Society

SOCIETÀ. - From the Latin socius, the term s. was initially used in Roman law to denote universitas 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, s. expresses, in the treatise on obligations, "that consensual and bilateral (or, occasionally, multilateral) contract, without repercussions on the position of the contracting parties in relation to third parties, by virtue of which two or more persons commit to pooling goods and activities with the aim of dividing profits and losses according to a preestablished proportion" (v. Arangio-Ruiz, La s. in diritto romano, Napoli 1950, p. 63). These meanings have passed into modern civil codes and canon law. Through the work of Roman philosophers, the use of the term s. acquired greater breadth, as the Latin equivalent of the Greek word κοινωνία, which Greek thought had made the object of its speculation as early as the 5th century B.C.: Cicero, for example, states: «nati sumus ad societatem» (De fin., IV).

I. SOCIETY IN ANCIENT THOUGHT

The philosophical problem of human sociality is posed with the Sophists' question as to whether the constitution of the πόλις, and thus its laws, are the fruit of nature (φῶσι) or mere convention (νόμω): their answer was distinctly individualistic, though not unanimous in establishing the value of society. Protagoras, for instance, saw political activity as the field for the affirmation of individual ἀρετή, accessible to all through education; yet he resorted to the fundamental sentiments of justice and moral fear (δίκη καὶ αἰδώς) to explain the possibility and value of political life (cf. Plato, Protag., 320 ff.). However, the disintegration of Pericles' Athenian polis during the Peloponnesian War led the Sophists to deny all value to the State, its laws, and traditions: according to Thrasymachus (id., Respubl., 338 e), the law of the State is a mere instrument of power to subjugate the weak; according to Callicles (id., Gorgias, 483 c), it is the weak who use laws against the strong; for Lycophron (cf. Aristotle, Polit., III, 9, 1280 b), the State derives from a convention of mutual guarantee for the maximum advancement of individual interests. The Sophistic trend found its logical developments 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 considered social life in function of individual pleasure (id., II), thus paving the way Epicurus (v.). Epicureanism celebrated the pleasure of friendship and posited the State as the fruit of utility calculation, hence deriving from a social contract (id., X), in which the wise, while securing their own maximum well-being, also determine civil progress (cf. Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 1103 ff.).

These individualistic conceptions were opposed, first, by Plato and Aristotle, and later by the Stoics. For Plato, "the polis exists because none of us is self-sufficient, but needs many things" (Respub., II, 11). Need leads to association and a progressive organic division of labor: hence the polis arises as an associative organism, with the exigency of defense and government (ibid., III, 2). Though born of need, the polis does not find its meaning in the satisfaction of particular utilities, but possesses in itself and for itself a universal value, as the concrete expression of the idea of the good, cause and principle of all becoming (ibid., VI, 19; VII, 3), and as the realization of the idea of man in his three constitutive parts—the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive. Citizens must live solely for the state as a whole, sacrificing every particular interest: thus, no private property or family (ibid., V). For Aristotle, ὁ ἄνθρωπος φύσει πολιτικὸν ζῷον (Polit., I, 2, 1253 a 3): by virtue of his rationality, man is capable of beatitude; but he cannot attain the fullness of his rational life except in the polis. The polis is therefore the end toward which all human development tends. Aristotle applies the observational method of the genetic process of sociality in its various forms toward the attainment of human self-sufficiency or beatitude (ibid., I, 2, 1252, 630). The exigency of "living" leads man to seek the daily goods necessary for his life, and thus to the constitution of the family (φιλία), whose necessity and nature are given by the very natural differences between male and female, master and servant, requiring mutual completion through union (ibid.). The need for other goods for life leads families to mutual aid and thus to the constitution of the village (χώμη; l. c. 1252 b 12). But man cannot be content with mere living, for he is made for "living well" or perfectly, that is, for the full exercise of all his rational capacities: hence the necessity of the further union of villages into the polis. "The polis is that perfect [community], formed by several villages, possessing, so to speak, the highest degree of self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια), born for the sake of living, but essentially constituted for living well" (ibid.). Since the polis is identified with human entelechia (v.), it is a whole of value, and is therefore "prior, by nature, 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, of the family institution, 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 interest in 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 emergence of form or constitution in its various modalities (ibid., IV, VI) and its very transformation (ibid., V). For Aristotle, therefore, one cannot establish an ideal form of the State, but only theoretically distinguish good constitutions from depraved ones (ibid., III), and practically strive for a constitution that, responding to the concrete social situation, employs just laws and wise education to morally elevate this situation toward the full exercise of all practical and theoretical virtues, which allow the attainment of the greatest possible beatitude (ibid., VII, VIII).

