CHAPTER XV

ON THE PROBLEM OF THE RELATION

`BETWEEN' THE PERSON AND SOCIETY

ASEN DAV IDOV

 

No one gives a human being his qualities . . . . One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole. Fr. Ni etzsche

Only the whole is true. G. W. Fr. Hegel

Only the whole is untrue. Th. W. Ad orno

Of all problems, why should one treat the role of the person in social life? Has it not been clear from the beginning that men always are both self-determined and socially determined; that social life not only concerns human beings and their natural environment, but that it is social as well? Is it not too obvious that every human being is molded from both in accord with the cultural and historical heritage of social life under the influence of the various social groups and communities in which he lives, whether of family, play, worship, labor or love? Indeed, through change in the individuals of which such groups are composed, the groups themselves are changed, and through them the whole society.

On the other hand, has not this problem been altogether typical of philosophy as a specific kind of human orientation as soon as it arose out of the immanently undifferentiated, syncretic, mythological, magical, `life-world' consciousness? Implicitly or explicitly, this problem can be found in the depths of every philosophical meditation. Why then, thousands of years after Socrates, are people asking insistently about man's nature, his role in society, the influence of the latter upon the former, and so forth?

As a matter of fact, the problem in question has had a vast variety of forms during the intellectual history of mankind. Even in those doctrines where in one way or another the problem has been ignored (in so-called "theoretical anti-humanism," functionalism, and the like) we can unearth a quite different answer to such questions as: what is a person, what is a society, and how are the two interwoven. The very avoidance of the problem indicates that such a problem exists--even in its most acute, though latent, form.

Of course, every historical epoch puts its specific imprint upon the philosophical understandings of the `person-society' relation. It had one meaning, for example, in ancient Gr eece where it appeared as the problem of the relation between the free citizen and the p olis; there it concerned only the unity of both poles of the relation. It had a quite different meaning through the Middle Ages, where it manifested itself as a moral problem of the comparability between the free will of the individual and Divine Pr ovidence. The Rena issance humanist notion of the free individual as the goal, while society was the means, later was transformed into the problem of social and political freedom by Enlig htenment ideology. There its typical form was the relation between the `reasonable egoism' of the individual, on the one hand, and the interests of society, on the other.

More recently, in the developed capitalist societies the problem manifests itself as the contradiction between two aspects of the individual, that is, in Karl Ma rx's words, between bour geois and ci toyen between the civil society and the political state. In developing socialist countries and the problematics of so-called "scientific communism," the issue concerns the social functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat--factually, the one-party ruling system--on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the development of a relationship such that, according to the Communist Manifesto, "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." Some gloomy pages of the recent history of socialist countries bears witness that there is a problem.

Being, one way or another, constantly in the limelight, the problem of the person and social life usually is most clearly defined in an age of crisis or during periods of intensive social transition. This is only natural, as it is natural that one does not feel and thus not think of any of one's bodily organs except when a change appears in their functions or when they are impaired.

Today our world is undergoing a great transformation. We should not be overly pessimistic regarding the end of the cold war; nor should we be so overly-optimistic as to believe that, in man's heart at least, the day of the dictator is over, that the tot alitarian era and its ideas have passed. But the transition is underway, in any case, and on a global scale. The symbolic demarcation lines, dividing the world into "East" versus "West," "South" versus "North," tend to become obscure as do the traditional enemy-images. Today, some ideologies, declared officially to be athe istic, are openly appealing to values of trans-historical, even transcendental, character, while some allegedly religious movements have turned out to be a sheer means for the powers that be. Almost two decades after the end of the end-of-ideology debate, de-ideologization has become a catchword once again. What is most strange is that the stimuli for the renewal of the discussion came from a side that no one would have expected, that is, from the Eastern European countries.

It would be wishful thinking, however, to declare that our days bring an end of every kind of social calamity and one-sided ideology such as, for example, those of "authoritarian collectivism" and "possessive individualism" in M. Marko vic's terms. Of course, one can doubt his ideal of a self-governing community, which of itself could provide the conditions for a real pursuit of common interest by persons who are as free as possible.1 It is even more dubious now, when the hidden reefs of such an approach to governing have pushed the country in question towards the possibility of a quite undemocratic approach to ruling. Prof. Markovic is much more consistent when he states that "where there are or have been movements, they invariably constitute what Hegel used to call `abstract negation': expressing demands extremely opposed to official values and aspirations, rather than transcending them and differentiating between what is limited and what is historically indispensable in them."2 Would that mean that people are doomed to unsuccessful questioning regarding their place and role as parts of society, of mankind or of the Cosmos?

