SOCIETÀ

SOCIETY. – From the Latin *socius*, the term *societas* was initially used in Roman law to denote *universitates personarum* (also called *ordines*, *sodalicia*, *collegia*, *corpora*), that is, associations of multiple persons united for a lawful purpose with the intention of constituting a single subject possessing legal personality (cf. D. 3, 4, 1; 47, 22, 1). More specifically, *societas* expresses, in the treatment of obligations, “that consensual and bilateral (or, on occasion, multilateral) contract, without implications for the position of the contracting parties vis-à-vis third parties, by virtue of which two or more persons commit themselves to pooling goods and activities for the purpose of dividing profits and losses according to a predetermined proportion” (v. Arangio-Ruiz, *La società in diritto romano*, Napoli 1950, p. 63). These meanings have passed into modern civil law codes and canon law. Through the work of Roman philosophers, the use of the term *societas* acquired a broader scope, as the Latin equivalent of the Greek vocabulary *koinōnia*, which Greek thought had subjected to speculation since at least the 5th century B.C.: Cicero, for example, states, “we are born for society” (*De fin.*, IV).

I. SOCIETY IN ANCIENT THOUGHT

The philosophical problem of human sociality is posed by the Sophists’ inquiry into whether the constitution of the *polis*, and thus its laws, is the product of nature (*physis*) or mere convention (*nomos*): their response was distinctly individualistic, though not uniform in establishing the value of society. Protagoras, for instance, saw in political activity the arena for the assertion of individual *aretē*, accessible to all through education; yet he appealed to fundamental sentiments of justice and moral fear (*dikēn kaì aidōs*) to explain the possibility and value of political life (cf. Plato, *Protag.*, 320 ff.). However, the collapse of Pericles’ Athens during the Peloponnesian War led the Sophists to deny all value to the State, its laws, and traditions: according to Thrasymachus (*Rep.*, 338 e), the law of the State is merely an instrument of power to subjugate the weak; according to Callicles (*Gorgias*, 483 c), it is the weak who use laws against the strong; and for Lycophron (cf. Aristotle, *Polit.*, III, 9, 1280 b), the State arises from a convention of mutual guarantee for the maximum advancement of individual interests. The Sophistic trend found its logical development in the Cynic school, which declared man essentially antisocial and affirmed his full individual self-sufficiency (cf. Diogenes Laertius, VI), and in the Cyrenaic school, which regarded social life as a function of individual pleasure (ibid., II), thus paving the way for Epicurus’ utilitarian sociology (v.). Epicureanism extolled the pleasure of friendship and viewed the State as the product of a calculation of utility, hence arising from a social contract (ibid., X), in which the wise, while securing their own maximum well-being, also determine civil progress (cf. Lucretius, *De rerum natura*, V, 1103 ff.).

To these individualistic conceptions, Plato and Aristotle first opposed their views, followed later by the Stoics. For Plato, “the *polis* exists because none of us is self-sufficient, but requires many things” (*Rep.*, II, 11). Need leads to association and to a progressive organic division of labor: hence the *polis* as an associative organism, with the exigency of defense and governance (ibid., III, 2). Yet, while grounded in need, the *polis* does not derive its meaning from the satisfaction of particular utilities; rather, it possesses an intrinsic universal value as the concrete expression of the Idea of the Good, the cause and principle of all becoming (ibid., VI, 19; VII, 3), and as the realization of the Idea of man in his three constituent parts—the rational, the irascible, and the concupiscible. Citizens must live solely for the state as a whole, sacrificing every private interest: hence no private property or family (ibid., V). For Aristotle, man is “by nature a political animal” (*Polit.*, I, 2, 1253 a 3): by his rationality, he is capable of happiness; yet he cannot attain the fullness of his rational life except within the *polis*. The *polis* is therefore the end toward which all human development tends. Aristotle applies the observational method to the genetic process of sociality in its various forms, leading to the attainment of human self-sufficiency or happiness (ibid., I, 2, 1252 b 30). The exigency of “living” drives man to seek the daily goods necessary for life, and thus to the constitution of the family (*oikia*), whose necessity and nature are given by the very natural differences between male and female, master and slave, requiring mutual completion through union (ibid.). The need for other goods, essential to life, leads families to mutual aid and thus to the formation of the village (*kōmē*: loc. cit., 1252 b 12). Yet man cannot be satisfied with mere living, for he is made for “living well” or perfection—that is, for the full exercise of all his rational capacities: hence the necessity of further union of villages into the *polis*. The *polis* is that perfect association formed from multiple villages, as it were the highest culmination of all self-sufficiency (*autarkeia*), arising from the need to live, but essentially constituted for living well (ibid.). Identifying with the very “entelechy” of man, the *polis* is a whole of value and is therefore “by nature prior to families and to each of us” (ibid., 1253 a 19); yet it requires, for its very existence, the full development and efficiency of each individual, the institution of the family, and the defense of private property (ibid., II, 1–2, 1261 a–1264 b). It is an organism composed of “matter” and “form.” Aristotle places particular emphasis on the study of social matter, for it is from the concrete situation of social matter that not only the possibility of self-sufficiency arises (ibid., II, 1, 1261 b), but also the very emergence of form or constitution in its various modalities (ibid., IV, VI) and its transformation (ibid., V). For Aristotle, therefore, one cannot establish an ideal form of the State, but only theoretically distinguish good constitutions from corrupt ones (ibid., III), and practically strive for a constitution that, responding to the concrete social situation, employs just laws and wise education to elevate that situation morally toward the full exercise of all practical and theoretical virtues, which enable the attainment of the highest possible happiness (ibid., VII, VIII).

