Ferdinand Tönnies

“ It is this which makes us regard the state also as an instrument fit for serving our particular interests, or those we have in common with some or with all of our fellow-citizens, rather than as an organism, ideally pre-existent to ourselves, living its own life, and being entitled to sacrifices of our life and property in its behalf. It is true that in extraordinary times we live up to this view, but then we do not speak so much of society and of the state as of the fatherhood which puts forward its claim to what we call our patriotism. ”

“ At any rate we shall allow, what we seldom act upon, that we must not philosophise in words alone, but that the word is a sign indifferent in itself, the value of which depends entirely upon its being appropriately formed and upon its serving to arouse the desired clear and distinct idea, or—in proper, that is abstract, thought—to recall the activity whereby we, or another, or all in common, formed a concept, and thereby to recall the content of the concept. ”

“ Why is not modern society—and, above all, the modern state—an organism in this peculiar sense?
I believe, indeed, that there is strong reason for controverting the theory in its application to these collective beings as they actually are. We live, as everybody knows, in an individualistic age, and we seek each other’s society chiefly for the benefit that accrues from it; that is to say, in a comparatively small degree from motives of sentiment, and to a comparatively great extent from conscious reflection. ”

“ Understanding is itself a kind of willing, it is the will of recognition, of acceptance, i.e., of appropriation, and thus understanding in common is like possession in common. Thus by understanding a social will issues from the individual will. But the less social validity a word has, the more effort it needs for the individual to make himself understood; he then strengthens by natural signs—tones and gestures—the meaning which he desires to give to the word. ”

“ Thus such an application of biological notions to the social life of mankind—as the organicist theories or methods set out to do—is not to be rejected on principle. We may, in fact, look upon any community of this kind—maintaining itself by receiving its parts—as being a living whole or unity. This view is the more plausible if the renewal itself is merely biological, as indeed is the case in the human family, and, as we think, to a still greater extent—because a family soon disperses itself—in certain larger groups: a tribe, a nation, or a race ”

“ That the use of language, like other customs, has also a subjective side is obvious with so psychical an act as that of speech; and yet the object is so far intellectual that deviations and errors ought not to excite ill-will. Still, in every linguist there is another kind of dissatisfaction, or at any rate dissent, which makes itself felt, often only as at something ludicrous, and in less marked cases simply as the judgment which denies something as false, and as the wish to correct. ”

“ It is clear that certain signs may easily be fixed or invented whereby the volitions and acts of a single individual may be differentiated from the rest as being representative. But how if there are more than one, who only occasionally have one will and act together, and who cannot be supposed to agree in their feelings as soon as they are required to represent their moral person? It is well known that these must be “constituted” as an assembly or as a whole capable by its constitution to deliberate and, what is more, to resolve and act. ”

“ But with the guarantee of public credit there is opened the door to deception and falsehood; here come in the historical debasements of the currency, which have played such a discreditable part, chiefly in times of transition to the modern state. The State, generally represented in its first phase by princes and their war-chests, lends value to the coins, not so much by moral guarantee as by force, which makes the universal medium of exchange into a legal medium of payment. ”

“ At any rate, this is what I should call a purely biological aspect of collective human life, in so far as their conception is restricted to the mere existence of a human group, which, so to speak, is self-active in its maintenance of life. ”

“ There at once the individual will, at the height of its enjoyment of power and of its artist’s pride, finds itself over against a more powerful social will which commands its respect, and which, forming itself in a council wherein the most distinguished masters have the greatest natural weight, and exercising its office of distinction and selection, determines with decisive sovereignty, what is to hold universally, what permanently, and what both universally and permanently. ”

“ I believe and assert that three distinct conceptions, the common object of which is social life in its broadest sense, are not sufficiently, or not at all, kept apart nor even recognized as being distinct, viz., the biological, the psychological, and the sociological in what I call the exclusive sense, the subject of this third conception only being entirely new, as compared with the subjects of other sciences or departments of philosophy. ”

“ We define the abstract concept as a work of art of scientific thought, but scientific thought as an operation with such creations by comparing them, partly with one another, partly with concrete concepts or with particular ideas. The abstract concept is an object to which any characteristics are given, whether presentable to sense or not, whether found connected in reality (“in experience”) or not; it is determined only by the end which the creation is to serve, and this end is knowledge of the relations between objects experienced, and capable of being experienced. ”

“ If we justly call it a division of labor that England manufactures cotton and China produces tea, and that the two countries exchange their products, then there is not and has not been a common labor or function preceding this division and dividing itself, as in the case of an organism; no state of society being historically known where China and England were one whole, working in harmony upon the spinning-wheel and upon the tea plant. ”

“ And so the more acute logicians have always seen that scientific definitions are propositions, the truth of which rests upon the will of the person advancing them. Even if a name already denotes a concept in some (e.g.) scientific usage (i.e. denotes a definitely limited universal idea) , still the person defining must appropriate this concept and the name, if the definition is to hold in his mental context also, i.e. is to be true for him. But free definition is completely necessary when we are operating with those works of thought of the individual which we here call abstract concepts. ”

