Human nature and the social orderCooley, Charles Horton
Science
Human nature and the social order
Cooley, Charles Horton
Individualism; Social psychology; Sociology
And just as there is no society or group that is not a collective view
of persons, so there is no individual who may not be regarded as a
particular view of social groups. He has no separate existence; through
both the hereditary and the social factors in his life a man is bound
into the whole of which he is a member, and to consider him apart from
it is quite as artificial as to consider society apart from individuals.
If this is true there is, of course, a fallacy in that not uncommon
manner of speaking which sets the social and the individual over against
each other as separate and antagonistic. The word “social” appears to be
used in at least three fairly distinct senses, but in none of these does
it mean something that can properly be regarded as opposite to
individual or personal.
In its largest sense it denotes that which pertains to the collective
aspect of humanity, to society in its widest and vaguest meaning. In
this sense the individual and all his attributes are social, since they
are all connected with the general life in one way or another, and are
part of a collective development.
Again, social may mean what pertains to immediate intercourse, to the
life of conversation and face-to-face sympathy—sociable in short. This
is something quite different, but no more antithetical to individual
than the other; it is in these relations that individuality most
obviously exists and expresses itself.
In a third sense the word means conducive to the collective welfare, and
thus becomes nearly equivalent to moral, as when we say that crime or
sensuality is unsocial or anti-social; but here again it cannot properly
be made the antithesis of individual—since wrong is surely no more
individual than right—but must be contrasted with immoral, brutal,
selfish, or some other word with an ethical implication.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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