Facing the great number of solutions to these problems, one feels inclined to adopt a skeptical stance or to plunge into an ocean of unlimited relativism. But regardless of the multifarious types of cultures, whether taken sync hronically or d iachronically, we discover continuity between each and every world view because human beings incessantly try to give meaning to their own lives, as well as to the world and its history. The problem of the person and society, of the individual and community, of the particular and the general, of the concrete and the transhistorical forms the basic structure of human philosophizing. It is quite reasonable, even inevitable, then that this problem should repeatedly become the focus of theoretical analyses. It is, moreover, a valid problem not only for philosophers, but also for socio logists, psych ologists, cultu rologists, political scientists , theol ogians, etc. The issue has become a crossroads for different intellectual trends, not only in theoretical spheres, but also in various political, artistic, economic and spiritual areas. There is a quite reasonable consensus that the problem of the person as something unique and universal, on the one hand, and as a part of some encompassing entity, community, or society, on the other hand, is one of the most characteristic features of 20th century thought.

It would be unreasonable therefore to give up efforts to approach the problem again and again, taking account of the richness of the accumulated historical experience in this field of research and, of course, trying not to overlook the typical shortcomings of the available attempts to solve the problem. Being far from any absurd pretension to encompass the unencompassable, I would try only to outline the inner logic of the problem. I shall try to do this not so much from an analytic, but from a dialectical standpoint; hence, mine will be mostly a philosophical attempt.

I am aided in this endeavor by the impressive richness of conceptions regarding the problem of the person and society in the field of philosophy. These include not only vastly informative entries in the most respectable encyclopedias, but also some cogent philosophical analyses of the problem or of some of its parts.3 Whereas most of those focus upon the positive moments in the historical development of the problem and its solutions, I shall try to discover the roots of their common insufficiency.

WHAT IS WRONG ABOUT THE PROBLEM OF

THE PERSON-SOCIETY RELATION?

The empty phrase, Man, distorts man's relation to his society as well as the content of what is thought in the concept of Man.

Theodore W. Adorn o

The philosophy of the person-society problem, although always essentially present, has acquired quite specific characteristics at the end of the 20th century. Instead of abstract speculation on such traditional philosophical subjects as the whole and the part, determinism and indeterminism, necessity and contingency, a great many 20th century philosophers deliberately have focused attention upon the human being as concrete, living and dying, happy and suffering, creative and destructive, here and now. Thinkers have been forced to consider the human condition in new ways by the great events of the century, namely, the two World Wars, with the consequent revolutions that have split the world into opposed `camps'; the quantitatively and qualitatively unprecedented extermination and obliteration of whole social strata and nationalities, through civil wars, gas-chambers, slave-labor camps, artificially invented starvation, demographic migrations, purges and terrors; the progress of `formal rationality' (M. We ber), `instrumental reason' (M. Hork heimer) and the pervasive principle of `all-encompassing utility' (K. Ma rx); the replacement of `to be' by `to have' (E. Fr omm); the highly sophisticated propaganda machines and the development of an industry of dreams and mass-culture; and the technological and scientific revolution with its accompanying dangers of ecological and thermonuclear omnicide.

All these crucial problems stem from the new situation of man in society. First, the centuries-long unfolding of history, especially in recent times, convincingly demonstrates that there is no sure protection against the perpetual tendency to `totalize' social life in a way that promotes the development of all kinds of cults of personality. Correspondingly, there is a continuing tendency to `atomize' society, to self-isolation by the sectors of society and by individuals themselves. This is due to the fact that, despite powerful processes of integration, equally strong racial, national, religious and cultural forces lead not only to socio-cultural self-identification and progressive development, but also to incomparability and even to hostility.

It is worth noting that for centuries the majority of philosophers have been saved from latent contradictions in the classical solutions of the person-society problem. Such famous definitions as `zoon politicon', `imperfect substantion', `natural egoist', or the person as only a particular manifestation of the objective and all-embracing development process, were able to hide their inner contradictions in clouds of theoretical speculations. In various forms this can be seen in the Ka ntian dichotomy of phe nomenon and noum enon, with the respective antinomies between ha ppiness and moral ity, freed om and categorical imperative; in the Fic htean incomparability between the empirical and the transcendental "I"; and in the Romantic opposition between the arts as the sphere of absolutely free person and mundane reality. H egel is one of the most significant examples in this respect as the first philosopher to extend the dialectical method to an all-embracing world view.