Even for the Stoics, man is by nature a political being (cf. Stobaeus, Ecl., II, 226 ff.); but the *polis* is no longer concretized in a specific social structure, since it expands to encompass the whole of universal rationality, governed by the immanent eternal divine law. The Platonic-Aristotelian conception of the State as a spiritual unity and supreme human value thus reaches its zenith, but at the same time tends to dissolve into complete individualism. Each person must indeed live within himself and in his own autonomous isolation the objective universal rationality, and only thus does he participate in the universal value of the unity of all rational beings. The Stoic cosmopolitanism is characteristic of this attitude. The merit of Stoicism lies in having placed outside the state institution the ultimate foundation of the rational unity toward which human sociality tends, and in having recognized the rational value of every man; yet its radical individualistic-rationalistic conception prevented it from understanding the social value of individuals and the human significance of the historical concreteness of sociality.

The incorporation, effected by Cicero, of Aristotelian and Stoic thought into the great Roman juridical tradition brings the immutable natural law down into the historical concretization of the law of nations and civil law. Each individual and people, participating in the principles of natural law, realizes them in the social institutions necessary for their life and progress, determining in a fundamental coincidence of customs (ius gentium) a manifold variety corresponding to differing circumstances and degrees of civilization (ius civile). The Roman *respublica*, with its capacity to respect the natural values implicit in the ius gentium and perpetually to apply the ius traditum to the equity of new circumstances, historically realizes the universal values of human sociality according to the rational nature of all men (cf. De re publica, II, 1 ff.).

II. SOCIETY IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

Only with Christianity does the problem of society acquire that profound human significance which Greek and Roman naturalism and rationalistic objectivism could not discover. In Christianity, society is essentially a communion of persons through knowledge and love. Communion among men presupposes the recognition of God as common Father, and is a preparation for eternal communion with God Himself. In Christianity there is a human solidarity in good and evil: as all men have sinned in Adam, so can they rise again in Christ (Rom. 5:12 ff.) and cooperate with Christ in the coming of the Kingdom of God in themselves and in others. Thus with Christianity there is achieved the synthesis between the concept of society and that of history, whereby the individual person expands in space and time within the living communion of the Mystical Body (q.v.), which through earthly vicissitudes tends toward the fullness of its perfection (Eph. 1:22 ff.; 4:1 ff.): this is a supernatural organism expressed in an organic visible society, the Church (ἐκκλησία, *societas*), dynamically open to all men, to realize in space and time the Kingdom of God.

The historical-social conception of Christianity finds its first organic elaboration in St. Augustine. The root of society and the development of the historical process lies in the intimate act of free love of the human person: “Fecerunt itaque civitates duas amores duo, terrenam scilicet amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei; caelestem vero amor Dei, usque ad contemptum sui” (De civ. Dei, XIV, 28). Personal activity, however, presupposes divine Providence, whereby even earthly society tends to realize the divine providential plan for the advancement of the heavenly city or rather of that part of it “quae in hac terra peregrinatur et vivit ex fide” (ibid., XIX, 17). Inasmuch as it lives on earth, the heavenly city is subject to the social conditioning proper to the earthly city, and therefore cannot estrange itself from the historical process of the latter; indeed, it must through its educative work lead the earthly city to its own end willed by God, establishing that external peace among men which guarantees the free development of the heavenly city itself (ibid., 17).

Through the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, Scholasticism achieved a synthesis between the Greco-Roman social conception (Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero) and that of Christianity. The result was two systems: a social philosophy, closely linked to moral philosophy, in which the natural forms of sociality acquire their own value in the pursuit of a good that the person must naturally set as a goal to achieve personal perfection and tend toward the ultimate absolute good; and a social theology, in which God, responding to a natural capacity of the rational creature, elevates individuals to the supernatural life of charitable communion realized in the Church, making them capable of expressing, even in the natural forms of sociality, not only moral virtues that enable true friendship and the advancement of human progress, but above all the theological virtues that elevate justice and friendship to the supreme values of charity.

To determine the characteristics of human sociality, it is necessary to distinguish between the natural necessity of friendship and the natural necessity of society. The love of friendship is essential to the concept of the created person, whose very nature includes the demand for communion, through knowledge and love, with God and with other created persons according to the degree of natural or acquired likeness and the concrete possibility of an actual form of coexistence (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 60, a. 5; 1a-2ae, q. 27, a. 3 and q. 28, a. 1). This natural friendship must be realized by the person through free choice, becoming elective friendship: only the constant will toward honest good allows its full and perfect realization (amicitia boni honesti), while the imperfection of moral life determines types of imperfect and extrinsic friendship (amicitia boni utilis et boni delectabilis; cf. In Eth., VIII, lect. 2, n. 1561, lect. 3, n. 1563 ff.). Natural friendship, which is an essential property of all rational creatures, has a particular significance in the human person: human beings, individuals of the same nature, can share a common will toward goods that are suitable and proportionate to them; and by their natural perfectibility, they have the demand to achieve their own perfection through the progressive attainment of finite goods, which can only be realized through mutual and organic collaboration (In Eth., 1, lect. 1, n. 4; De reg. princ., 1, 1).