The Stoics, too, held that man is naturally political (cf. Stobaeus, Ecl., II, 226 ff.); but the polis is no longer concretized in a determinate social matter, for it expands to encompass all 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 apex, but at the same time tends to dissolve into the most complete individualism. Each person must live within himself and in his own autonomous isolation the objective universal rationality, and only thus does he insert himself into 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 naturally tends, and in having recognized the rational value of every man; but its radical individualistic-rationalistic conception prevented it from comprehending the social value of individual persons and the human significance of the historical concreteness of sociality. The integration, accomplished by Cicero, of Aristotelian and Stoic thought into the great Roman juridical tradition brings the intangible natural law into the historical concretization of the law of nations and civil law. Each individual and people, participating in themselves the principles of natural law, actualizes them in the social institutions necessary for their life and progress, determining in a fundamental coincidence of customs (ius gentium) a multifaceted variety corresponding to diverse circumstances and degrees of civilization (ius civile). The Roman respublica, with its capacity to respect the natural values implicit in ius gentium and to perpetually apply the ius traditum to the aequum of new circumstances, historically actualizes the universal values of human sociality, according to the rational nature of all men (cf. De republica, II, 1 ff.).

BIBL.:
Per il pensiero antico: E. Barker, Greek Political Theory, London 1918; W. W. Jaeger, Paideia, trad. it., Firenze 1936-1959; M. Pohlenz, La Stoa, trad. it., Firenze 1967; A. Levi, Storia della sofistica, Napoli 1966; per la concezione ciceroniana: V. Arangio-Ruiz, Storia del diritto romano, Napoli 1947; P. De Francisci, Sintesi storica del diritto romano, Roma 1948.
— G. B.

II. SOCIETY IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

Only with Christianity does the problem of society acquire that profound human meaning which Greek-Roman naturalism and rationalistic objectivism could not discover. In Christianity, society is essentially communion of persons through knowledge and love. Communion among men presupposes the recognition of God as a common Father and is preparation for eternal communion with God Himself. For Christianity, there exists a human solidarity in good and evil: as all men have sinned in Adam, so they can rise again in Christ (Rom. 5, 12 ff.) and cooperate with Christ for the advent of the Kingdom of God in themselves and in others. With Christianity, therefore, the synthesis between the concept of society and that of history is achieved, whereby the individual person expands in space and time within the Mystical Body (v.), which, through earthly vicissitudes, tends toward the fullness of its perfection (Eph., 1, 22 ff.; 4, 1 ff.): this is a supernatural organism that expresses itself in an organic visible society, the Church (ἐκκλησία, s.), 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 civit. Dei, XIV, 28). Personal activity, however, presupposes divine Providence, whereby even earthly society tends to fulfill the divine providential plan for the growth of the heavenly city or, rather, of that part of it «quae in hac terra peregrinatur et vivit ex fide» (ibid., XIX, 17). As it lives on earth, the Heavenly City finds itself in the social conditioning proper to the earthly city and therefore cannot estrange itself from the historical process of the latter; rather, through its educational work, it must 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.).