Fighting against romantic individualism, Hegel tried to explain the incomparability of the personal ideal with reality by the subjective character of the ideal itself. As he wrote in the Philosophy of Spirit, the third part of the Encyclopedia,

What is true in these ideals has been preserved in practical activity; man ought to free himself only from what is untrue, only from empty abstractions. . . . What is substantial is one and the same in all human accomplishments, in the legal system, in morality, and in religion. That is why people can find self-satisfaction and attain respect in all of the spheres of their practical activity.4

Heg el understood the person not as an isolated monad, but as a `moment' of the Whole, as an ingredient of the Totality. That is why for him a person's true goals are not subjective but objective; the less subjective they are the more true they become. Thus, the person is united not with the genus only, but with the whole world. As the spirit, the essence of the latter is identical with that of the former; the Spirit is the concrete concept of the person. Hence, the dialectical variant of the typically `Enlightened' conception of freedom is that of acknowledged necessity, whence follows Hegel's well-known totalitarian implications.

Even for Hegel, however, the contradictions connected with the division of labor and alienation will continue to exist in the world. It is only in the sphere of the spiritual, which is the philosophical par excellence, that man can become a whole, unalienated person. Even in Hegel's social philosophy there remains the paradox that the State, as the highest incarnation of reason, is the highest incarnation of a person's free dom, so that Hegel's panlogicism turns out to be an apology for `s tatism'.

As early as the beginning of the Modern Age, in Pas cal, for example, the first hints of the latent contradictions in the classical solutions of the problem of the relation between the person and society begin to appear. However, these forerunners of contemporary existe ntialism, perso nalism and philosophy of life attained their significance only later in our age of all-embracing crises of every kind. This revealed the insufficiencies of classical thought in general and, in particular, of its conceptions of the person-society interrelation.

In the post-classical period two main methodological trends, along with their respective world-views, have emerged. Provisionally we shall call these the scientistic and anthropological orientations. The most typical of the former is the positivistic style of thinking, while the most typical of the latter is the existential. In the long run, however, in both cases the problem of the person and society is distorted and misinterpreted, either in favor of society, or in favor of the person, both of which are ultimately absolutized. Either the person is dissolved as a functional element of society by being reduced entirely to social roles or even to a specimen of the herd, such as a `naked ape'; or the person is postulated as being the one and only reality, and proclaimed to be an impossible task or mystery.

If, on the other hand, the solutions propounded by a vast majority of Mar xist philosophers for a certain historical period could be regarded as no less satisfactory, one could easily be prone to agree with Hannah Aren dt's conclusion, that it is a `tragic fallacy' to suppose "that there was such a thing as one human nature established for all times," because history has taught us "that the power of man is so great that he really can be what he wishes to be."5 Though seeming almost like a classical `socialistic-realistic' slogan (cf. Maxim Go rky's credo: "Man--how proudly it sounds!"), in the horrifying context of Arendt's book her conclusion sounds rather gloomy.

Traditionally, the essence of the problem of the relation between the person and society has been sought in the `functionalization' or `socialization' of the person. But this could not be fruitful, first of all because of the fact that every reduction of the many-sided relations between the person and society to the socialization processes for the former and to the stabilization processes for the latter results in a rather abstract picture of society itself, no matter how nuanced that picture might be. In addition, the idea of man as homo sociologicus is inadequate by virtue of its one-sidedness. Last but not least, this idea is grounded on the thoroughly false latent premise that there could be a person before the socialization processes and that it is possible to have society beyond the person.

It would be no more adequate, however, to formulate this problem in terms of the total negation of social life by the person, as if in such a case we could speak of a person at all. The model of the so-called `concrete man' opposed to the material and spiritual (yet objective) structures of social life and alienated from any genetic and functional social connections is no less abstract than was the previous one. As the individuality, uniqueness and autonomy of the person become absolute and self-sufficient the very meaning of the person evaporates, because the person is considered apart from the conditions in which his life actually occurs. As the person can manifest his various features, including his personality, only in relation to the social world, an all-pervasive alienation of the person from society, and vice versa, renders absurd both the social world and the person.

These are, of course, only `ideal types' of an inadequate formulation of the problem. In addition one could construe also `mixed' types, which would claim to present an organic unity of the natural, social and personal dimensions of personal and social life.

