Organic Concept of Society
When we come to the final and perfect association....we have
already reached the polis - an association which may be said
to have reached the height of full self-sufficiency; or rather [to
speak more exactly] we may say that while it grows for the
sake of mere life....it exists [when once it is fully grown] for
the sake of a good life....
....[E]very polis exists by nature, having itself the same quality
as the earlier associations from which it grew.....the ‘nature’
of things consists in their end or consummation;
for what each thing is when its growth is completed we call the
nature of that thing, whether it be a man or a horse or a
family....
....From these considerations it is evident that the polis
belongs to the class of things that exist by nature, and man is
by nature an animal intended to live in a polis. He who is
without a polis, by reason of his own nature and not of some
accident, is either a poor sort of being, or a being higher than
man....
....[M]an is a being meant for political association, in a
higher degree than bees or other gregarious animals can ever
associate....Nature makes nothing in vain; and man alone is
furnished with the faculty of language....
....[T]hough the individual and the family are prior in the order of
time, the polis is prior in the order of nature to the
family and the individual. The reason for this is that the whole
is necessarily prior in nature to the part....
Atomistic Concept of Society
God having made Man such a Creature, that, in his own
Judgement, it was not good for him to be alone, put him under
strong Obligations of Necessity, Convenience, and Inclination
to drive him into Society, as well as with Understanding and
Language to continue and enjoy it. The first Society was
between Man and Wife, which gave beginning to that between
Parents and Children; to which, in time, that between Master
and Servant came to be added.
Conjugal Society is made by a voluntary Compact between
Man and Woman....it draws with it a Communion of
Interest....[Though] these Conjugal Bonds [are] more firm and
lasting in Man than the other Species of Animals....it would
give one reason to enquire, why this Compact....may not be
made determinable, either by consent, or at a certain time,
or upon certain Conditions, as well as any other voluntary
Compacts....that it should always be for Life....to such as are
under no Restraint of any positive Law, which ordains
all such Contracts to be perpetual.
....Master and Servant are Names as old as History, but given
to those of far different condition; for a Freeman makes himself
a servant to another, by selling him for a certain time, the
Service he undertakes to do, in exchange for Wages he is to
receive: And though this commonly puts him into the Family of
his Master, and under the ordinary Discipline thereof; yet it
gives the Master but a Temporary Power over him,
and no greater, than what is contained in the Contract
between ‘em.....
Organic Concept of Society [cont’d]
Atomistic Concept of Society [cont’d]
If the whole body be destroyed, there will not be a foot or a
hand, except in that ambiguous sense in which one uses the
same word to indicate a different thing....
....Man being born....with a Title to perfect Freedom,
and an uncontrouled enjoyment of all the Rights and Privileges
of the Law[s] of Nature, equally with any other man....hath by
Nature a Power, not only to preserve his Property [his Life,
Liberty, and Estate] against the Attempts and Injuries of other
Men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that Law
in others....there, and there only is Political Society, where
every one of the members hath quitted his natural Power,
resign’d it up into the hands of the Community....the
Community comes to be Umpire, by settled standing
Rules, indifferent, and the same to all Parties; and by Men
having Authority from the Community, for the execution of
those Rules....punishes those Offences, which any member
hath committed against the Society, with such Penalties as the
Law has established.
....All things derive their essential character
from their function and their capacity; and it follows that
if they are no longer fit to discharge their function, we ought
not to say that they are still the same things, but only that,
by an ambiguity, they still have the same names. [The
whole is prior to the part in the sense that the part
presupposes it; the idea of the whole must first be there
before the part can be understood, and, the whole itself
must first be there before the part can have or
exercise a function.
....We see that the polis exists by nature and that it
is prior to the individual. [The proof of both
propositions is the fact that the polis is a whole, and that
individuals are simply its parts.] Not being self-sufficient
when they are isolated, all individuals are so many
parts all equally depending on the whole, which
alone can bring about self-sufficiency. The man who is
isolated - who is unable to share in the benefits of political
association, or has no need to share because he is already
self-sufficient - is no part of the polis, and therefore must be
either a beast or a god.
....And thus every Man, by consenting with others to
make one Body Politick under one Government, puts
himself under an Obligation to every One of that Society: But
such a Consent is next to impossible ever to be had....[T]hus
that , which begins and actually constitutes any Political
Society, is nothing but the consent of any number of Freemen
capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a
Society. And this is that, and that only, which did, or could
give beginning to any lawful Government....
Man is thus intended by nature to be part of a
political whole and there is therefore an imminent
....[T]he beginning of Politick Society depends upon
the consent of the Individuals, to joyn and make one
Society, who, when they are thus incorporated, might set up
impulse in all men towards an association of this order....
what form of Government they saw fit.
Organic Concept of Society [cont’d]
Atomistic Concept of Society [cont’d]
....Man when perfected, is the best of all animals; but if
he be isolated....he is the worst of all....That is why, if he
be without [a polis], he is a most unholy and savage
being, and worse than all others in the indulgence of
lust and gluttony. Justice belongs to the polis; for
....[Governments may be dissolved] when by the Arbitrary
Power of the Prince....without the Consent....visibly
ceases [to govern]....for the securing of Mens Rights....the
People are at liberty to provide for themselves, by erecting a
new [Government]....by the change of Persons, or Form, or
both as they shall find it most for their safety and good.
justice is an ordering of the political
association.
from The Politics by Aristotle, edited and translated
by Ernest Barker, Oxford University Press, 1958, pp 47.
....Revolutions happen not upon every little
mismanagement in publick affairs. Great
mistakes....many wrong and inconvenient Laws, and all the
slips of human frailty will be borne by the People, without
mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of Abuses,
Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make
the design visible to the People....they should then rouze
themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands,
which may secure them to the ends for which Government was
first erected....
from The Second Treatise of Civil Government by John
Locke, edited by Peter Laslett, Cambridge University Press
1960, pp. 361-466