Mary Whiton Calkins

Name: The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist
Author: Mary Whiton Calkins

The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

Summary

“The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist”, published in 1920, is a work by Mary Whiton Calkins. It explores elements such as self, social group and conception.

Quotes from The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (Mary Whiton Calkins)

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ Now all the arguments known to me for the self-conception of society fall far short of establishing the truth that a social group is in this sense a person. Such arguments seem to fall into two groups:
1. There is first the consideration, eloquently urged by Royce, that a man may love his country—church or country—and be loyal to it and sacrifice himself for it as if it were a self. In other words, Royce argues (and in my opinion very effectively) that a society is regarded by its members as a self. But this certainly does not prove that a society is a self. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ There is, to be sure, a sense in which the conception of the social group as a self may be said to be facilitated by the Absolute-Self-doctrine. For if the universe is rightly conceived as One Self, including all the unnumbered lesser selves of the universe, there is apparent reason for describing races, societies, communities each as a sort of intermediate self of many interrelated persons. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ Community, association, and state, so far as they are personified, are therefore sociological and neither psychological nor metaphysical units, constructs of the socially minded selves who compose them. Hach of these members of society is distinctively conscious of himself as in close mutual relation with his fellows and each may personify the social group and conceive it, feel toward it, or behave toward it as if it were a person. But the social group, even when personified, remains a plurality, larger or smaller, of the selves who are ultimately related as members of the Absolute Self. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ The many, in a word, are parts of the Absolute; the Absolute is not a composite of the many. Now, in a universe thus conceived there is—so the argument runs—no room for communities or social groups which are mere pluralities of interrelated selves, conscious indeed of mutually influencing each other yet constituting each a mere system or organization of distinct though related selves and not a single being. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ So far, however, the argument for sociological monism consists merely in the statement that for the personal absolutist there is no inherent difficulty in the conception of a genuine self which includes other lesser selves. This is true; but it is far from a proof that all social groups, or even some social groups, actually and literally are selves. This paper undertakes first to indicate the insufficiency of the empirical arguments advanced for the conception of the social group as literally a self ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ Royce makes use of this argument (and, unjustifiably as it seems to me, calls on Wundt as witness) in his insistence that because it is “the social mind” or “community which produces languages, customs, religions ...—mental products which can be psychologically analyzed, which follow psychological laws and which exhibit characteristic processes of mental evolution—processes that belong solely to organized groups of men” that we are therefore justified in declaring that “community has or is a mind.” ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ A sociological monism could thus be maintained without thereby entailing the consequences of political absolutism, the doctrine of state or church or any other organization as possessing a reality more ultimate than that of its members, and a consequent sovereignty over them. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ I. Fundamental to both these purposes is a clear statement of what must be meant by the doctrine that a social group is literally a person. The doctrine evaporates into sheer metaphor unless it means that a social group is a being aware of itself as unique, or individual, relatively persistent or identical, and changing. In Fite’s pregnant (and Hegelian) phrase a self or person must exist for himself and not merely as an appearance to others. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ But no a priori consideration forbids the conclusion that between the human and near-human selves (each a relating self) and the all-including Absolute Self, the ultimate relater, there are no intervening self-conscious persons. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Mary Whiton Calkins, The Metaphysical Monist as a Sociological Pluralist (1920)

“ It should be noted, in conclusion, that it would be possible to maintain the literally personal existence of natural social groups while denying that of artificial, or voluntary, societies, because of their apparent dependence on the impulses or purposes of human. selves. One might then conceive the race, or even the community in the wide sense, as a person, without so regarding the trade-union or the bar association. ”

Mary Whiton Calkins

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