METAPHYSICS OF SOCIETY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF

A. H. KAMALI

In my last paper on the “Nature of Social Experience According to I the is Philosophy definitive of Self I concluded that the Law of Mutual otherness category of Social consciousness. This is the only true premise in this field which” accords with the Philosophy of Self.[1] Any other notion whether it is Collectivism or Individualism simply leads to the negation of Social Experience. Not only does it negate Social Experience but it also contradicts the basic tenets of Selfism, especially the axiomatic principle that every ‘ego’ is an irreducible entity characterized by Self-possession. Consequently, there is no question of mergence in other Self, however universal has created this order of reality, which in no way can be reduced to self-experience, that is, to an experience of an ego. If one admits such a reduction, it is nothing but denial of the creative ability of God. Philosophy of Self can only have self-assuring growds if and only if we are capable of reflecting such theories in whatever guise they may be found.

According to the metaphysics of Selfism, Social order is ultimate order of reality. It has its own mode of givenness. An analysis of this mode puts the theory of ‘Space’ in a new light, and reveals its true character as a constructive step towards the formulation of the details necessary for a comprehensive statement of Selfism. It is in the ultimate nature of reality as a social system that the category of space comes into being.

I

Examination of the Idea of Community in Plurality

As we do apprehend in the Law of Mutual Otherness the philosophicmulatedal foundation of the construction of social experience and the structure of group system, we are confronted with a very novel and original exposition in the concept of the “Community of Interpretation” for by Josiah Royce, a massive effort to provide an accommodation of the plurality of selves. within the body of the Monistic thought scheme. It merits a separate treatment.

This theory has exercised enormous influence on social behaviourist like G. H. Mead; it has been incorporated in the development of self by many social psychologists like Newcomb and C. Young and is represented by such thinkers as E. Cassirer and C. Mannheim. It is more reasonable to see how Royce himself expresses the position.

(i) Royce’s Definition of Community

“Our idea of the individual self is no mere present datum or collection of data, but is based upon an interpretation of the sense, of the tendency, of the coherence, and of the value of a life to which belongs the memory of its own past. And therefore these same facts will help us to see how the idea of the community is also an idea which is impressed upon us whenever we make a sufficiently successful and fruitful effort to interpret the sense, the coherent interest, and the value of the relations in which a great number of different selves stand to the past

(a) Plurality of Individuals

“Now when many contemporary and distinct individuals so interpret, each of his own personal life, that each says of an individual past or of a determinate future event or deed ‘that belongs to my life’, ‘that occurred or will occur to me’, then these many selves may be defined as hereby constituting, in a perfectly definite and objective, but also in a highly significant sense, a community. They may be said to constitute a community with reference to that particular past or future event or groups of events, which each of them accepts or interprets as belonging to his own personal past or to his own individual future.

“A community, whether of memory or of hope exists relatively to the past or future facts to which its several members stand in the common relation just defined. The concept of the community depends upon the interpretation which each individual member gives to his own past and to his own future

(b) Unity of Self Enlargement

“Our definition presupposes that there exist many individual selves .... But let these selves be able to look beyond their present chaos of fleeting ideas and of warring desires, far away into the past whence they came, and into the future whither their hopes lead them. As they thus look, let each of them ideally enlarge his own individual life, extending himself into the past and future, so as to say of some far-off event, ‘I view that event as a part of my own life.’ That former happening or achievement so predetermined the sense and the destiny which are now mine, that I am moved to regard it as belonging to my own past, or again for the coming event I wait and hope as an event of my own future.

And further, let the various ideal extensions, forwards and back-wards, include at least one common event, so that each of these selves regards that event as a part of his own life.

Then, with reference to the ideal common past and future in question, I say, that these selves constitute a community.

II

(ii) Incorrigibility of the Definition

That Royce does not observe the distinction between the concept of ‘logical class’ and that of a ‘community’ is quite discernible. A logical class is generated in the common property of objects; classifica­tion under the denomination of a common characteristic carves out a class of objects, independent of any other relations or properties they might have. Royce uses the concept of community synonimous with the class concept. Consequently, if a Martian and an earthly pagan, each could say to himself: “Well! this sun magnanimous sun I behold in the sky is my ancestor, then both form a community.

(a) External Loci

The idea of community involves mutual recognition and interpersonal contact. Royce puts its loci in an externality. If I wish to know that I am in communion with you, I should not know my relation with you, but must go beyond our mutual relations and see whether I and you have the same contents as possessions of our Individual selves or not. The directness of I and you is to be mediated by the intervention of the common core of possessions. Again, the common events, facts and episodes need not have mutual references, that is they need not warrant a logical and necessary transition from one to another. It is enough that if I breathe the air and a snail takes in the same air both of us form a community. Perhaps, the idea of explicit “minehood” must be there. The poor snail may not possess it. Then he may be ruled out of the community. Royce makes the idea of self-enlargement at ideal plane, so as to include some past or future (which should also be owned by others) into the realm of mine possessions, an integral component of community life. This leads to a slightly distinct point.