Human friendship therefore entails the demand for society, that is, a conscious union among multiple persons to achieve a common good through common and organic effort. Society is not a real substance existing outside the reason and will of the individuals who compose it, but a unitas ordinis (In Eth., 1, lect. 1, n. 5), perpetually caused by practical reason and the common will toward a particular good. “Bonum commune est finis singularum personarum in communitate exsistentium” (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 58, a. 9): to this common good, as parts to a whole, the activities of individuals are directed, so that society in a certain way assumes its own operation within the limits of the particular end that individuals have set for themselves to achieve together. The common goods that individuals can pursue are indefinite, allowing participation in multiple societies without being entirely absorbed by them; this gives rise to a plurality of societies that variously intersect within the social whole (De reg. princ., 1, 14; Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 47, a. 10). However, practical reason demands that this plurality be composed into a higher unity that encompasses it without destroying it, enabling all particular goods and ends of the various societies to become common patrimony within that supreme public good, coinciding with the ultimate end achievable on earth: the greatest earthly happiness (In Eth., 1, lect. 2, n. 19 ff.; Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 96, a. 3).

The fundamental forms of sociality are given by the two fundamental demands of the person: to live and to live well. To living corresponds the natural form of domestic society or the family, which finds its full meaning in the education of children, representing the “commune bonum amicitiae coniugalis,” in which paternal authority is an inviolable participation in divine fatherhood, directed toward the formation of perfect human beings (In Eth., VIII, lect. 12, n. 1719 ff.; Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 10, a. 12; q. 92, a. 1). To “living well” corresponds civil society or the State, as a self-sufficient society in whose harmonious unity the particular goods of individuals, families, and other societies that compose it find full efficacy and orientation toward the common good, and in whose historical perpetuity the work of generations is preserved and transmitted (De reg. princ., 1, 15; Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 96, a. 1). However, the State itself is not capable of directing human beings to the ultimate supreme personal good, that is, to the “bonum divinum,” and therefore “homo non dirigitur ad communitatem politicam secundum se totum et secundum omnia sua” (ibid., 1a-2ae, q. 21, a. 4 ad 3; q. 96, a. 3). Only in a society whose end is the same divine good can human persons realize that perfect friendship which is demanded by the nature of the created person. This supreme society must guide the State so that its earthly good is effectively ordered to the divine good of persons. If this religious form of sociality was expressed in the ancient world only imperfectly through priestly authority subject to political authority, after the Christian Revelation it is perfectly expressed, and on a supernatural plane, in the Church (cf. De regim. princ., 1, 14).

III. Society in Modern Thought

At the beginning of the modern age, individualistic and naturalistic tendencies brought about a split between ethics and politics (Machiavelli [v.]). The denial of the natural value of society and the rejection of the supernatural order and, consequently, of the Church. HOBBES, THOMAS (v.) posed the problem of reconciling individual natural egoism with the absoluteness of monarchical power, resorting for this purpose to the theory of the social contract, already defended by medieval nominalism: individuals, driven by fear, renounce their unlimited natural rights, submitting to the absolute and unlimited right of one person, whose will determines social life through civil law. Thus begins the juridical conception of society as an organism deriving from positive law, whose value lies entirely in the physical coercibility of external acts contrary to public utility. This conception, adopted by rationalism and empiricism (v.), passed into liberal doctrine (v. LIBERALISMO), even though Hobbes’s theory had to yield to the aristocratic-republican theory of Spinoza and the democratic theory of Locke and Rousseau. The inadequacy of the juridical conception led, in the 18th century, rationalism to seek an a priori social order safeguarding individual rights, to be imposed even by revolution. Thus there emerged, in opposition to historical political order, a problematic of strictly social individual relationships that later found its full development in socialism (v.). At the same time, English empiricism sought to find in the very sentiments of individuals the root of their social relationships: CUMBERLAND, RICHARD (v.) MALMESBURY (v.) HUTCHESON, FRANCIS (v.) to the sympathy (v.) Hume (v.) SMITH, ADAM (v.).

In the 19th century, three conceptions of the nature of sociality were clearly formulated: the naturalistic, the historicist-formalistic, and the personalistic.

### 1. Comte (v.), positivism (v.) sought to interpret all social facts in light of deterministic laws, denying any value to the human person and any normativity to sociology (v.). Various theories emerged, depending on the nature of the laws invoked to explain the emergence and evolution of social facts:

a) Mechanistic or energetic physical theories. Society is regarded as a physical body whose individuals are mere atoms or forces mutually interfering according to the laws of mechanics (cf. L. F. Ward, *Mechanics of Society*, in *Journ. of Sociol.*, 2 [1866], pp. 234 ff.) or dynamics.

b) Biological theories. The social body is a living organism governed by biological laws, either according to the Darwinian principle of struggle for the spontaneous selection of the best organisms—whether races or classes (G. Ratzenhofer, *Die soziologische Erkenntnis*, Leipzig 1898)—or according to the laws of adaptation of living beings to their environment (cf. H. H. Frost, *The Functional Sociology of E. Waxweiler*, Berkeley 1934).

