CHAPTER IV

SOCIETY AS BENEFIT AND LIMITATION

ZHEN LI

            The nature of the human being and the relation between the human being and society are very interesting, and important themes for philosophy, anthropology, psychology, history and the other branches of social sciences. They are matters not only of theoretical but of practical importance.

THE HUMAN BEING: INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL

            What is a human being? Existentialists maintain that being is prior to essence: "At first, there is a human being, he meets himself and appears in the World, then defines himself" (Sartre: Existentialism is a Humanism). This thesis does not explain the essence of the human being. Of course, there must be a thing in order to talk of its essence: first a being exists and then its essence develops with the development of the being itself. But this is not the same question as what is the essence of this being.

            Two definitions of human nature were suggested by an ancient Chinese philosopher and an ancient Greek philosopher. Xun Zi (c. 296-236 B.C.) said:

What is the human being as a human being? The answer is: he possesses the ability of discrimination (contemplation). . . . What is the human being as a human being is not only that he has two legs and no fur, but that he possesses the ability to discriminate. . . . There are fathers and sons among beasts, but they have no ethical consciousness of the relation between father and son. There are males and fe-males among beasts, but they do not realize the moral distinctions among them. But every human being has the ability to discriminate such relations. The highest degree of this contemplation is division, and the highest division is the rite-law.

Again, he pointed out:

Water and fire have energy but no animation; grass and wood have animation, but no cognition; beasts have cognition, but no social justice. As for the human being, he has energy, animation, cognition and social justice, and therefore is the noblest of the world. The strength of mankind is inferior to that of the ox; man cannot run faster than the horse. But the ox and horse are used by man and serve the human being. Why? Because human beings alone lived in a community, and those other than humans did not have a community (Xun Zi, IX.2).

On the same question Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) expressed his view in other words: "Man is by nature a political animal".1 But he who is unable to live in society or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself must be either a beast or a god; he is no part of state. A social instinct is implanted in all humans by nature."2 At the same time, he explained:

            For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous; he is equipped at birth with arms meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, but which he may use for the worst ends. This is why, if he has not virtue, he is the most unholy and savage of animals.3

            Here there are two main points. (1) Human beings are social animals or capable of organizing community whose determinant factor is law and justice. (2) Human beings have the highest power of intelligence, i.e., reason.4

            Plato expressed a similar idea in a myth.5 After Prometheus found that no arms were given to human beings, he stole Hephaestus’ fire and Athena’s mechanical skill for humankind. Hence, human beings obtained Wisdom for living. Afterwards, Zeus ordered Hermes to distribute Respect and Justice to every human as the gifts of their political Wisdom.

            Thus, association in community is the nature or "instinct" of human beings. The purpose or end of community is to protect and promote the security of self-sufficient social life, that is it is "for the highest good of the people". Therefore, individuals are elements of a society, which is an organized collection of individuals. Thence arise many problems such as: which has priority, the individual or society; what are the freedom or rights of an individual or a society; does every member of a society have equal political rights, etc.? All these are concerned with the basic question: What is social justice?

            Roughly speaking, there are two conflicting views regarding social equality. One is that the individuals in a society cannot be equal to each other. For example, there are the structures of master and slave, husband and wife, father and son. As the relations between these correspond to monarchical, constitutional and royal rule, inequality is a fact of nature. Another view is that every individual in society is equal by nature, whereas inequality is due to convention (Law). Aristotle and Xun Zi supported the former.6 Xun Zi emphasized that the relations between king and subjects, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, husband and wife are the basic ethical and political relations embodying both the ruler and the ruled. This has been the traditional Confucianist view since Confucius and Mencius. Its main failure is to confuse some features of family relations with political relations, whereas actually they are not the same.

            Living in antiquity both Xun Zi and Aristotle supported the systems of slavery and rule by masters: kings or noblemen. This was a limitation of the age. Nonetheless, they thought about some special aspects of social life, and suggested many extremely important theories which manifested profound insight and greatness.

            Aristotle emphasized that, although there are many unequal phenomena in social life -- even "slavery being both expedient and right" -- in the sphere of citizens, every freeman, every citizen is na-turally equal as a citizen. This means that they share equally in poli-tical life:

            Among peoples where it is impossible by reason of the natural equality of the citizens, yet at the same time it is just that all should share in the government (whether to govern be a good or bad thing). However an approximation to this is that equals should in turn retire from office and, apart from office position, should be treated alike. Thus the one party rules and the others are ruled in turn, as if they were no longer the same persons.7

            This description seems an ideal picture for modern democratic life. The doctrine of "natural equality" among citizens is a great demo-cratic principle which has inspired modern history since the so-called "Renaissance". Despite the circumstances of the ancient Greek system of slavery, this theory is one of the greatest cultural heritages of humankind.