Through the work of St. Thomas, Scholasticism achieved the synthesis between the Greco-Roman social conception (Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero) and that of Christianity. The result was a system (social philosophy), intimately connected with moral philosophy, in which the natural forms of sociality assume their own value in the finality of a good that the person must naturally set for himself to achieve his own perfection and tend toward the attainment of the ultimate absolute good; and a system (social theology), in which God, responding to a natural capacity of the rational creature, elevates individual persons to the supernatural life of charitable communion realized in the Church, and thus renders them capable of expressing, in the same natural forms of sociality, not only the moral virtues that allow true friendship and the growth of human progress, but above all the theological virtues, which 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, to whom is intrinsic the exigency of communion, through knowledge and love, with God and with other created persons according to the degree of mutual resemblance, natural or acquired, and of 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 deliberation, becoming elective friendship: only the constant will for the honest good allows its full and perfect realization (amicitia boni honesti), while the imperfection of moral life determines imperfect and extrinsic types of friendship (amicitia boni utilis et boni delectabilis; cf. In Eth., VIII, lect. 2ᵃ, n. 1561, lect. 3ᵃ, n. 1563 ff.). Natural friendship, which is an essential property of all rational creatures, has a particularly significant meaning in the human person: men, as individuals of the same nature, can communicate in a common will for goods suitable and proportionate to them; and by their natural perfectibility, they have the exigency to realize their own perfection through the progressive attainment of finite goods, which can only be achieved through mutual and organic collaboration (In Eth., I, lect. 1ᵃ, n. 4; De reg. princ., I, 1). The natural friendship of human persons therefore entails the exigency of society, that is, a conscious union among several persons to attain a common good through common and organic operative effort. Society is not a real substance existing outside the reason and will of the individuals who compose it, but is an unitas ordinis (In Eth., I, lect. 1ᵃ, n. 5), perpetually caused by the ratio practica and the common will for a determined good. «Bonum commune est finis singulierum personarum in communitate existentium» (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 58, a. 9): to this, therefore, as parts to the whole, the activities of individuals are directed, so that society assumes in a certain way its own operation, within the limits of the particular end that individuals have set themselves to realize in common. The common goods that individual persons can propose to themselves are defined, participating simultaneously in multiple societies without being totally absorbed by them; thus arises a plurality of societies that variously interfere with one another in the social complex (De reg. princ., I, 14; Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 47, a. 10). Nevertheless, the ratio practica demands that this plurality be composed into a unity of superior order, which encompasses it without destroying it, and allows all the particular goods and ends of the various societies to become common patrimony in that supreme public good, coinciding with the ultimate end realizable on earth, that is, the greatest earthly happiness (In Eth., I, lect. 2ᵃ, n. 10 ff.; Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 96, a. 3).

The fundamental forms of sociality arise from the two fundamental needs of the person: living and living well. The natural form of the domestic society or family corresponds to living, finding its full meaning in the education of children, who represent the "commune bonum amicitiae coniugalis", and in which paternal authority is an inviolable participation in the paternitas divina, directed toward the formation of perfect men (In Eth., VIII, lect. 12ᵃ, n. 1719 sgg.; Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 10, a. 12; q. 92, a. 1). The civil society or State corresponds to living well, 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 ordering 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 in itself is not capable of directing men toward the ultimate and supreme personal good, that is, the "bonum divinum", and thus "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 bonum divinum itself can human persons realize that perfect friendship which is inherent in the nature of the created person. This supreme society must guide the State, so that its earthly good may be effectively ordered to the divine good of persons. While in the ancient world this religious form of sociality was expressed only imperfectly through priestly authority, subordinate to political authority, after the Christian Revelation it finds perfect expression—and on a supernatural plane—in the Church (cf. De regim. princ., I, 14).
### III. SOCIETY IN MODERN THOUGHT

At the dawn of the modern era, individualistic and naturalistic tendencies led to the separation of 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 (v.) addressed the problem of reconciling the natural egoism of the individual with the absoluteness of monarchical power by resorting to the theory of the social contract, already defended by medieval nominalism: driven by fear, individuals renounce their unlimited natural right, submitting to the absolute and unlimited right of a single ruler, whose will determines social life through civil law. Thus began the juridical conception of society as an organism derived 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 drove 18th-century rationalism to seek an a priori social order safeguarding individual rights, to be imposed even through revolution. Thus emerged, in opposition to the historical political order, a problematic of strictly social individual relationships, which later found full development in socialism (v.). Meanwhile, English empiricism sought to find in the sentiments of individuals themselves the root of their social relationships: from Cumberland’s (v.) altruism and Shaftesbury’s (v.) and Hutcheson’s (v.) moral sense to Hume’s (v.) and Smith’s (v.) sympathy (v.).