In some sectors of Marxist literature, after many years of vulgar sociological and class-reductionism regarding the person-society relation, the so-called `bio-social essence' of man recently has become a catchword. Without dwelling upon the details, premises and fallacies of such a formula, it is sufficient here to note that the eclectic unity of these essentially different qualities in one `essence' makes the problem even more obscure, instead of elucidating it. Appeals to dialectics as if it were some magic wand are of no use when they violate elementary rules of formal logic. Even in dialectics not everything can be everything or one with everything; at the very least, this leads logically to a kind of `bad infinity' to use He gel's term ("schlechten Undendlichkeit"). Indeed, there is no good reason to stop at the biological substrate of social life and not to proceed further with the analyses to, for example, the deeper chemical, physical, molecular and sub-molecular levels. But as a matter of principle it is quite reasonable to doubt whether that would make the essence in question any more clear.

It is almost common--and here M arxist literature is hardly an exception--to ask whether the person or society has ontological and logical priority. But the very formulation of the question is incorrect, and leads the investigator to dead-ends. The `hen-or-egg' problem is a pseudo-problem, and as such is insoluble.

If we use Werner Stark's distinction, basing the first type of solution upon a collectivistic and holistic approach, and the second type upon an individualistic and `atomistic' approach,6 we can hardly reconcile and preserve these two "sound, if one-sided," positions. It is not at all, as W. Sta rk thinks, a matter of their co-existence "on the heights of human thought," but rather of changing the very approach to the problem.

To begin with, the conceptual difference between `person' and `society' does not necessarily mean that their contents are actually opposed in reality. If we begin from the prejudice that there is an essential difference and opposition between the two, certainly we will end up with some kind of one-sided result: either we will favor the one at the expense of the other, or we will simply lump together things already meant as incommensurable and incompatible.

That is why, from the very beginning, we must adopt the position that there is not an absolute, essential difference between pe rson and soc iety, but rather some type of fundamental unity. Inasmuch as every unity implies difference, from the very beginning we must keep in mind both characteristics of this unity: its personal as well as it `societal' aspects. In its essence the relation between the person and society demands that we regard them as distinct but not mutually opposed, exclusive `realities'. They exist, in truth, only as two moments of an all-encompassing historical process, which is something `third' in their dialectic. This also means that both `moments' of the relation imply each other at every moment of their being and becoming, and that the mediating field for this is the above-mentioned `third' moment.

We must keep in mind also the fact that the concrete, historical character of both the person and society means that their unity, as their deepest `essence', can never be an entity `as such' for it possesses rather a dynamic and historical character. In other words, the concrete historicity of the unity in difference of the person and society means that it is impossible for us as finite, concrete human beings to investigate this problem as if we were able to acquire an absolute knowledge of eternal truth, or the truth of the last instance. Hist oricity here means that all of our theoretical determinations of this dynamic unity in every moment of its concrete existence have a quite concrete character. This means, finally, that our approach to this problem must be dialectical, for all of these requirements indicate typical characteristics of a dialectical process: unity in difference, negation as the source of the inner dynamics, historicity, concreteness, and so forth.

From the dialectical point of view, the right question here would not be whether the person or society has ontological and logical priority. Instead we should attempt to reveal the nature of the process that makes it possible for the person and society to exist as an undivided whole, to form a totality. That is to say we should aim instead to reveal the meaning of the dialectic of the person and society.

HUMAN ACTIVITY AS THE GROUND OF THE DIALECTICAL

RELATION BETWEEN THE PERSON AND SOCIETY

Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.

Hannah Ar endt

The first step towards the dialectical solution of our problem would be to answer the question: How is it possible to unite in an organic, dynamic whole the social and the personal, the objective and the subjective? Or: How is the concrete whole of human personal and social life possible?

Obviously, it is not enough to define society only as "the most universal concept describing the total complex of the relations of man to his fellow man,"7 because this still does not prevent us from regarding society in a one-sided, `purely objective' fashion. If, along with T. Pars ons, we define society as "only the complex of social relations as such," then we are unable to give proper consideration to the role that heredity, environment and cultural factors play in the entirety of human social existence. This is a typically formal approach which regards all the objective, symbolic, communicative and normative structures working in social life only as manifestations of the `substance' of this life, that is, as distinct from the objective reality of `society' itself.