c) Psychological theories. Society is determined by individual and interindividual psychological laws or is itself a reality with its own psychological laws that determine the individual: G. Tarde’s theory of imitation; M. Lazarus and H. Steinthal’s *Volkerpsychologie*; the relationalism of the Chicago school (E. A. Ross), R. M. MacIver, and P. A. Sorokin; the theory of instincts (W. MacDougall); social behaviorism and the theory of attitudes (W. I. Thomas, F. Znaniecki, L. L. Bernard); psychoanalysis (v.); psychodynamic analysis (Kardiner, Linton); American socio-psychology (F. H. Giddings, J. M. Baldwin, Ch. Cooley, E. Faris, C. A. Ellwood); the psychology of crowds from the Italian criminological school (Lombroso) and the Frenchman G. Le Bon; G. Mead’s social theory (*Mind, Self and Society*, New York 1934), etc.

d) Sociological theories. Society is a reality in itself, governed by its own laws that determine all individuals. This reality is of an empirical order and consists in a collective consciousness that precedes and determines individual consciences through social pressure. Society is diminished when it is seen merely as a body organized for certain vital functions. Within this body lives a soul: the sum of collective ideals (E. Durkheim, *Jugements de valeur*, Paris 1924, p. 136); society is a specific reality; it is part of nature and its highest manifestation (id., *Formes élémentaires de la vie relig.*, 3rd ed., Paris 1937, p. 25).

The merit of the advocates of the naturalistic conception of society lies in having promoted the scientific study of the social conditioning of man, investigating the laws that govern the formation and evolution of social material—a significance already emphasized by Aristotle and Plato. However, the positivist claim to find in this scientific inquiry the complete interpretation of the social value of man must be rejected: such a claim subjects the person to determinism and cannot explain the spiritual, rational, free, universal, and normative characteristics inherent in the social process.

### 2. Historicist and Formalist Conception of Society

In opposition to the extrinsic and deterministic naturalism, historicism and formalism consider society in its formal, rational, or vitalistic element, as an expression of creativity that makes it a reality in historical becoming. For Christianity, social activity necessarily involves the same teleology, rationality, and freedom present in all personal activity. Already St. Augustine regarded society and history as the product of divine providence and human freedom. G. B. Vico (v.) saw the emergence and development of society in the light of a logical dynamism whose principle is both Providence—through the eternal ideas present in the human mind—and the human person, who, through freedom, progressively certifies the true in the gradual development of utilities, thus determining human good socially and historically.

All society and history culminate “in a general unity, which is the unity of the religion of a provident divinity, the unity of the spirit that informs and gives life to this world of nations” (*Scienza nuova seconda*, II, Bari 1942, p. 50, n. 915).

For Hegel, historicism is instead understood in an immanentist sense, Idea (v.) in the dialectical process. The subjective spirit, expressing itself in the abstract values of the individual person, finds liberation from its limits and abstractness in the full dedication to the concrete universal values of the objective spirit, which expresses itself in the family, civil society, and finally, perfectly, in the State—“which is the end and the actual reality of the universal substance and of the public life consecrated to it” (*Grundlinien der Philos. des Rechts*, part 2, § 157).

Marx (v.), it is economic activity that produces society with all the values that determine individuals, and it is economic dialectics that makes history (v.). DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM; HISTORICAL MATERIALISM.

F. Tönnies distinguishes a double will: natural, organic will inherent in being (*Wesenwille*), and the will of choice or reflected will (*Willkür, Kürwille*). From the former springs the social form of “community,” while from the latter comes that of “society.” Community and society are the two categories through which human life is expressed, and the process of their interference produces historical development (cf. *Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft*, Leipzig 1887). H. Freyer interprets these categories of Tönnies on a historical-objective plane: from primitive, homogeneous community, where the group as a whole forms an indivisible *we*, one moves to society as a heterogeneous complex of groups bound together by power that dominates them, so that society is a form of domination (*Herrschaftsgebilde*; cf. *Einleitung in die Soziologie*, 1931, p. 136). O. Spann (*Gesellschaftslehre*, 3rd ed., 1931) regards society as a Platonic idea, that is, a totality (*Ganzheit*) of spiritual essence, one and yet multiple insofar as it is capable of imparting its fullness to individuals through the force of domination emanating from its very essence. O. Spengler (*Untergang des Abendlandes*, Munich 1923; *Der Staat*, 1933) defends a historical evolutionism in which the State is understood as a concrete reality, the incarnation of a living culture in which the direct experience of a collective *we* asserts itself. To this collective consciousness, G. Lehmann (*Das Kollektivbewusstsein*, Berlin 1928) tends to attribute an ontological reality to make it the basis of a sociology conceived as a philosophy of the spirit; similarly, F. Jerusalem interprets the spiritual solidarity of men by recourse to a collective spirit of which they are bearers (*Grundzüge der Soziologie*, Berlin 1930).