            There are some similarities between Xun Zi’s doctrine and that of Aristotle. But what is notable is that Xun Zi insisted that every human is the same with respect to physical functioning and intellectual activity, such as feeling, desire and physiological faculties. According to Xun Zi, the differences among individuals come from learning, edu-cation, activity, and practice in social life. He pointed out that, as every-one loves and pursues what is pleasant to the senses, human beings are evil by nature. Their good nature comes from rectifying this through remolding human nature by education and the law of society. Therefore, he said, "It is right to say that anyone in the road might become Shun (a legendary archaic great king), but it is not certain that anyone in the road will necessarily become Shun".8 Xun Zi explained that everyone’s situation and surrounding circumstances are quite different from that of the others. So, he continued:

Although one will not necessarily become Shun, this does not change the fact that one might become Shun: just as one’s feet might go everywhere in the world, but no one actually goes everywhere in the world. . . . So, from this, we know that what is possible or able to be done, is not actually necessary or need not necessarily be done. Therefore, even though it is not actually necessary or certain that something be done, this will not affect the fact that it is possible that it be done.9

What Xun Zi is concerned about is, to a certain degree, an equal opportunity for every member of a community (he talked also about categories of possibility and actuality). This is why he said, "Sages could be formed by accumulating virtue day by day".10 From this point as well we can trace Xun Zi’s thought abut the best rulers (the former and contemporary kings) who should love their people and promote their lives by good political rule. It could be said that on the basis of equal opportunity for everyone as his political ideal, Xun Zi suggested rule by a certain kind of philosopher king. But he had no clear notion of equal natural political rights, although he condemned the worst ancient rulers. King Jie and king Zhou were "lonely dictators" and not "parents of the people", so that the revolutionaries killed them in accordance with social justice.11

            Mencius expressed the same idea as Xun Zi and even main-tained that "the people is the most noble; the next is the power of governing the state; which the position of a monarch is lighter". Re-grettably such an important idea was not developed by Mencius him-self and the other Confucians until the modern period of the history of Chinese philosophy.

BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS FROM SOCIETY

            The establishment of society is decisive for human life. Social co-operation, on the basis of the principle that everyone makes his own contribution, helped greatly to promote and develop the strength of humankind. From this point, we might say that society is like a "su-perman" with thousands of hands, ears, eyes, feet, minds and so on. Thus, we can describe it as one who exists everywhere, hears every-thing, thinks about everything, and does everything. In one word: it is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. This is why humankind has had so many magnificent and even miraculous achievements in the fields of manufacture, scientific research, the improvement of social life, etc. Actually, "He" is the God of myth. Thus, where some would say that God created the human being according to his own image, I would say that human beings created the image of God according to their own image. This God is human beings themselves combined as a whole in society; all the benefits and advantages for humans come from this source. Under this condition, every member of the society enjoys natural and equal right and freedom.

            But, at the same time, we must recognize that there are also limitations imposed on everyone by society, like the so-called "fate" allotted by "the fatal sisters". Although theoretically it seems that every member in a society has equal opportunities, actually, the opportu-nities for everyone are quite different. As noted above, Xun Zi was clear on this. Hence, in speaking of the freedom of a citizen we mean that a citizen has a right to decide how to choose according to his own free will from among the possibilities confronting him. This freedom or right is absolute and untransferable, but is limited by conditions in one’s natural and social circumstances. In this sense, therefore, free-dom is not absolute, but rather relative; in fact, as the limitations are historical, actualized freedom also is historically limited.

            For example, according to Xun Zi, even in ancient China, every-one had the freedom or possibility to expect that one could become a sage or a powerful king. And if one were clever and diligent enough, and had excellent gifts, if each day one sought to do good for one’s fellow citizens, and if the current ruler were a bad one, then there was an actual possibility for one to become a great king. But, if the current ruler was one of the best and the people loved him or her greatly, if one lacked persistence, or was wounded or even died at an early age, then definitely one could not realize one’s will. Thus, one’s desire or free-dom of choice which set one’s aim became only an abstract possibility.

            Of course, everyone must choose their own way of life according to their own will: only thus could we call the one independent. One uses oneself as a means for one’s own end, which must also belong to oneself; otherwise, one would be imperfect and dependent or, even worse, would lose one’s own personality and dignity as a human being.

            From this point of view, the basic doctrine of the existentialists would seem to have some validity. As Sartre has written:

If Being is really prior to Essence, man has to take responsibility for the man that he is. Therefore, the first consequence is: let everyone understand his own figure, and bear the responsibility of being himself entirely. . . . When we say man himself makes the choice, indeed we mean that everyone of us must make the choice by himself, but when we speak thus we mean also that when man makes the choice for himself, he makes the choice for all human beings. . . . In molding oneself, I mould man.12

            But when existentialists emphasize that one can make any choice, and bear the responsibility for that choice, they seem overly optimistic; they forget that in actuality one cannot make any choice whatsoever, but only some choices under certain limitations. The free-dom they really have is, therefore, a limited or relative one. This limita-tion or relativity is historical; liberation or the achievement of freedom lies in the historical progress of society. Only when we understand clearly what limitations we have to deal with and how we should react to those conditions for maximum success can we say that we have a certain degree of freedom. Otherwise, there would be not freedom, but only blindness.