On the other hand, if we reduce the essence of social life to its `grouping' functions only--saying that "society is grouping"--while "culture is the patterning of behavior in groups," if we limit the scope of our vision to society only as the "largest organized social group today,"8 we will eliminate the possibilities of comprehending the so-called `non-additive' effect in social life. That is, we cannot understand how it is possible for society to manifest qualities and features which cannot be deduced from the mere sum total of the features of the groups of which society is comprised. Moreover, the person is related to society through his connections with other persons, being simultaneously a member of various social groups, interacting with various social institutes and integrating all hereditary, cultural, psychological and social factors in the one unit of his own "ego". Society is not an entity composed of a number of smaller social groups, nor is a community simply a sum of a number of individuals. To declare the opposite would mean slipping into a kind of sociological atomism , nom inalism and radical ind ividualism, and leaving people unable to grapple with growing problems of community in the broadest sense of that term.9

The same can be true for the person. Not only is it impossible to reach by theoretical means some absolutely singular, ultimate meaning for each human being, but the very concept of a `purely individual' person would be an empty abstraction. Curiously enough, the etymological origin of the term (Persona) leads us in a direction quite opposite to personalistic and existentialistic notions. The adventures of `the person' during the long intellectual history of the mankind,10 lead to the historicity of the person and the conclusion that the notions of `substantial individual' and `personality' are deeply historical in their very nature, for they change along with social life.

The important thing here is that the concept of society indicates the essential interconnections and inter-relations between different human beings to the same degree in which the concept of the person indicates the interpersonal origin and social character of each person. The human being is a person inasmuch as he lives within and through (by means of) his social relations. We can speak of him as a person only in the context of his relations to others. The complex of social relations is not something external to the person. Marx obviously has precisely this in mind, when he notes, en passant, in Capita l that a man is not born with a mirror in his hand, reflecting his self-identical `ego' in the manner of the Ficht ean philosopher's "I=I". Rather one is born looking at another man as if at oneself in a mirror. "Only by means of his relation to the human being, Paul, as his equal, does the human being Peter relate to himself as a human being. By this, Paul, with all his skin and hair, with all his corporeality, becomes for Peter a manifestation of the genus `Man'."11

This can be grounded even anthropogenetically. As mentioned above, it would be incorrect to speak of the "bio-social essence" of the person. This does not mean that human beings can grow beyond their biological pre-conditions or physiological susbtratum, beyond their living, natural environment. Being social does not include being naturally destructive; it means only that human corporeality, being a necessary and inevitable precondition for personal existence, cannot be regarded as the differentia specifica of a person. There would be a parallel danger in speaking of "a potential universal humanity" as being "genetically built-in," as a kind of "genetic make-up."12 Vice versa, it would be ridiculous to claim that as a human being the person is a purely spiritual phenomenon, that his essence is a purely spiritual creation. Only God has no need of corporeal structures for His creative activity--and no matter what man thinks of himself, for bad or for good, he is not God. It is impossible, then, for the person to be also a pure subjectivity; through his body he is intertwined with society, from the very moment of his conception and through the incessant processes of his natural metabolisms. As Marx put it, unobjective being is impossible; it is nonsense (Unwesen).13

As a natural being, man is an `objective being', that is, one endowed with objective powers, related to real objects, etc. Acting objectively, he "can express his life only in real, sensuous objects."14 Thus, man is necessarily an objective being, although as a person his natural existence is not what differentiates him specifically from other beings (his differentia specifica). Nature is a component of man himself inasmuch as he `comes' into, and lives in nature which he appropriates in and through his life. That is why we cannot divide our human world into two self-sufficient, substantial worlds, namely, the world of the relation of men to nature, and the world of the relation of men to each other; or, to put it in other words, the world of the relation of the person to nature, and the world of his relation to society. Later I shall try to articulate this statement in somewhat more detail, but for the time being I wish to stress its following aspect.

Just as there is undivided unity between the natural and the social worlds, of which the contemporary ecological crises are the best witness--a unity that is possible through the specific unity of man as a symbiosis of the objective and the subjective--so too is there an analogous unity in the historical development of the human species. The biol ogical evolution, especially that of the animal world, `prepared' the biological preconditions for the emergence of human beings. The transition from the incidental use of natural things as tools to the specialized production of the very means of production marks the transition to a new qualitative level of the organization of life. Furthermore, it also marks the fact that purely natural being has been sublated by another type of being, that is, by social being. So, the purely natural activity of the animal has been transformed into another, social, type of activity. As a means for the most direct connection with our natural preconditions, labor is one of the primary forms of social activity. Precisely by means of labor a human being is able to maintain his life as an individual, to adapt himself to the changes of his natural environment, and to adapt the latter according to his needs. Thus, as a human life activity, labor is rooted in the nature of man--though this is not identical with the essence of man.

