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The social will.

1909; American Psychological Association; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037/h0093031

0096-9753

Edwin Andrew Hayden,

The following thesis has grown out of general studies in sociology and psychology which I prosecuted under the direction of Professor Cooley and Professor Pillsbury.So far as anything new is offered in the thesis, I may say it consists in this: that the processes rather than the products of collective mental activity have been kept systematically in mind.Suggestion and imitation have received very little attention, in the belief that they contain practically nothing beyond what was already a matter of common possession in the doctrines of association and apperception.I believe that the conception of a social personality as a collective total organized out of mental systems that interact in definiteways,isof more fundamental significance.TABLE OF CONTENTS.Chapter I-The Social Consciousness.Section i .Spencer's distinction between animal and social groups in respect to parentage and cooperation, merely biological.S. 2. Reciprocity of thought and feeling the matter of social importance.S. 3. Two kinds of communities, the instinctive and the social.The nature of instinctive communities most clearly revealed by the life of insect families.Some other animal groups present a transitional stage.S. 4 and 5.The human mind the only truly social mind.S. 6. Language a social necessity.It is the most delicate instrument for the communication of thought and feeling.S. 7. The content of the cultured mind, i. e., the ideas with which it is stocked, largely social in their nature.Illustrations of this fact furnished by different subjects of study.S. 8. Mental development culminates in two universes of fact and feeling: the objective, relating to the physical order; and the subjective, relating to the personal order.These two are somewhat confused in the mythologic mind.Chapter II-The Social Personality.S. 1. Two fundamental processes in the social mind, desire and belief.Difference between reactions of animals and purposive control.S. 2. Conditions under which desire arises.S. 3. Theoretical desires arise in connection with mythologic thought.S. 4. But for the most part knowledge is at first subordinated to practical needs.This is true of the average mind of even an advanced social order.Mental division of labor assigns the task of thinking to a select few.S. 5. Personal ideas play a considerable part in directing the activity of the imagination.S. 6.The specific content of desire is a matter of history.S. 7. The psychological nature of belief.Emotion in belief: case of Knox and Loyola.S. 8. World of sensible experience the ultimate universe of reality.Association changes the memories of history at times into unrealities.S. 9. Native attitude of the mind one of belief.Faith necessary to the mental health of a people.Beliefs are outgrown.Social development tends to make the sphere of desire and belief coincident.S. 10.Desire and belief systematically coordinated through the activity of the will.S. 11.Psychological nature of the collective will.S. 12. Collective deliberation a possibility, though less controlled than that of the individual mind.The state expresses a collective will.Bryce quoted on the work of the state.TABLE OF CONTENTS S. 13.Psychological nature of the ends of the state.Voluntary control in private associations.S. 14.The concept of social personality.The social disposition.S. 15.Habit in collective volition.The development of the individual will a process of infoldment of the social will.S. 16.Conditions under which ephemeral beliefs arise.Chapter III-The Systematization of Belief.S. 1. Primitive beliefs grow by association. S. 2a.Mental systems are in part implicit in the social mind.Conditions for the unfoldment of the social mind.S. 2b.Beliefs are organized into a few fundamental systems, which are united in the self.S. 3. Two types of mental systems: associative and apperceptive, both figuring in the historical development of thought.S. 4. Nature of apperceptive systems.Relation of apperception to invention and imitation.Illustration from the history of the theory of natural selection.S. 5.The spread of ideas through the social medium.S. 6. Recency.S. 7. Intensity and vividness.S. 8. Joint Activity.S. 9. Repetition, condition the vigor of mental systems.S. 10.Interrelation.S. 11.Two classes of cognitive systems, conceptual and perceptual.Then interaction in the development of knowledge.S. 12. Systems of social concepts.All conceptual systems modified by substitution and combination.S. 13.Concepts may at times be formulated with more logical precision than the existing state of facts warrants.S. 14. Resistance to the spread of ideas.Mental conflict in the social and individual mind.Conflict settled by discussion or force.S. 15.Conditions of mental systems that cause conflict.S. 16.Solution of conflict by force.S. 17a.Conflict in the social mind marks a period of