The historicist and formalist conception of society has rightly emphasized the universal and active element inherent in society and determining its historical process, as well as the inconsistency of rationalistic a priorisms or physical determinisms. However, by resorting to a personal element which, through its activity, creates society and through it individual values, this conception also resolves into a negation of the person. Society can only be the product of the persons who compose it; if there are universal values and a historical process within it, these can only be explained by means of the universal value and the dialectical nature of reason, which is proper to each individual person. The various social forms have their principle in the normativity of reason, which sets itself those ends, and thus those social forms correspond to human nature itself. To explain, therefore, the full value of man's social and historical life and all the teleology intrinsic to it, it is necessary to ground human personality metaphysically in its relationship with transcendence.

IV. PERSONALISTIC CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY — The axiological, spiritualist and Scholastic personalism considers the social process as a communion of consciences in view of finite goods to be attained, according to a hierarchy and dynamism of universality tending toward the Absolute Value. The person essentially entails sociability, and from the various forms of society which it itself produces, it draws the very values which perfect it and thus make it the principle of social perfection.

Max Scheler considers values according to an emotional a priorism: they are gradually revealed in the progressive evolution of physical and moral persons, and are perfectly realized in God. The subjective element which leads to communication and to sensing the progressive hierarchy of values is sympathy, which is intrinsic to vital being itself (Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, 2nd ed., Bonn 1923). In its lowest degree, sympathy is simple affective contagion (Gefühlsansteckung) and gives rise to animal associations (herd) and to the crowd (Masse), without any emotional intuition of values, and thus cannot be the principle of community. In its second degree, sympathy expresses a shared lived experience (Miterleben) and gives rise to vital community (Lebensgemeinschaft), such as the family, the people, classes, humanity, and the profession (Der Formalismus in der Ethik, 3rd ed., Halle 1927, pp. 547-48): this is a degree of communion of consciences in a 'we' of value. Through pure reasoning persons form society: it is opposed to community, inasmuch as it is founded on a simple contract (ibid., p. 549), but by emphasizing personal individuality it allows for the perfect communion of consciences in the community of love (Liebesgemeinschaft). This is the autonomous and spiritual union of simple individual persons in an autonomous and spiritual collective person (Gesamtperson) (ibid., p. 555); such are the Church and the Nation.

This axiological conception rightly highlights the two fundamental principles of sociality: the essential tendency of the person toward communion and the existence of objective values which necessitate and specify communion; principles which are already present in Thomistic doctrine of natural friendship and of human sociality as a plural and hierarchical unity of forms. But natural friendship is not realized through irrational emotionality: it is reason which brings objective ends into the interiority of the person and moves the will to realize natural friendship, engaging it normatively. It is therefore not possible — on the human plane — to make a real distinction between society and community, or between vital community and community of love, because society is ultimately communion: its exact term is community, the consciousness of individuals of being in communion with one another (L. Sturzo, La società, Bergamo 1949, p. 34). One can only agree to a distinction of degree of moral perfection corresponding to friendship for the sake of honest good and friendship for the sake of the friend and of credibility: a society is truly a community when the persons who compose it, living their moral dignity, elevate the pursuit of particular goods to a service of fraternal friendship, and the formalism of earthly justice to an authentic moral value (cf. F. Perroux - R. Prieur, Communauté et société, Paris 1941; E. Mounier, Rivoluzione personalista e comunità, Italian trans., Milan 1949).

The forms of sociality follow the natural ends of human activity; they are thus their projection into concrete reality, their consolidation in ever more adequate response to human needs, their organization as permanent means for the attainment of further ends, and also their transformation if they are no longer adequate to the impulse to act which arises ceaselessly in man (L. Sturzo, op. cit., p. 52). Human reason, as an expression of natural law, is the principle of realization of three fundamental forms of society, intrinsically connected to three essential goods of human nature: its affectivity and continuity (family), its guarantee of order and defense (politics); its ethical and teleological principles (religion). These three fundamental forms are, in their essentials, constant in all civilizations and at all times (ibid.). Particular emphasis today is given to the social form deriving from professional activity (v. PROCESSIONE), which, through work (v.), realizes individual and social perfection (cf. Codice sociale di Malines, Rome 1944, p. 67 ff.; Morale professionale, 1948): this, however, can be considered a secondary form of sociality, necessarily linked to the political form. Economic activity in itself does not give rise to a social form, because it is directly ordered to individual, family, political and religious good: from it is derived the natural right of private property (v.); it can, however, give rise to secondary forms of sociality such as castes, classes, and trade unions (v.). Only the subordination of economic values to the higher values of the person makes economic conditioning a means of authentic human perfection. The forms of society have not always been concretely expressed in autonomous social institutions, the realization and evolution of these depending on the conditions of social matter: the religious form found its full — and supernatural — realization in the Church only with Christian Revelation.

Society presents itself as a concrete reality; and people, upon being born, find it as a fact that conditions them. Nevertheless, it exists only within the rationality and will of individuals, who make it their own by receiving it from previous generations and giving it life by contributing their own innovations, thus determining the historical process. As a communion of persons, society is realized in the will for a common good and for a unity of rational order, which constitutes individuals within an organic reciprocity of rights and duties. This order demands an authority (v. AUTHORITY) because without a unifying principle it is impossible to direct individual wills toward a single end; yet it also demands freedom (v. FREEDOM) that allows everyone to contribute personally to social life and to achieve those other ends that transcend the very end of society itself.