The labor process itself is par excellence a socializing factor, labor is impossible in absolute isolation. This fact that "to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act,"15 can be traced back to action as men's most substantial means for sustaining their lives. Action is, indeed, impossible as something completely isolated, but at the same time, it cannot be opposed to "fabrication" (which is characteristic of labor, but not of action, according to H. Aren dt). Absolutely isolated Homo faber is no less impossible than an absolute Homo creator. Labor presupposes interconnections, interactions and intercommunciation, not only with nature, but with men. Nature itself, being appropriated by men, becomes human nature: this process of transition from the biological type of activity to the specifically human one was at the same time the birth of a new type of relations, social relations. Labor process and socialization are the two sides of one and the same coin. All the specifically human aspects of man's activity such as language, communication and intellection, to mention but a few, in the long run are rooted in labor.

It would be one-dimensional to view labor as merely adaptive, assimilative and consumptive. Labor is first and foremost a creative process which produces a new world, the so-called `world of second order.' This is specifically and entirely human, but is no less objective than the world of the `first order' or nature. In assimilating, appropriating or, in some sense, subjectivizing the world of nature, men objectify themselves. It is neither possible nor necessary to escape the forces of objectivation by means of `continuing metaphysical reflection' as recommended by H. Schelsky or by the ceaseless negations from the founders of `critical theory'. H. Are ndt noted the "inevitability with which men disclose themselves as subjects, as distinct and unique persons, even when they wholly concentrate upon reaching an altogether worldly, material object."16

It would seem unfair to blame M arx for overlooking this fact. In spite of his sometimes oversimplified depictions of his own views, the "`web' of human relationships" was not regarded by him, as H. Are ndt thinks, as only "an essentially superfluous superstructure affixed to the useful structure of the building itself."17 His materialism did not cloud his dialectic of objectivation and subjectivation, of alienation and delineation in his Paris Manuscripts of 1844, which were much more Hege lian than those of the `Young Hegelians' he fiercely opposed. Later, Marx analyzed the deepest roots of these dialectics in terms of economic fetishism, reification, etc.

It is not my task here to dwell upon this highly complicated and special subject, for I would like to stress another aspect of the dialectic. Due to the dialectics of objectivation and subjectivation, the human being, as distinguished from the animal, acquires two interconnected, though not identical, features: t otality and unive rsality. As human beings appropriate the natural world through these dialectics, they also make themselves specifically human, that is, beings who exist in both natural and `super-natural' fashion, who have a total world that is simultaneously objective and subjective, natural and `supernatural'. Insofar as it is absurd to speak of such a totality beyond human activity, this totality is itself `activistic', that is, dialectic in character. It undergoes processes of inner differentiation and stratification by virtue of the progressive division of labor, produced by the ongoing development of the means of production. In this way the totality of the human world becomes increasingly self-contradictory.

On the other hand, the dialectics of human activity, that is, the unity and opposition between objectivation and subjectivation, relates man essentially to his genus. This is not merely a matter of the plurality of individual human beings, because the totality characteristic of the human world and the creative character of human activity enable human beings to relate to every object in accordance with that object's own `measure', revealing thereby its potential for further development and creative activity. This is precisely what human universality means.

Universally creating and recreating the totality of his world, man links through his activity the three modes of temporality, namely, past, present and future. Inst itutions, norm s, va lues, tradi tions, acquired skills and knowledge, and sym bols are brought together by human activity to form a collective `memory'. This is one of the main conditions for the continuity of human life which, like every life process, flows from the past to the future. Man's historicity stems from this cultural aspect, or sphere of human activity, which distinguishes the human from the inhuman world.

The process of the total and universal appropriation of the world, which is at the same time the process of its cultural and historical recreation, is the specific form of human activity, namely, pra ctice. This human practice makes it possible for an individual existence to be human, total and universal. In his comments on Marx's early writings H. Marc use quite rightly states: "It is only now, after the totality of the human essence as the unity of man and nature has been made concrete by the practical-social-historical process of objectification, that we can understand the definition of man as a `universal' and `free' species being." In the majority of the Ma rxist interpretations of practice (or praxis, as some prefer to call it) the main, if not the only, feature stressed is its objective character. In the study just mentioned, Mar cuse himself accentuates precisely this moment of the dialectic of practice, though this is obviously insufficient. For the same reason Habe rmas reduces historical materialism to an economic theory which he offers to replace by his new theory of communicative action . Some aspects of M arx call for supplementation by something more elaborated and efficient, but as Habermas' own evolution manifested, in most endeavors of that kind the essential pathos of Marxism, its immanent social criticism, evaporates.19

