Sozialer Organismus
Metapher
Basisiwissen
Der englische Philosoph Herbert Spencer (1820 bis 1903), Anhänger des Darwinismus und Vordenker eines radikalen Liberalismus beschrieb menschliche Gesellschaften in enger Analogie zu einem individuellen Organismus[1]. Er schrieb diesen sozialen Organismen aber ausdrücklich kein eigenständiges zentrales Bewusstsein zu. Dazu hier zwei Zitate.
Ähnlichkeiten zu einem Lebewesen
Originalzitat: "A social organism is like an individual organism in these essential traits: that it grows; that while growing it becomes more complex; that while becoming more complex, its parts acquire increasing mutual dependence; that its life is immense in length compared with the lives of its component units; that in both cases there is increasing integration accompanied by increasing heterogeneity."
Aber kein Bewusstsein
Originalzitat: "... the discreteness of a social organism ... does prevent that differentiation by which one part becomes an organ of feeling and thought, while other parts become insensitive. High animals [on the other hand] ... are distinguished ... by complex and well integrated nervous systems. ... Hence, then, a cardinal difference in the two kinds of organisms. In the one, consciousness is concentrated in a small part of the aggregate. In the other, it is diffused throughout the aggregate"
Fußnoten
- [1] Spencer, Herbert: Principles of sociology. MacMillan, London 1969. Erstveröffentlichung im Jahr 1873.
- [2] A. L. Kroeber: The Superorganic. In: American Anthropologist, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April - June, 1917), pp. 163-213. Kröber verwendet den Begriff "social organism" dort auf Seite 180.
- [3] Albert Schäffle: Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers. 1875. Siehe auch Albert Schäffle ↗
- [4] Gerhard Lechner: Der soziale Organismus bei Rudolf Steiner und Rudolf Stolzmann. In: RoSE (Research in Steiner Education), Volume 8 Number 1. Online: https://philarchive.org/archive/LECDSO
- [5] Park, R. E. (1921). Sociology and the social sciences. The social organism and the collective mind. In: Journal of American Sociology. Vol. 27, No.1. pp. 1-27