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

1. Naturalistic Conception of Society – After 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 rise and evolution of social facts:
a) Mechanistic or energetic physical theories. Society is considered a physical body in which individuals are mere atoms or forces, mutually interacting according to the laws of mechanics (cf. L. F. Ward, Mechanics of Society, in Journ. of Sociol., 2 [1896], pp. 234 ff.) or dynamics.
b) Biological theories. The social body is a living organism governed by biological laws, according to Darwin’s principle of the struggle for 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 a reality with its own psychological laws determining the individual: G. Tarde’s theory of imitation; M. Lazarus’s and H. Steinthal’s Völkerpsychologie; the relationalism of the Chicago School (E. A. Ross), R. M. Mac Iver, P. A. Sorokin; the theory of instincts (W. Mac Dougal); 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 madness of the Italian criminological school (Lombroso) and the French G. Le Bon; G. Mead’s social theory (Mind, Self and Society, New York 1934), etc.
d) Sociological theories. Society is a reality sui generis, governed by its own laws, determining all individuals. This reality is of an empirical order and consists in a collective consciousness preceding and determining individual consciousnesses through social pressure. “Society is diminished when it is seen merely as an organized body for certain vital functions. In this body lives a soul: it is the ensemble of collective ideals” (E. Durkheim, Jugements de valeur, Paris 1924, p. 136); “society is a specific reality; it is part of nature, and is its highest manifestation” (id., Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, 3rd ed., Paris 1937, p. 25). The merit of the proponents of the naturalistic conception of society lies in having promoted the scientific study of the social conditioning of man, seeking the laws that govern the concrete formation and evolution of social matter, the importance of which had already been emphasized by Aristotle and Plato. However, the positivist claim to find in this scientific inquiry the integral interpretation of man’s social value must be rejected: such a claim subjects the person to determinism and is unable to explain the characteristics of spirituality, rationality, freedom, universality, and normativity immanent in the social process.

2. Historicist and Formalistic Conception of Society – In opposition to naturalistic extrinsicalism and determinism, historicism and formalism consider society in its formal, rational, or vitalistic element, as an expression of creativity that makes it exist in historical becoming. For Christianity, social activity necessarily contains the same teleologism, rationality, and freedom present in all personal activity. Already St. Augustine had considered society and history as products of divine providence and human freedom. G. B. Vico (v.) saw the rise and development of society in light of a logical dynamism whose principle is both Providence, through the eternal ideas present in the human mind, and the human person, who with their freedom progressively certifies the truth in the gradual development of utilities, thus socially and historically determining finite human good. All of society and history “culminate in a general unity, which is the unity of the religion of a provident divinity, which is 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).

With Hegel, historicism is instead understood in an immanentistic sense, as the self-revelation of the Idea (v.) in the dialectical process. The subjective Spirit, expressing itself in the abstract values of the individual person, finds liberation from its limit and abstractness in full dedication to the concrete universal values of the objective Spirit, expressed in the family, civil society, and finally perfectly in the State, “which is the end and actual reality of the universal substance and of the public life devoted to it” (Grundlinien der Philos. des Rechts, part 2, § 157).

For Marx (v.), it is economic activity that produces society with all the values determining individuals, and it is economic dialectics that makes history (V. MATERIALISMO DIALETTICO; MATERIALISMO STORICO).

F. Tönnies distinguishes a double will: the natural, organic will inherent to being (Wesenwille), and the will of choice or reflective will (Willkür, Kürwille). From the former is expressed the social form of the "community," while from the latter that of "society." Community and society are the two categories through which human life is expressed, and the process of their interference produces the historical process (cf. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Leipzig 1887). H. Freyer interprets these categories of Tönnies on a historical-objective plane: from the primitive, homogeneous community, in which the group as a whole forms an indivisible "we," one passes to society as a heterogeneous complex of groups bound together by the power that dominates them, so that "society is a form of domination" (Herrschaftsgebilde; cf. Einleitung in die Soziologie, ibid. 1931, p. 136). O. Spann (Gesellschaftslehre, 3rd ed., ibid. 1931) considers society as a Platonic idea, that is, a totality (Ganzheit) of spiritual essence, one and yet multiple insofar as it is capable of making individual persons live from its fullness through the force of domination that expresses itself from its very essence. O. Spengler (Untergang des Abendlandes, Munich 1923; Der Staat, ibid. 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" is affirmed. To this collective consciousness, G. Lehmann (Das Kollektivbewusstsein, Berlin 1928) tends to attribute an ontological reality in order to make it the basis of a sociology understood 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 highlighted the universal and active element inherent in society and determining its historical process, as well as the inconsistency of rationalist apriorisms or physical determinisms. However, by resorting to an impersonal element that, through its activity, creates society and, through it, individual values, it also resolves into a negation of the person. Society can fundamentally be nothing other than the product of the persons who compose it; and if within it there are universal values and a historical process, these can only be explained through the universal value and the dialectical nature of reason, proper to every single person. The various social forms have their principle in the normativity of reason, which sets those ends and, therefore, those social forms corresponding to human nature itself. To explain, therefore, the full value of man's social and historical life and all the teleologism intrinsic to it, it is necessary to metaphysically ground the human person in its relationship with transcendence.