In some of his letters of 1890, Fr. E ngels makes the bitter confession that he and Marx were to blame for a definite overemphasis upon the material side of the human life (which was quite in a line with their political quarrels with the Young Hegelians ). Engels was by then too old to develop a more sophisticated theory of practice. Marx, not only in 1844 but even later in 1857, noted in his draft variant of Capital that man appropriates the world through his activity in a many-sided both material and spiritual way, and that the latter could be both theoretical and `practico-spiritual'. Nevertheless, as long as we keep in mind the total nature of the dialectic of practical activity, we surely agree that practical and social existence are basic traits of man's essential being. Man in his totality which is itself a form of his activity is essentially practical and, thereby, an essentially social being. Moreover, as Ma rx put it as early as 1844, even human sensuality is social by its nature and human organs of sensitivity are `theoreticians.'

In the final analysis then, the opposition between the person and society turns out to be unreal, a mere appearance; it is but an abstract postulate which must be subject to critique. Man is an essentially social being. The young Marx wrote that the life of the individual, "even if it may not appear in the direct form of a collective life in association with others, is therefore an expression and confirmation of social life. The individual and the generic life of a man are not something different."20 In keeping with this, a year later Marx formulated his famous sixth thesis on Feuer bach, which has been the target of passionate criticism against Marx's alleged social (class) reductionism, namely: "The essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its actuality, it is the ensemble of social relations."21

It is not necessary here to go deeply into the fact that the concept of human essence neither expresses the whole of the human being, nor that human reality cannot be reduced entirely to its social dimension taken in a narrow sense, that is, as a sphere of merely social interactions. It is more relevant here to state that when we `insert' social relations, la bor, wo rk and activity in general into the structure of the person we must not lose sight of the fact that all these phenomena are not so much of a personal as of a social nature. Rather, we must pose the question of how we can relate these to the subjective structure of the person, how they can be relevant at all to the person, and whether they are isomorphic to the various social relations characteristic of general types of human action? Even should this be the case, as it is not the social relations as such which are the components of the structure of the person, there must be some specific `personal' forms representing these relations at the substantial level of the person.

It is possible to answer all of these questions only through the united effort of such different sciences as, for example, psy chology, soci ology, anthro pology, political science , et hics and peda gogy. The proper role of phi losophy in this interdisciplinary `family' consists not in meddling into the fields of research of the other sciences, but in working out the basic world view and the theoretical models and categories which could integrate the whole interdisciplinary movement.

In this respect, it would be of some use to make a more strict demarcation between the contents of the three basic terms by which people usually designate man as a specific phenomenon, namely, `indiv idual', `perso nality' and `pe rson'.

Here I would note that in the new 1989 edition of the standard Soviet introductory textbook on philosophy a serious step is made in the section on personality towards overcoming the `sociologistic' aberrations which formerly marred even some most interesting attempts in this field. One reason for such a notable achievement in contemporary Marxist philosophy is that it finally abandoned its formal declarations concerning the importance of the activity principle as a means of theoretical (social, philosophical, etc.) analyses, and tried to use it instead in the actual analysis of the most fundamental philosophical problems.

In respect to the person-society problem, it based the very distinction between personality and the person upon the different types of activity characteristic of the different socially meaningful types of individual. The demarcations run as follows.

Usually, the term individual denotes a particular representative of some larger whole. Sociologists use `individual' quite adequately when they mean some one representative of a given group, community or society. Here, the individual is taken as exemplary. Compared with the other terms in question, `individual' preserves the meaning closest both to its etymological origin (cf. also `atom') and to its strict scientific designation. Thus the specific features of the individual's concrete life and his activities as a concrete, singular being do not matter for the sociologist, for he treats his subject from a purely so ciological perspective. The individual is always `one of' the group, whether society, community, collective or class. Of course, individuals in society are in no way indistinguishable monads, but the differences between individuals in such a schema are due mainly to the differences between their social groups and to the degree to which they manifest group characteristics.

For the philosopher it is important to analyze the ultimate grounds of the individual's being and, first of all, to reveal the fundamental conditions from which the individual as a phenome non arose. Dialectical social philosophy studies the ground, the reasons and the very conditions of possibility by which such a differentiated particular unit as the individual is in his essence always meaningful as a social individual. In other words, the sociologist studies how the individual is always `one of' a group; philosophers must study why be `one of' a group and how this is possible at all.