            Two kinds of limitations are imposed upon human beings. One is natural limitation, i.e., the outer physical world, one’s physiological conditions, etc.; the other is social limitation, i.e., the established social system, social custom, special traditions of certain civilizations, etc. We must face all of these and may change some of them gradually, but we cannot always change them immediately. In some periods of history, human beings have suffered greatly from such limitations. The term "alienation" has been used to describe this situation. Let us take as examples the modern history of the Western and Eastern worlds.

            After the Renaissance, Europeans made great progress in their history. The success of the "Industrial Revolution" made for a rapid in-crease in material production. The great European thinkers redis-covered the theory of natural equality and the equal rights of citizens and in time the modern Western democratic political system was established. The victory of the anti-feudalism revolution had been won; but at almost the same time, especially in the so-called "primitive accumulative stage", thousands of workers became the modern slaves of the system of machine production. Karl Marx described this "miserable world" in his magnificent work, Das Kapital:

Within the Capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual laborers; all means for the development of production transform them-selves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they change the laborer into a frag-ment of a man, degrade him to the level of an ap-pendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange him from the intellectual potentialities of the labor-process in the same proportion as science is in-corporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital.13

Really, it seems that the historical victory of humankind in both its poli-tical and productive aspects turned out to be an oppressive force so that many men and women lost their humanity and dignity, becoming "parts of a machine". This strange phenomenon of human history is called "alienation".

            At the same time, in the eastern part of the world, a great old kingdom -- "the Heaven Kingdom", the "Central Kingdom", China was ruled by an extremely corrupt feudalistic royal government. It refused political reform and compelled social life to move in a feudalistic orbit. As a result, the Chinese people suffered greatly due to imperialistic aggression from without and feudalistic oppression from within. This too was a special form of "alienation".

            Under the imperialist powers the suffering of the people was astonishingly great. It is enough to think about the First and Second World Wars when millions of men and women were killed, their lives squeezed by military machines built by human beings. If the alienation of humankind is the making of "another ego", humankind seems to have made the "other ego" for the purpose of oppressing itself!

THE FUTURE AUTHENTIC EGO -- A PROBLEM

            TO BE RESOLVED

            Let us return to the thesis of Aristotle that "the end of the state is the good life"14; that "a city is not to be termed happy in regard to a portion of the citizens, but in regard to them all."15 In an ancient Chinese utopia we find the naive expectation of an ideal state: "The Great Harmony". It is said, that in this community, everyone lives a very happy life and achieves the highest good.

            The great thinkers, both Eastern and Western, foresaw an ideal human society to secure the realization of human happiness. In this society everyone should possess his or her own ego, and not be inauthentic or an alienated ego. Until now, this has been seen as the noble task and duty of great politicians, honest scientists, profound philosophers, talented poets, famous artists, and all wise common people.

            At present, the first urgent task is to maintain world peace and protect the environment and ecosystem. This is a necessary condition for humans to live on this globe, for otherwise we will lose the very bases of life. The achievements of modern science and technology should serve this noble task and benefit the people; they should not be used to kill humankind and satisfy the vicious greed of a handful of war criminals and butchers. The Gulf War teaches us the lesson that people must be aware of the danger of mad leaders or homicidal satans.

            To establish a just, new economic order for the world, it seems a precondition that people, especially in poor countries, improve their material lives. The guarantee of a necessary living standard is es-sential for the improvement of other cultural and educational con-ditions. There is a plain truth in the old Chinese proverb that "Only when you have enough clothes and goods, can you talk about rites and justice."

            To reform backward political systems is still an important task of humankind. Human beings must struggle consciously for their equality and freedom in order to possess their own lives. Wherever there is no equality and freedom, there will be no authentic ego, because under unfree and unequal social conditions where alienation occurs the authentic ego disappears.

            In order to raise the level of the culture and civilization of all people, the decisive step is to rediscover the dignity of humankind. One must raise oneself above the other animals so that one can begin to live a life which befits the essence of a human being. Humans are not merely animals with two legs and no fur; nor are they merely instruments for increasing material wealth or for carrying out the special orders of some "Big man", "noble man" or "leader," either to kill other men or to be killed by them. Human beings are independent persons who possesses their own natural rights.

            When human persons recognize their own positions, rights and missions in society they will befriend, help, respect, and cooperate with each other in community, for then men will know what it is to be really human and to live a human life. At last, the dream of generations of humankind for an ideal society might be realized. On the flag of such a world might be written: "We are human; we are authentically human!"

NOTES

            1. Politics, I, 2, 1253a 28-30.

            2. Ibid., 1253a 28-30.

            3. Ibid., 1253a 31-36.

            4. Benjamin Franklin’s definition that the human being is an instrument-making animal is also reasonable and was praised by Karl Marx. He maintained that the essence of the human being lies in his labor, which is the foundation of all of human social life and of the history of civilization.

            5. Cf. "Protagoras", 320C-322D.

            6. Cf. Politics, I, 3-7; "Xun Zi", IX.10.

            7. Ibid., II, 2, 1261b 1-5.

            8. Xun Zi, XIII.5.

            9. Ibid.

            10. Ibid.

            11. Xun Zi, XVIII.2.

            12. "Existentialism Is a Humanism".

            13. Vol 1, Ch. 25, sec. 4, p. 604.