When directed toward the attainment of the natural ends of the person, the social order has its value in the natural order, which reason determines and imposes. The natural order does not contain a priori an ideal social order, but only the general fundamental principles that reason itself is continually obliged to apply according to changing historical circumstances. For a correct social order that serves as a means of true human perfection, there must be a constant will toward the good, knowledge of natural principles in light of concrete social conditioning, and knowledge of the laws that determine this conditioning. It is the task of social philosophy to deepen the study of natural law in all its aspects; of the social sciences to establish the laws of social conditioning; of sociology to understand the laws of concrete society; and of political science to implement the best social order in concrete circumstances.

The importance of the Church for a sound social order is evident from the fact that it is a teacher of truth, a sanctifier of human persons, and has the mandate to guide men toward the attainment of their ultimate divine end. It is the unassailable competence of the Church—wherever the social order touches upon or enters the moral sphere—to judge whether the foundations of a given social order are in accord with the immutable order that the Creator and Redeemer God has revealed through natural law and Revelation...; for the Church, as guardian of the Christian supernatural order in which nature and grace converge, must form consciences, even the consciences of those called to find solutions to the problems and duties imposed by social life. From the form given to society, whether consonant with or contrary to divine laws, depends and infiltrates the good or evil in souls (Pius XII, Pentecost Message, 1941, no. 3).

V. SOCIETY AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLE

The idea that ethnologists and evolutionary sociologists had formed of primitive society was highly a priori and alarming. According to them, in human relations there reigned the most bestial egoism, “the struggle for life,” in relations between groups the “bellum omnium contra omnes” (the war of all against all), in relations between the sexes unlimited promiscuity, and in matters of property boundless communism. In primitive society there would have been no juridical order, no moral or religious ideal; all of this would have developed slowly, precisely as man became man, stripping himself of his original animality.

How did they explain authority and law in primitive society? The myth of “group marriage” cast its shadow, as Malinowski wrote, over all the arguments and descriptions of evolutionary jurist-ethnologists, undermining their juridical reconstructions with related concepts such as “group responsibility,” “group justice,” “group property”—in short, with the absence of individual rights and responsibilities among primitive peoples. In explaining social achievements, everything was attributed to the “mass” and nothing to the individual, who, according to them, was completely immersed in the “mass,” passively and automatically obeying the commands of the community, its traditions, public opinion, and decrees. This mentality has persisted to this day, particularly in the French sociological school. Durkheim, its founder, upheld the totemist origin of human societies, admitted a primitive pan-totemist stage of humanity, and sought in human collectivism the sole origin of religion.

These evolutionary theories, which derived partly from a priori philosophical and biological assumptions and partly from insufficient documentation, have been entirely disproven by more thorough and well-documented comparative research; indeed, it has sometimes been shown that the opposite is true. There is a great variety of types of primitive society, depending on the differing configurations of relationships between the individual, family, extra-familial groups, and the state, as well as the form of economy, property, religious and moral life—including ideas, beliefs, and practices that are pseudo-religious and pseudo-moral—thus differing in legal structure and in spiritual, artistic, moral, and religious life. Nevertheless, four fundamental types of primitive society can be distinguished, one of which is more ancient and from which the others derive independently.

In treating this subject here, while referring the reader to the following entries: DIRITTO (Law); DONNA (Woman); FAMIGLIA (Family); INCESTO (Incest); INDISSOLUBILITÀ (Indissolubility); INDIVIDUO (Individual); MATRIMONIO (Marriage); MONOGAMIA (Monogamy); PARENTELA (Kinship); POLIANDRIA (Polyandry); POLIGINIA (Polygyny); PRIMITIVI (Primitive Peoples); PROSTITUZIONE (Prostitution); PUDORE (Modesty), we shall limit ourselves to illustrating the form of the state and the concept of authority among primitive peoples.

a) It is now beyond dispute that the oldest form of primitive society known to us—and from which the primordial form can be discerned—is that characteristic of the so-called gathering peoples. It consists of small groups of 30–70 blood relatives with their wives and children: a large family. There can be no question of a “mass” society, obviously. Similar groups are found every 30–50 km, each group possessing a territory of such extent.

The sexes enjoy equal rights: there is a natural and equitable division of labor between them, though this is neither immutable nor based on magical or superstitious grounds. The Andamanese, for example, who normally perform the daily hunt, do not hesitate to perform the work of a wife. If necessary, they care for children, light and tend the fire, gather wood, and draw water—tasks essentially feminine in nature. They also build huts, if these are more substantial than ordinary shelters.

Each family has its own house or shelter and possesses certain things in its own right. The economy is familial and based on subsistence. Marriage is monogamous and follows local exogamy. Children are subject to parental authority, which is exercised equally over sons and daughters according to their stage of development, providing them with sustenance and education. This authority is accompanied by great mutual affection. Care is also taken of elderly parents. The family, however, is patriarchal. The father’s authority is everywhere the only stable authority, though not absolute. Among the Yamana, for example, if a husband were to treat his wife unworthily, her relatives would intervene, putting an end to his arbitrary behavior and possibly inflicting punishment.