But it would be inaccurate to regard man as wholly defined by his social activities. As I mentioned above, the concept of human practice becomes one-sided and unreal if practice is reduced simply to a social, material or objective activity. It is impossible to reduce a human being to his characteristic features--even his most general ones--taken as if his essence were dissected. The impossibility of any kind of reductionism regarding the human being is reflected in the content of the other two terms mentioned above, namely, `personality' and `person'. While the `individual' more closely denotes the objective, conditioned moment of the social dialectic, `personality' and `person' denote more closely the opposite, the subjective and conditioning moment of this dialectic. They denote those social qualities by which a human being is an active social phenomenon. The term personality focuses upon the uniqueness of a given human being--his actual uniqueness--while the term person reveals the meaning of a given human being in the system of social relations. The term `person' denotes primarily, not the various social roles played by an individual, but his attitude towards them, his dispositions, his specific intentions in respect to them, as well as his ability to choose freely between them.

We judge personality mainly by the results of his activity, while the person interests us by his activities themselves. Moreover, we are much more interested in the person's inner motives and in his personal culture as a specific concrete incarnation of cultural universals in their historical dynamics. In this respect, the more socialized an individual the more he is a person. Personality is a precondition of the person, and the person is the individual who has fully developed his personality.

Personality would be regarded and `measured' by the extent to which an individual's activity is actually original, unrepeatable, unique, many-sided and carried out in a `natural' and spontaneous way. The concept of the person should accentuate the volitional and conscious origin of the individual's activity. The more an individual is aware of the motives of his actions, the more they can become transparent to him; in turn, the more he is able to control his activity in view of these motives, the greater is his value from the social point of reference and the more he deserves the honor of being regarded as a Person.

The main conclusion of the present study, therefore, can be formulated as follows. We can speak of the person so far as the individual acts independently, that is so far as he becomes a real subject. This is not only a matter of his inner, spiritual, and intellectual activity, in which case he would be a personality only. It is a matter also of his external, objective activity, acting in accordance with the appropriate norms and values conveyed to him by the culture in which he was born, by which he was socialized, and which as a person he enriches, develops and continuously creates.

Outside the context of socio-cultural activity as the deepest fundament of social life and human history it is impossible fully to realize, at least theoretically, the dialectics of the person and society. Beyond this dialectics the contradictions in the title of this study and expressed in a paradoxical fashion by three of the greatest thinkers in the history of philosophy undoubtedly will remain unsolved.

The University of Sofia

Sofia, Bulgaria

 

NOTES

1. See M. Mark ovic, "Person as a Unique Universal Social Being," in Person and Society, ed. by G.F. McLean and H. Meynell (Washington: International Society for Metaphysics and the University Press of America, 1988), Ch. IX.

2. Ibid., p. 81.

3. See G.F. Mc Lean, "The Person, Moral Growth and Character Development," in Act and Agent. Philosophical Foundations for Moral Education and Character Development, ed. by G.F. McLean et al. (Washington: The University Press of America, 1986), Ch. XII.

4. He gel, Works (Moscow, 1956), III, 95.

5. H. Ar endt, The Origins of the Totalitarianism (New York: Harvest Books, 1973), p. 95.

6. See W. St ark, The Fundamental Forms of Social Thought (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1962).

7. T. Parson s, "Society," Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Vol. XIV.

8. See J.L. Gi llin and J.Ph. Gi llin, Cultural Sociology (New York: The McMillan Co., 1948), p. 140; see also E. Boga rdus and R.H. Le wis, Social Life and Personality (Lexington: Silver, Burdett, 1948).

9. Cf. R.N. Be llah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1986).

10. See G.F. M cLean, op. cit. See also The Frankfurt Institution for Social Research, The Aspects of Sociology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 40ff.

11. K. M arx, Fr. Engels, Works (Sofia, 1968), XXIII, 65.

12. M. M arkovic, op. cit., p. 86-87.

13. K. Marx, F. E ngels. Works (Sofia, 1983), XLII, 15I.

14. Ibid.

15. H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 188.

16. Ibid., p. 183.

17. Ibid.

18. H. Mar cuse, Studies in Critical Philosophy (NLB, 1972), p. 25.

19. See T. Rock more, "Theory and Practice Again: Habe rmas on Historical Materialism," Phi1osophy and Socia1 Criticism, 13 (1987).

20. K. M arx, Fr. En gels, Works (Sofia, 1983), XLII, lll.

21. Ibid., III, 5.