IV. PERSONALIST CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY - Axiological, spiritualist, and scholastic personalism (v. PERSONALISMO) considers the social process as a communion of consciences in view of finite values or goods to be achieved, according to a hierarchy and a dynamism of universality tending toward the Absolute Value. The person essentially entails sociality, and from the various forms of society that it itself produces, it derives the very values that perfect it and thus make it the principle of social perfection.

SCHELER, MAX (v.) considers values (v. VALORE) according to an emotional apriorism: they are gradually revealed in the progressive evolution of physical and moral persons and are perfectly found in God. The subjective element that leads to communication and to perceiving the progressive hierarchy of values is sympathy (v. SIMPATIA), which is intrinsic to being itself (Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, 2nd ed., Bonn 1923). In its lower degree, sympathy is simple affective contagion (Gefühlsansteckung) and gives rise to animal associations (Herde) and the crowd (Masse), without any emotional intuition of values, and therefore cannot be the principle of community. In its second degree, sympathy expresses a lived experience in common (Miterleben) and gives rise to the "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 opposes community insofar as it is based on a simple contract (ibid., p. 549), but by emphasizing personal individuality, it allows 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 necessitating and specifying communion—principles already present in Thomistic doctrine on natural friendship and human sociality as a plurality and hierarchical unity of forms. But natural friendship is not realized through irrational emotionality: it is reason that brings objective ends into the interiority of the person and moves the will to realize natural friendship, normatively engaging II. It is therefore impossible—on the human plane—to make a real distinction between society and community, or between vital community and community of love, because "society is fundamentally 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 the "amicizia boni honesti" and the "amicizia boni utilis et delectabilis": 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 comunitaria, Italian trans., Milan 1949).

The forms of sociality "follow the natural ends of human activity; they are, therefore, their projection into concrete reality, their consolidation in ever closer correspondence to human needs, their organization as permanent means for the achievement of further ends, and also their transformation if they are no longer adequate to the impulse to act that 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 finalistic principles (religion). These three fundamental forms are, in their essentiality, constant in all civilizations and in all times" (ibid.). Particular prominence today is assumed by the social form deriving from professional activity (v. PROCESSIONE), which, through labor (v. LAVORO), achieves individual and social perfection (cf. Codice sociale di Malines, Rome 1944, p. 67 ff.; Morale professionale, ibid. 1948): it can, however, be considered a secondary form of sociality, necessarily linked to the political one. Economic activity in itself does not give rise to a social form, as it is directly related to individual, familial, political, and religious goods: from it is expressed the natural right to private property (v. PROPRIETÀ); nevertheless, it can give rise to secondary forms of sociality such as castes, classes, corporations, and syndicates (v.).

G. M.

Society (from the Latin socius) presents itself as a concrete reality; and individuals, upon birth, find it as a fact that conditions them. Nevertheless, it does not exist except in the rationality and will of persons, who make it their own, receiving it from previous generations, and give it life by contributing their own novelty, which determines the historical process. As a communion of persons, society is realized in the will for a common good and a unity of rational order, which constitutes persons in an organic reciprocity of rights and duties. This order requires an autorité (v. AUTORITÀ) because without a unitary principle, a single direction of wills toward the same end is impossible; but it also requires a liberté (v. LIBERTÀ) that allows everyone to contribute personally to social life and to realize those other ends that transcend the very purpose of society. Implemented for the attainment of the natural ends of the person, the social order derives its value from the natural order, which reason determines and imposes. The natural order does not contain an a priori ideal social arrangement but only the fundamental general principles that reason itself is committed to applying continuously according to changing historical circumstances. For a correct social order, which serves as a means of true human perfection, a constant will for the good is necessary, along with knowledge of natural principles according to concrete social conditioning and knowledge of the laws determining that conditioning itself. It is the task of social philosophy to deepen the understanding of natural law in all its aspects; of the social sciences to establish the laws of social conditioning; of sociology to know 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 the teacher of truth, the 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, in that aspect of the social order where it approaches and touches the field of morality, to judge whether the foundations of a given social arrangement are in accord with the immutable order that God the Creator and Redeemer has manifested through natural law and Revelation...; for the Church, as the guardian of the Christian supernatural order, in which nature and Grace converge, must form consciences, including those of persons called to find solutions to the problems and duties imposed by social life. From the form given to society, whether in conformity with or contrary to divine laws, depends and insinuates itself also the good or evil in souls » (Pius XII, Pentecost Message, 1941, n. 3).