The family has a clearly defined identity vis-à-vis the state, which exists only in an embryonic form and of which it performs almost all the functions. Among gathering peoples—for example, the Yamana of Tierra del Fuego, the Andamanese, and the Bambuti of Africa—the state is reduced to the local group, though there may also be the idea of a tribe (several local groups speaking a common dialect) and of a people. There is no permanent head within the local group; if one exists, his authority is limited by law and traditional custom and is not one of command. Of the Yamana, the explorer Koppers wrote: “As I have said, the Yamana lacked any kind of chief. Even the local groups had no permanent head. For the initiation festivals of the young, the most respected elder of the group was chosen as a temporary leader, whose orders were respected.” Among the Bambuti, there is a head of the local group or sippe, and among the Andamanese, there is also a tribal head, but their authority is weak and limited. The head of the group among the Bambuti is the eldest of the elders and ordinarily exercises his authority by settling daily disputes between members and families within his sippe and between his sippe and others, offering advice and assistance; he distributes the common game, offers sacrifices, directs initiations, and participates in the spazialzo. In its most ancient form, the head is not a magician, as has been observed among the Yamana. Indeed, among these people, while the most worthy man was chosen for the initiation of the young, the direction of the school of sorcerer-doctors and the male festival (Kina) was entrusted to a magician-doctor.

In primitive society, justice is left to private vengeance. Human life is protected by the institution of blood revenge, which falls to the kin of the slain and cannot be carried out by the nearest relatives but by the more remote ones, according to the Yamana, because the nearest relatives are not exempt from complicity in the crime. The slain lived with them, and thus it is they who have most offended and are therefore most responsible. Gathering peoples do not know war, since they have no chiefs, no offensive or defensive military weapons, no fortified places, nor war canoes; they lack the skill to throw stones or javelins, and no term has been found to denote war or the warrior. In the rare cases of armed conflict, if it can be called such, among the Yamana, when someone is wounded, both sides sound the retreat; thus the “war” ends.

In the practical life of every member of the community—but especially of the head, where one exists—justice and altruism are required. The sense of freedom and independence of the individual and the family is very strong. No one gives orders to others, nor do they like to receive them. Nevertheless, nomadism makes these primitives helpful toward one another, as has been observed among the Fuegians, since they do not know whom they might meet in a place or might need to seek refuge with someone; they are reluctant to incur the hostility of a person or his friends.

b) The sacredness of nomadic pastoral peoples of Asia and Africa (Turco-Mongols, Indo-Europeans, Hamito-Semites) differs from that of primitive gathering peoples primarily in its economic form, because it produces its own means of subsistence through the raising of large herds of livestock (sheep, goats, horses, cattle, camels), which provide dairy products, meat, means of transport, and several ergological resources. The nomadic shepherd feels the need to preserve and, if possible, increase his flock, and thus also the need for various people to achieve this end. From this comes his desire to have a large family and therefore also a second wife if the first is sterile, and not to divide his flock by inheritance among his sons, who therefore, upon marrying, remain in the paternal family under the authority of the father. The flock requires unity of command and order, which has led to the development of a strong patria potestas in the figure of the patriarch. Thus, the large pastoral family is patriarchal like that of gathering peoples, but it is distinguished by the increased unity and cohesion of its members. It has also been observed, however, that the authority of the patriarch is not always absolute; among Tibetan shepherds, for example, the wife is equal to the husband, and married sons are consulted in family matters.

A characteristic of the pastoral family, as mentioned, is the hereditary system, influenced by the indivisible preservation of the flock, which passes from the father, after his death, to the eldest son. Hence the right of primogeniture.

Several families from the same region unite into a group for the development and safeguarding of their pastoral economy by appointing a head of the group. Regional groups form a tribal association that ensures the shepherds within its groups. The tribe was originally a natural development of the large family, formed among blood relatives. Since individualism and the independence of the individual and individual families are very strong, the authority of the heads of groups and tribes is limited; indeed, it essentially depends on the strength, esteem, and personal prestige of the leader.

The protection of the lives of individuals is left to private vengeance, which can extend over many generations, as the entire clan is responsible for the crime or held to pay a fine. Among the Yakuts, in the case of the murder of a member of the same group, the murderer was tied to a tree inside a forest and left there to perish.

The varying growth of livestock, the differing skill in managing herds, and especially the danger these face during droughts and epidemics lead to the distinction between rich and poor. But given the strong family spirit, the poor easily find assistance among the rich and are put in a position to regain lost herds. Among the shepherds of Central Asia, there is also a distinction between white bones and black bones.

The initiation of youth becomes individual and only for young men, as among the Romans, or also for young women, as among the nobles of feudal China, who were perhaps of Turkish origin. Characteristics of pastoral society are seasonal popular festivals with many communal games, which among African shepherds also take on the aspect of military exercises. The combative and domineering psychology of nomads and their contempt for agriculture and every kind of occupation explain the great empires they have founded in the world, imposing their rule and their dynasties, which originate from their powerful family spirit.

c) The totemistic society. The type of totemism (q.v.) that gives a characteristic form to primitive society is social clan totemism, which is also the most widespread. Every tribe is divided into clans, each having its own totem, to which every member feels bound by a sense of kinship and from which derive the name, emblems, and the law of exogamy. With respect to the totem, every member of the clan must observe several taboos, that is, it is forbidden to touch, kill, or eat it, understanding by totem any animal of the same species. The clan forms an economic unit and a ritual unit. Every member of the clan is identified with the totem, whose magical forces the chief concentrates. For this reason, the chiefs can perform magical actions in the interest of the entire clan and tribe according to their totems and natural symbols; they are therefore magician-chiefs.

