Tag Archives: Nazism

NL XXIII: The Family As a Society

September 15, 2017 – 7:37 am

Index to this series

Executive summary (added September 11, 2018):

1.
The society at the nucleus of the family is temporary, ending with the death of one of the two members.
2.
The family has a life-cycle, with three phases: (1) before children; (2) after children, but before they have free will; (3) after the children have free will.
3.
The community consisting of husband and wife is now a society. It was not a society when a marriage was arranged by the groom or the groom’s father and the father of the bride. The non-social aspect of a marriage survives in the custom of formally “giving away” the bride.
4.
If today a bride and groom do not quite recognize themselves as forming a society, they may come to do so in time.
5.
Contraception helps clarify that a marriage is normally for the sake of having children.
6.
In order to grow up and leave the nursery, the child must be educated. The work of this is both the child’s and its teachers’. Parents must also allow the child to leave the nursery and join their society.
7.
There are three possible needs, and they are distinct: (1) to have a baby, (2) to have a child, (3) to have a grown-up child.
8.
Any of those three needs is fulfilled by an act of will; there is no parental “instinct”—not a scientific term anyway, though it is used popularly for an appetite or desire.
9.
Born without free will, we are not born in chains either, since this would mean suppression of a will that didn’t exist.

The last chapter was called “The Family As a Mixed Community,” because the family consists of both a society and a non-social part, called the nursery. Now we are looking at “The Family As a Society.” We are not in contradiction, but are in the flux that Heraclitus observed in all existence (24. 62). The inmates of the nursery normally grow and join the society of their parents: the family as a whole is a society in this sense.

Altınova bazaar, Wednesday, September 13, 2017

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By David Pierce | Posted in Collingwood, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Pirsig | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)

NL XXI: Society as Joint Will

September 9, 2017 – 5:50 am

Index to this series

Executive summary (added September 10, 2018):

1.
I cannot say “I will” without recognizing the possibility of joining with others to say “we will.”
2.
A social consciousness consists of (1) a precise idea of one’s place in a society and (2) a vague sense of the society as a whole. The latter sense may be incorrect, having been foolishly accepted on the word of an authority.
3.
Properly understood, ruling, of itself and perhaps of a non-social community, may be all that a society does. It is the responsibility of the members alone.
4.
To form a society means (1) to form social relations and (2) to do this for some purpose. To focus on (1) yields the idea of a universal society—which cannot actually exist, despite foolish hopes for the League of Nations.
5.
The universal society cannot exist, because we produce a society by transforming an earlier community, and some trace of this must remain.
6.
Members of a society are equal, (1) in having the freedom to join and (2) in just being members. A society may create an inequality, as by delegating authority. There may be natural inequalities, not produced by the society itself; society may compensate for them, turn them into assets, or even depend on them, as in the case of initiative.
7.
Rule by force (in a non-social community) may be by rewards and punishments, that is, objects of desire and fear. These may be promised or threatened fraudulently. One who grows too accustomed to exerting force may lose freedom of will.
8.
Societies institute criminal law to mitigate members’ losses of freedom of will.
9.
Societies can be temporary or permanent.

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By David Pierce | Posted in Collingwood, Hitchens, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Plato | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (7)