alone cannot isolate himself from the rest of
society. We become dependent to society for our existence. This dependency has been
formally described by philosophers and social scientists in various catchy names such as:
social being, political animal, socius, being-with-others. Man’s relationship with society is
very complex and the foremost because it directly affects the totality of his existence in the
world.

Where do societies come from?

Conceptualizing h o w does society originate traces its radical formulation in the
16th century by group philosophers called the social contract theorists. The theory
was rather political and social for it stressed the authority of the king, the rights of
the individual which basically radical compared to the existing socio- theological explanation
of that time. Among its major proponents were: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean
Jacque Rousseau. Social contract theory was an assumption that society was brought about
by the transformation from the individualistic state of nature to a collective community in
which the individual surrendered some of his rights in order to secure his survival.

Michael Morga (1989) has an interesting observation to this. For all these thinkers
what had priority in existence was the individual. The individual human first existed then
entered into some type of social relationship. Society came about, therefore, as the result of
man’s free choice. Both the existence of political society and its nature were determined
by man. Man can either choose to remain in the state of nature that existed before human
society or man can choose whatever form of government that he judges best.

Types of Society
Different forms of society were established across history. Among them, three types
can be said are prominent today. They are the agrarian society, the industrial society and
the virtual society. Their origin has no exact date. Since their characteristics
overlapped with one another, it is difficult now to state what society is. The following forms
of society are merely brief descriptions of the qualities of society and what a community
would be looked like.

1. Agrarian Society: the motivation of the interaction of people in this type of society was
centered around the land. Most of the resources came from the land which people tilled
and cultivated. Because of this, people within the community lived near to each other and
they were related to family members. Mostly people lived in the place where their land
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was located. Here there was no separation between work in the field and work at home.
Family members worked together to till their field. The skills in farming were handed
down to children up to the next generation. The kind of life described here was more of
subsistence. In the agrarian society, family were united and became the center of
influence in the society
In the agrarian society, there were already a sense of inequality. Since the life of
community centered around land, those who have land were at the top of the social
hierarchy a n d those who have little or have not were in the lower strata. Already there was
a big gap between the rich and the poor. The land owner were the influential and became
the leader of the community while the people who tilled the land were the poor and kept
being exploited by the powerful. The poor doesn’t have any more time and opportunity for
education, for leisure, and rest. It can be said that in the agrarian society the gap
between the rich and the poor is like heaven and earth. This condition was passed on
to society.
2. Industrial society: In the industrial society, the machines of factories were at the center
of society. Compare to the “plow” and “horse” in the agrarian society, factories were much
more efficient, faster, and cheaper in producing goods. The production of goods by machines
brought standardization, bureaucracy, specialization in work. Workers in the factories were
conditioned to act in uniformity, they were treated like a robot, they were timed, theiractions
must be coordinated to ensure that goods they have produced had the highest quality.
The closeness of family life in the agricultural society changes in the industrial society.
Here the place of work was separated from home. Workers has to travel for long distance
just to get to their place of work. Children were placed into school where they being take
care of by the institution which disciplined and prepared them for work in the factory
when they grew up.
In the industrial society the production of wealth is faster compare to the agricultural
society. A person has an opportunity to level up his condition in life in industrial society by
selling the product of his labor. This is the reason why people from the rural town move
in exodus into city in which affluent is a guarantee. They leave their hometown to look
for a greener field. What the worker needs is his ability and knowledge to be successful in
the competitive world of the industrial society. The measurement of success in the industrial
society is the accumulation of material goods the money saved in a bank. The gap between
the rich and the poor didn’t disappear in industrial society instead they took a new form.

3. Virtual society: the virtual society is run by the internet, science and technology. People
in the virtual society is connected though a network by computer, smart phone and
Bluetooth. We are now living in virtual society where people are separated by different
geographical location and time can be convened together in a virtual space. A virtual
space is not an actual physical place the word itself is difficult to define. It doesn’t have
any physical existence, it cannot be touched, it is not visible. On the other hand, it exists
and shared by people not as an imagination but as pure experience.