history.S. 17b.Conflict causes social thought to return on itself.S. 18.Sometimes a permanent division of opinion is the outcome of mental strife.S. 19.Mental conflict necessary to self-consciousness.S. 20.Sentiments cannot be bodily transferred from one culture to another.Chapter IV-The Consciousness of Moral Right.S. 1.The interaction of individual minds takes place with varying degrees of intimacy in respect to the self.S. 2. When the interaction lies within some cognitive system, consciousness of self is reduced to a minimum.S. 3. Some desires are connected with ideal universes.Moral desire is desire for an ideal self, and must be united with belief in order to have any practical effect on consciousness.S. 4. The universe of the ideal self is social.The ideal self is imagined as achieving its career under the special historic conditions of the social order.TABLE OF CONTENTS.ill S. 5.The relation of the self to others in the moral universe.Inclusive social ideals possess higher moral worth.S. 6. Moral evil considered as a condition of mental conflict.S. 7. Various forms of the aberration of the moral will.S. 8. Fragmentary character of the immoral life.S. 9. Variations of the social ideal limited by heredity and use.S. 10.The social utility of ideals.S. ua.Nature of the social ideal.Collective ethics usually inferior in value to individual.S. lib.The higher form of collective ethics means more comprehensive apperceptive control in the social mind.S. 12. Springs of moral action kept healthy only by effort.S. 13.The primary moral feelings attach most firmly to the ascendant personal universe of the individual.The will of the family group and the will of the state grow out of the tribal will.S. 14. Ceremony of adoption extends the sphere of moral obligation.S. 15.The special morality of social groups.S. 16.Moral values changed by historical experiences.S. 17. Principles of morality stand in vital relation to the mental and moral health of the individual and social will.Chapter V-The Consciousness of Legal Right.S. 1.The social will lacks the unity of the individual will, but is motived by more numerous and more comprehensive ends.It aims at ends of general validity, as seen, for instance, in what it effectuates through the instrumentality of the law.S. 2. The social will reacts upon the individual negatively in the way of restraint exercised through the medium of the law.Effect of punishment.The social will also reacts in a more positive fashion through the direct encouragement and assistance which it gives the individual.S. 3. Personality of the judge in relation to the application of the law.Judicial opinion a collaboration.S. 4. Consciousness of the law varies in the different social groups.Most completely organized about group interests.Vigorous enforcement of the law strengthens the feeling of legal right.S-5)6,7,8.Conditions that determine the vigor of the feeling of legal right.S. 9. Enforcement of a right by the state increases the general stability of rights.S. 10.Mental conflict an important condition in the development of the consciousness of legal right.S. 11.Extent to which the individual feels the law as a constraint S. 12.The atomistic view of political relations looks upon the state as the mechanical opposite of the individual.S. 13.Desire for freedom is preeminently a social desire.S. 14. Social institutions define the feeling of right.Relation of custom to the feeling of legal right.Habits of private life an important element in the matter of public control.S. 15.Consciousness of a commonweal varies considerably in the history of culture.The higher forms of civic idealism.S. 16.Reality of a national ideal.It exists interconnected with other motives of inferior moral worth in the historic process which has organized the social will in the state.S. 17.The state immanent in the reciprocal relations existing between the individuals of a social order.Chapter VI-The Social Will as Expressed in the State: the Theory of Sovereignty in its Psychological Bearings.S. 1. Social psychology in political philosophy.S. 2. Two psychologic facts basic to an understanding of the subjectthe reality of the individual and the reality of the social will.S. 3. Sovereignty in the usual sense in which the term is employed presupposes a well developed social consciousness.S. 4. Sometimes a partial or group will becomes ascendant.Mental effects of despotic authority.S. 5. Ascendancy more organic in some instances, as in the supremacy of British rule in India.S. 6. Highest organic contact possible when the law-making power is native.S. 7. In times of social confusion, there is no social will, and sovereignty in the sense of power exercised according to standards of right exists only in a limited way.S. 8.The mode of determining the membership of the governing body is only indirectly related to individual freedom.Essential requirement is that the governing body should be responsive to the needs of the people.S. 9. A close interdependence exists between political and other social institutions.