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 jurist-evolutionist ethnologists, undermining their legal reconstructions with related concepts such as "group responsibility," "group justice," "group property"—in short, with the axiom of 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 its decrees. Such a mentality has persisted particularly in the French sociological school. Durkheim, its founder, argued for the totemistic origin of human societies, admitting a primitive pan-totemistic stage of humanity and seeking in human collectivism the sole origin of religion.

2. These evolutionist theories, which stemmed partly from an apriorism of philosophical and biological nature and partly from insufficient documentation, have been entirely disproven by more thorough and documented comparative research; indeed, the opposite has sometimes been proven. There is a great variety of types of primitive society, depending on the different configurations of relations among the individual, family, extra-familial groups, and the State, the form of economy, property, religious and moral life with its ideas, beliefs, and pseudo-religious and moral practices, thus deriving from a different legal structure and a distinct spiritual, artistic, moral, and religious life. Nevertheless, four fundamental types of primitive society can be distinguished, one of which is older and from which the others independently derive. In discussing them here, while referring to the entries: V. DIRITTO; DONNA; FAMIGLIA; INCESTO; INDISSOLUBILITÀ; INDIVIDUO; MATRIMONIO; MONOGAMIA; PARENTELA; POLIANDRIA; POLIGINIA; PRIMITIVI; PROSTITUZIONE; PUDORE, we limit ourselves to illustrating the form of the State and the concept of authority among primitives.

a) It is now indisputable that the oldest known form of primitive society, from which it is possible to glimpse the primordial one, is that proper to so-called gathering peoples. It consists of small groups of 30-70 blood relatives with their wives and children: a large family. One cannot speak of a "mass," evidently. 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 fair division of labor between them, which is not, however, something immutable or founded on magical or superstitious reasons. The Andamanese, for example, whose task is ordinarily daily hunting, does not hesitate to do his wife's work. If necessary, he takes care of the children, lights the fire and tends to it, and also gathers wood and draws water, essentially feminine tasks. He also builds the hut if it is a shelter more substantial than usual.

Each family has its own house or shelter; it owns certain things in its own right. The economy is familial and of the sippe. Marriage is monogamous and according to local exogamy. Children depend on the authority of their parents, which is exercised equally over sons and daughters according to their stage of development, providing them with sustenance and education, an authority tempered by great love, which is mutual. Great care is taken of elderly parents. The family, however, is patriarchal. The authority of the father is everywhere the only stable authority, though not absolute. Among the Yamana, for example, if the husband mistreated his wife, her relatives would intervene, putting an end to the abuse and possibly punishing him.

The family has a very distinct identity before the State, which exists only in embryo and of which it carries out almost all functions. Among gathering peoples, for example, among the so-called Yamana, 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 their own dialect) and of a people. There is no stable chief in the local group; if one exists, his authority is limited by law and traditional customs and is not commanding. Of the Yamana of Tierra del Fuego, their explorer Koppers wrote: "As I have said, the Yamana lacked any kind of chief. Even the local groups had no stable chief. For the initiation rites of the youth, the oldest and most respected man of the group was chosen as temporary chief, whose commands were respected." Among the Bambuti, there is a chief of the local group or sippe, and among the Andamanese, there is also one of the tribe, but their authority is weak and limited. The chief of the group among the Bambuti is the eldest of the elders; he ordinarily exercises his authority by settling daily disputes and quarrels among the members and families of his sippe and between his sippe and others, offering his counsel and assistance; he distributes the common game; offers sacrifice; directs initiation; and participates in marriage. In its most ancient form, the chief is not the magician, as has been observed among the Yamana. Indeed, among them, while the most worthy man was chosen for the initiation of the youth, a magician-doctor had to be chosen for the direction of the school of sorcerer-physicians and the male feast (Kina).