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 A virtual society is a virtual world facilitated by computer generated
environment where users build a network of interaction with other users at the end of the
line through the Internet. People in this society are known as netizens or cyber citizens which
are joined by an online community. Here they can communicate, participate in individual or
group activities from any place and any time in the real world. Real world institutions
such as economics, politics, business, education, health, entertainment, etc. are facilitated
by the Internet. One advantage of virtual society lies in its ability to connect people in any
place in the world into networks which they can transact anytime even in the comforts of
their home. Real time events happening in one part of the globe can be viewed
simultaneously b y people across the world. For example, a person in a remotest part of
Amazon forest in South America can interact in real time with a person in New York or
anyone in the globe. This phenomenon is impossible in an industrial society. In short,
the functionality and the potential of what we can do in a virtual world is unimaginable.
Since everything can be simulated and manipulated in a virtual world, its impact in
society is real. Among them are, identity theft where an individual’s personal information
can be copied and use by other people; the proliferation of false information in which the
purpose is to deceive and to make a false representation of facts; the social problems
remained in virtual society such as crime but brought up into the next level like
cybercrime, cybersex, cyberbullying, hacking, fraud, piracy, etc.
Human Sociality
Man is a social being and there is no doubt about it. Man is born within the society
and the first group of people he/she goes along with is his/her family. The family is the
center of his life. From earliest childhood friendship plays a big part in a man’s life and
much of his time is spent with friends. As he grows older, he enters into marriage and
put up his own family. He becomes involved in the community and country. There are
numerable clubs and groups that he belongs to: religious groups, labor groups, fraternal
organizations, recreational organizations. He earns a livelihood and that job itself
represent a deep involvement in the life of his society.

That man is social is a very obvious fact and yet in many ways it is problematic and
mysterious. Man finds himself in constant challenged to develop his relationship with others,
his family, his friends and his fellow citizens. These relations cannot be taken for granted
but must be constantly renewed and achieved. This situation perfectly describes what the
great existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre quips that “hell is the other people.” Man
must exert effort to be a worthy father, a loyal friend, a responsible citizen. Sociality
seems not a permanent possession of man but a difficult achievement.

It is common for modern man to experience various forms of alienation. This

experiences part or can we say integrated in being social. Man senses that he no longer
belongs to the world of his family, he does not feel at home with the values of culture, the
inspiration and rituals of his religion no longer move him. It is as if modern man
were torn out of comfortable, familiar world and placed in a no man’s land where he
belongs to nothing. Such an alienated man suffers the permanent loss of much of his social
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existence. He is on the outside, observing people caught up in involvements that
unfortunately are not his.

Contemporary man feels the need to step aside from the way of life offered by his
culture if he is to achieve true personal authenticity. Man finds the way of the “crowd”
to be narrow and stultifying. Man must affirm his own values, discover the pattern of life
that is true for him alone, responds to life with his own personal style. He surrenders a
significant part of his humanity if he merely conforms to the roles and the norms that his
culture has set for him. From this standpoint of authenticity, then, we see that social
existence can be seen as a negative value which man must renounce in order to discover
his full humanity.
The question ableness of man’s sociality is thus clear. How can we affirm that man
is social when, 1) man’s sociality is not part of his nature but is a goal and achievement to
be reached with great difficulty, 2) man feels himself cut off from many years of social
relationship through no fault of his own, and 3) man finds it necessary to step back from
certain forms of social existence in order to achieve his authenticity? How basic is man’s
sociality? Is sociality only accidental addition to the essence of man? These are some of the
questions which address the problem of sociality.

References
Dy, Manuel Jr. Contemporary Social Philosophy. Quezon City: JMC Press, 1994.

Guevarra, Geoffrey A. Pambungad sa Pilosopiya ng Tao. Quezon City: Rex Book

Store, 2016.

Moga, Michael D. S.J. Invitation to Wonder: An Introduction to Philosophical Thought.

. Manila: Solar Publishing Corporation, 1989.

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