“ But, though I myself lay considerable stress upon this general notion of society, in juxtaposition and opposition to the state or political society, I still regard it as more indispensable to a theory of social structure to inquire into the nature and causes of what may be called, from the present point of view, genuine corporations; that is, those conceived of as being capable of willing and acting like a single individual endowed with reason and self-consciousness. ”

“ Its language (which is largely understood) is not yet a complete social organ, of which any one, born and bred in this society, makes use with comparative ease and certainty. This is the case in proportion as the customary usage of language has become a power. Here a mass of fixed meanings has been elaborated, so that word-idea and object-idea are regularly blended. Nevertheless, in many expressions, especially those which are more remote from everyday life (the expressions of complex ideas) the customary usage is uncertain, and leaves therefore greater freedom to individual application. ”

“ Of course, it is only as a tendency that this dissolving and revolutionary principle is always active, but its activity is manifest everywhere in social life, especially in modern society, and characterizes a considerable portion of the relations of individuals to each other and consequently to their corporations. As long as men think and regard “society”—that is to say, their clan or their polis, their church or their commonwealth—as real and as truly existing ”

“ Much less do we recognise the possibility and importance of free choice in the formation of concepts, or we tend to confuse it with the mere determining of the meaning of a word. And yet we have here the source of the mastery of the greatest problems. Conceptual matter is the iron which we, as thinkers, have to forge. ”

“ Now the house will become identified with a family or perhaps with a clan. In the same manner a village community or a township will be imagined as a collective being, which—although not in all, yet in certain important respects—remains the same in essence, notwithstanding a shifting of matter; that is to say, an incessant elimination of waste portions—men who die—and a constant accretion of fresh elements—born children. Here the analogy with the essential characteristics of an organism is obvious. ”

“ As a matter of fact, it is the natural ripening of consciousness and thinking itself which makes reflection prevail over sentiment, and which manifests itself, first and foremost, in reflection upon a man’s own personal interest, in the weighing and measuring of costs and results; but, secondly, also in a similar reflection upon some common interest or business which a person, from whatever motive, selfish or not, has made his own affair ”

“ It is true that for mutual understanding a common idea-system is as necessary as a common sign-system; nay, more so, for if the ideas are there the signs are more easily and quickly gained, and therefore also substituted; while the knowledge of signs is worthless without knowledge of the ideas to which they are to be referred, and this knowledge is much more difficult to gain or replace, especially when we are no longer dealing with perceivable, but only with thinkable objects. ”

“ Now, it cannot be doubted that they do not consider either society or the state as representing that early community which has always been supposed to be the original proprietor of the soil and of all its treasures, since this would imply that their own private property had only a derivative right—derived from the right and law of public property. It is just the opposite which they think and feel: the state has a derivative right of property by their allowance and their contributions ”

“ But just as to a large extent laws merely fix, extend or limit, and more especially make consistent the norms of customary law, so also legal determinations treat the meanings of words. On the other hand this often occurs without any respect to customary usage, even in opposition to it. New concepts are formed, and for them new words are created or new meanings given to old ones. The legislator disposes freely of the material of language, but always holds it expedient to respect customary usage, by which indeed he often remains bound, even when he no longer feels himself to be so. ”

“ If there is, it can, according to the present view, be only in this respect, that a corporation may be thought and felt as an organic whole, upon which the members think and feel themselves dependent in such a way that they consider their own individual existence as subservient to the life of the whole. The question whether a “society” is an organism must be kept apart from the question whether there are “societies” the relations of which to their members are so qualified as to imply thoughts and feelings of that kind on the part of their members. ”

“ The description is here not merely a statement of limits, which must essentially refer to the comprehension of the concept; but it is as complete as possible a determination of its content, without regard to what the comprehension may be. It is only a make-shift when it is expressed in (not-defined) words of customary usage; science avails itself of this when and in so far as it has no other expressions defined by itself. Sigwart expresses this exactly in the words: “every definition presupposes a scientific terminology”. ”

“ The use of signs of different kinds, which is so infinitely important for the whole cultured life of humanity, depends principally upon made signs. Sensation in common, thought and belief in common, make themselves known in the use of signs, even when these have no other purpose than to afford expression to just this feeling and fellow-feeling, to be “symbols” of the community. ”

“ This nominalism also penetrates into men’s supposed collective realities (supernatural or not) , declaring them to be void and unreal, except in so far as individual and real men have consented to make such an artificial being, to construct it, and to build it up mentally. Knowledge and criticism oppose themselves to faith and intuition, in this as in most other respects, and try to supplant them. To know how a church or a state is created means the downfall of that belief in its supernatural essence and existence which manifestly is so natural to human feeling and intellect. ”

“ Thus speculation, attaching itself to such naive ideas, makes the word itself into God, or into the revealed Son of God; and as the word can create all and change all it creates and changes itself into flesh, and moves as man among men. But even beyond the sphere of the miraculous a mysterious actual value is attributed to the word, and to certain words therefore a good or evil significance as omens. ”