In primitive society, justice is left to private vengeance. Human life is protected by the institution of vengeance, which is the responsibility of the victim's kin, and cannot be carried out by the closest relatives but by the more distant ones, according to the Yamana, because the closest relatives are not immune from coresponsibility in the crime. The victim lived with them, and thus they are the ones who have most offended him and are therefore the most responsible. Gathering peoples do not know war, as they have no chiefs, no military weapons of offense or defense, no fortified places, no war canoes; they lack skill in throwing stones or javelins, nor has a term for war or warrior been found. In the case of a belligerent encounter, if one can call it that, among the Yamana, when someone is wounded, retreat is sounded on both sides; thus ends "the war."

In the practical life of every member of the community, but especially of the chief, where one exists, justice and altruism are demanded. The sense of freedom and independence of the individual and the family is very strong. Commands are not given to others, nor is it pleasant to receive them. However, nomadism makes these primitives helpful to one another, as has been observed among the Fuegians, because not knowing whom one might encounter in a place, or having to seek refuge with someone, one is reluctant to meet a person or their respective friends in whose hostility one might have incurred.

The primitive state is careful not to limit the freedom of the individual and the family more than is absolutely necessary; it performs only those functions for which the strength and authority of individual families are insufficient. While in primitive society authority has fewer institutional tasks compared to more developed societies, it is nonetheless correct to note that even this society is based on order, authority, and the active consciousness of order—that is, on the same permanent, active, directive, unifying, and responsible social consciousness present in every human society. The moral and legal order in primitive society is founded on religion, according to which grave human crimes provoke the wrath of God, who manifests it through lightning, storms, rainbows, etc. From what has been said, it can be concluded that primitive society, as it exists among the most archaic peoples of the Earth, is very different—indeed, diametrically opposed—to that imagined by evolutionists. From this type of primitive society derive the societies of nomadic pastoral peoples, totemistic peoples, and matriarchal peoples.

b) The society of nomadic pastoral peoples of Asia and Africa (Turco-Mongols, Indo-Europeans, Hamito-Semites) differs from that of gathering peoples primarily in its form of economy, as it produces its own means of subsistence through the breeding of large herds of livestock (sheep, goats, horses, cattle, camels), which provide dairy products, meat, means of transport, and various ergological tools. The nomadic herder feels the need to preserve and, if possible, increase his herd, and thus also the need for various people to achieve this goal. Hence arises his desire for a large family and, consequently, for a second wife if the first is barren, and for not dividing his herd hereditarily among his sons, who therefore, upon marrying, remain in the paternal family under the father’s authority. The herd requires unity of command and order, which is why a strong patria potestas has developed in the figure of the father of the family, the patriarch. Thus, the large pastoral family is patriarchal like that of gathering peoples, but it differs from them in the increased unity and cohesion of its members. However, it has also been observed that the patriarch’s authority is not always absolute; among Tibetan herders, for example, the wife is equal to the husband, and married sons are consulted in family affairs. A characteristic of the pastoral family, as mentioned, is the inheritance regime, influenced by the undivided preservation of the herd, 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, appointing a group leader. Regional groups form a tribal association, which secures the herders to its groups. The tribe was originally a natural development of the large family, formed therefore among blood relatives. Since the individualism and independence of the individual and individual families are very strong, the authority of group and tribal leaders is limited; indeed, it essentially depends on the strength, esteem, and personal prestige of the leader.

The protection of individual lives is left to private vengeance, which can bind even for many generations, as the entire clan is responsible for the crime or obliged 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 in the middle of a forest and left there to perish.

The varying growth of livestock, differing skill in managing herds, and especially the danger these face during droughts and epidemics lead to the distinction between rich and poor. However, 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 herders of Central Asia, there is also the 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. Characteristic of pastoral society are the seasonal popular festivals with many common games, which among African herders also take on the aspect of military exercises. The combative and imperious psychology of nomads and their disdain for agriculture and every kind of occupation explain the great empires they have founded in the world, imposing their dominion and dynasties, which originate from their powerful family spirit.

c) Totemistic society. — The type of totemism (v. TOTEMISMO) that gives a characteristic form to primitive society is clan-based social totemism, which is also the most widespread. Each tribe is divided into clans, each with its own totem, to which every member feels bound by a sense of kinship and from which they derive their 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 it, kill it, or eat it, the totem being understood as any animal of the same species. The clan forms an economic and ritual unit. Every member of the clan is identified with the totem, whose magical forces are concentrated in the chief. For this reason, chiefs can perform magical actions in the interest of the entire clan and tribe according to their totems and natural symbols; they are thus chief-magicians.