The clan chiefs form the assembly of the tribe, in which all enjoy the same rights. This is the case among the Narinyeri of southern Australia. Among the members of the clan, there is a great solidarity that leads them to help one another: they willingly offer hospitality and spare each other in war. There is a division into age classes, which entails special distinguishing marks and particular rights and duties. The sexes must observe certain laws of separation. At the age of puberty, the young men live together in a house reserved for them, to which women are forbidden access, and similarly the young women in a reserved house, with a strict prohibition on men entering. The initiation of the young consists mainly in circumcision and, among some Australian tribes, also in subincision. For the young women, there are similar corresponding rites.

The family has little significance in relation to the state; the authority of parents over children is exercised only in early childhood. The woman is in an inferior position.

In the division of the clan, due to its great growth, the new clan remains in a certain dependence on the original clan and retains its name. A clan may also have its own industry and engage in trade. In the union with the matriarchy of two exogamous classes, the clan subdivides into patriclans and matriclans, in which the children belong not to the father's clan but to the grandfather's, which complicates the exogamous laws considerably (q.V. MATRIARCHATE).

d) The matriarchal society is distinguished first of all by its economy, because the means of subsistence come from agriculture, first done with the hoe and later with the plow. It is further distinguished by the presence of land ownership, unknown to the arts and primitive societies. Since agriculture is a female invention, as woman was the gatherer of vegetable foods in the most ancient civilization, it is the woman who owns the cultivated field, its products, as well as the house, the granary, the tools of work, the pottery utensils, and other tools necessary for family life. Property passes from mother to daughters. In marriage, the woman, having to remain near her field, does not go to live in her husband's house but he visits her, usually at night, as was the case in Japan until the 7th century. In the full development of matriarchy, the husband goes to live in the house and with the family of the wife, as is still the custom among the Chams of Indochina and some tribes of Formosa. He is, however, like a stranger in his wife's family, while the brother-in-law, the wife's brother, has an advantageous position in the family in relation to him and his children. The woman enjoys great preeminence over the man, a preeminence that he can reduce by restoring a parity of rights when he works for his in-laws in order to have his wife in his own home. A reversal of the woman's position is found in Melanesia and New

Guinea and Australia, where at the intersection of matriarchy with totemism and the culture of gatherers, the woman loses the right to property, which passes to the maternal uncle or brother and devolves by inheritance to the nephew. The woman is reduced to a kind of labor slave when the man seeks to have more wives in order to command greater material resources of labor and prestige. The two-class system, in which one can no longer speak of a marriage of service, is peculiar in that the two exogamous classes exist in the same place (v. MATRIARCHATE), and it is a recent form of matriarchy. Here even service marriage is impossible. Matriarchy has sometimes become a veritable gynocracy, with the woman at the head of a state assembly, but generally in such cases she has had a man beside her in state affairs. This was the case among the Hurons of North America. In a matriarchal society there is the priestess, the diviner, and the shaman.

Among the Manchu, there are separate male and female assemblies; in the female assemblies only the head of the male assembly may intervene. In matriarchal society the state is democratic. The village is governed by the assembly of elders. If a chief exists, his presence is justified in a manichaean manner. In mixed societies, resulting from the intersection of the fundamental types, there may be a religious king, a magician king, united in a manistic conception of their political authority. This is the case in feudal states and in certain African kingdoms.

3. Origin of primitive society

For the evolutionists, who hold that man originated from the beast, the State existed before the family. According to them, as Cavazza wrote, man at the origin must evidently have been at the first rung of the progressive evolution of the species: he was half man and half animal; only later did he become fully human, and thus less guided by instinct, more lost, almost abandoned by nature and settled into his “original folly.” “The instinct of imitation” remains his essential basis, because he has lost the sure guidance of animal instincts; but then there would have come as a savior the emergence of the mystical concept of collectivity, which would have been born “from the promiscuous and disordered wave” not the natural, biological, rational, and economic family, but the clan, the collective group, bound by irrational, magical, mystical ties. Humanity, starting from its anti-instinctive, illogical, irrational beginning, would have begun its ascent, its progressive evolution.

But, as has been seen, this theory clashes with ethnological reality. Totemism cannot be taken as the basis for explaining the origin of the State, because it is not the oldest form of society, nor is it a social stage through which all peoples have passed. Moreover, in primitive society there is an individual differentiation that acts naturally, as Beck observed, even in social life. Therefore, the State is not prior to the family, but, on the contrary, the family is prior to the State. Indeed, among the most archaic peoples the reality, as Fr. Schmidt concluded regarding it, is that the family is almost everything and the State almost does not yet exist, or at least exists only in function of the family. It is not the State that gave rise to the family and, according to its own will or power, granted it its rights, which it could therefore take away or restrict; rather, the family already existed tens of thousands of years earlier in the fullness of its rights and duties, at which time it exercised all the functions of the State, which existed only embryonically within II. This was the case throughout the period of the most archaic civilization. Such is the social, economic, and political constitution of the society of the most ancient humanity. And, on the other hand, there is no evidence or reason to say that contemporary primitive societies are a degeneration of prehistoric societies, except in particular cases that can be clearly demonstrated.