The clan chiefs form the assembly of the tribe, in which all enjoy the same rights. This is the case among the Narrinyeri of southern Australia. Among clan members, there is great solidarity, which 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, young men live together in a house reserved for them, to which women are forbidden access, and similarly, young women in a house reserved for them, with a strict prohibition for men to enter. The initiation of young men consists mainly of circumcision and, among some Australian tribes, also of subincision. For young women, there are corresponding similar operations.

The family has little significance compared to the state; the authority of parents over children is exercised only in early childhood. Women are in a position of inferiority.

In the division of the clan, due to its great growth, the new clan remains in a certain dependence on the original clan and also retains its name. A clan may also have its own industry and engage in commerce. In the union with the matriarchy of two exogamous classes, the clan subdivides into fatherlands and sub-fatherlands, in which children belong not to the father’s clan but to that of the grandfather, so that exogamous laws become very complicated (v. MATRIARCATO).

d) Matriarchal society is distinguished first and foremost by its economy, as the means of subsistence come from agriculture, initially practiced with a hoe and later with a plow. It is further distinguished by the presence of land ownership rights, unknown in other primitive societies. Since agriculture is a female invention—women being the gatherers of plant foods in the most ancient civilization—the woman is the owner of the cultivated field, its products, as well as the house, the storeroom, the work tools, ceramic utensils, and other implements necessary for family life. Property passes from mother to daughters. In marriage, the woman, needing to remain near her field, does not go to live in her husband’s house; instead, 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 his wife, as is still practiced today among the Chams of Indochina and some tribes of Formosa. However, he is like a stranger in his wife’s family, while the brother-in-law, the wife’s brother, holds a position of advantage in the family over him and his children. The woman enjoys great preeminence over the man, a preeminence that he can reduce, restoring a parity of rights, when he works for his own family to later bring his wife into his own home. There is a reversal of the woman’s position in Melanesia, New Guinea, and Australia, where, in 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 is inherited by the nephew. The woman becomes a kind of labor slave when the man seeks to have multiple wives to dispose of greater material resources of labor and prestige. The two-class system, in which one can no longer speak of matrilocal or patrilocal marriage, as the two exogamous classes reside in the same place (v. MATRIARCATO), is a recent form of matriarchy. Here, not even service marriage is possible. Matriarchy has sometimes evolved into a true gynocracy, with the woman at the head of the state assembly, though generally, even in this case, 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 are priestesses, seers, and shamans.

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

3. Origin of primitive society

For 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 stage of the progressive evolution of the species: he was half-man and half-animal, only later becoming fully human, and thus less guided by instinct, more lost, almost abandoned by nature and established in his "original stolidity." The "instinct of imitation" remains his essential basis, for he has lost the secure guidance of animal instincts; but then the "mystical concept of collectivity" would have arisen as a savior, and from the "promiscuous and disordered horde" would have emerged not the biologically rational, human, and economic natural family, but the clan, the collective group, bound by irrational, magical, and mystical ties, and humanity, starting from its anti-instinctive, anti-logical, anti-rational beginning, would have initiated its ascent, its progressive evolution.

However, as has been seen, this theory clashes with ethnological reality. Totemism cannot be taken as the basis for explaining the origin of the State, for it is neither the most ancient form of society nor 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 does not precede the family; on the contrary, the family precedes the State. Indeed, among the most archaic peoples, the reality is, as Father Schmidt concluded on the matter, that the family is almost everything and the State scarcely exists yet, and in any case only in function of the family. It is not the State, therefore, that gave rise to the family and, according to its own arbitrariness or power, granted it its rights, which it could then take away or restrict, but the family already existed tens of thousands of years earlier in the fullness of its rights and duties, during which time it also exercised in full the functions of the State, which existed only embryonically within its maternal womb. This was the case throughout the period of the most ancient civilization. Such appears to us the social, economic, and political constitution of the society of the earliest humanity. And, on the other hand, there is no evidence or reason to claim that current primitive societies are a degeneration of prehistoric societies, except in particular well-demonstrated cases.