(b) Ego-Centricity

The principle of self-enlargement on the basis of increasing conscious­ness which expands to win over some past contents to the wealth of my ego-organization and which harnesses some future possibility to its benefit of results in merely an ego-centric experience eternally separated from all other persons who are also engaged in the same hectic business of personal aggrandizement. As Josiah Royce would recognize, it may happen that there are several many egos, each of them may be so big as to include all the universe in his ego-structure. Would it produce community? Surely not.

Each individual may pass through the same track of experience, but this never involves that they are in communion. The idea of community is a distinct notion cannot be explained away in terms of ego-expansion even at ideal plane. Let there be two persons A and B; if A in his self-enlargement involves all the contents of B’s life it will be a self-experience without becoming a social experience; and if B does the same, again it will be a personalistic experience. The essence of communion (of course, conscious union) is that both A and B should recognize each other, should have mutual reference in their dealings, should be affected by mutual presence, and should modify their behaviour in regard to each other.

Direct mutuality, let us conclude, constitutes the loci of every group life; dependence on some externality, however personal it may be, does not catch even the iota of a group life. Running in the spread of common contents is the directness of inter-personal transactions that constitute a community.

III

(iii) Implications of Identity

Now, we come to a point of still greater consequence. The core of Monistic thought is affirmed in the formulae of the identity of subject in the Multiplicity of contents. Josiah Royce’s formulation seems to move in quite opposite direction. His notion of community in its skeleton is the identity of content in the Multiplicity of subjects. Diverse subjectivities are pinned to some identical data in the becoming of a community. This is what Royce implies and yet it could not be expected of a Monistic thinker as he were:

(a) Meanings of Subject-Object Opposition

But, to me it seems that this riddle can be explained away in the context of the total Monistic Tradition of modern times. The Monistic formulae implies duality of knowing act with the con-sequence that every subjectivity implies an objectivity. The isolation and exclusion of an ego, consequently, involves a separation and ex­clusion of the related range of objects from the circle of another ego. It follows that if two selves are absolutely away from each other, they have no objectivity in common. Objective definition of a self, then, means the description of the pattern of objectivity in its possession. It further implies that change in the objectivity involves a change in the ego-existence. Therefore no object, no subject.

(b) Unity of Subject in Plurality of Subjects

Now, with this analysis in mind, we can see that identity of objects means the identity of subjectivity. If there is an absoluteness of common object, without some private sector of objectivity, there would be only one Self. The degree of the privacy of some object determines the degree of the isolatory existence of some mind. That many selves hold the same past in common means that one single subjectivity is pervading with its corresponding objectivity in the form of that past. It also follows that uncommon objects, memories, expectations are objectivities corresponding to some separate isolated selves. Josiah Royce therefore has no idea of self in social relations with other selves, of each other’s recognition and of mutual interaction. His definition of experience is always ego-centric in the Absolutistic Fashion to which he is always a party

His identity of content in the multiplicity of subjects is identity of a Subject in the Multiplicity of subjects or the Identity of Object in the Multiplicity of Objects.

His community of objects disguises the identity of mind. It means that behind the objective diversity of the social system there is unity of subjectivity.

IV

(iii) Community of Interpretation

Royce moves further from the community of memory and the community of future to the notion of the community of Interpretation of which he says that it is the ultimate structure of reality. This part of his exposition is exceptionally original, but one which exceptionally fails in positing the structure of social life. The inward Monism of his social philosophy comes out with all its implications.

“…A community, as we have seen, depends for its very constitution upon the way in which each of its members interprets himself and his life A self is a life whose unity and connectedness depends upon some sort of interpretation of plans, of memories, of hopes, and of deeds. If, then, there are communities, there are many selves who, despite their variety, so interpret their lives that all these lives, taken together, get the type of unity which our last lecture characterized.”

(a) Triadic Structure

“An interpretation is a relation which not only involves three terms, but brings them to a determinate order. One of the three terms is the interpreter; a second term is the object—the person or the mean­ing or the text—which is interpreted; the third is the person to whom the interpretation is addressed.”

When a process of conscious reflection goes on, a man may be said to interpret himself to himself. In this case, although one per­sonality, in the usual sense of the term, is in question, the relation is really triadic relation. And, in general, in such a case, the man who is said to be reflecting remembers some former promise or resolve of his own or perhaps reads an old letter that he once wrote or an entry in a diary. He then, at some present time, interprets this expression of his past self.

But, usually, he interprets this bit of his past self to his future self. ‘This’, he says, ‘what I meant when I made that promise is what I wrote or recorded or promised’. ‘Therefore’, he continues, addressing his future self, ‘I am now committed to doing thus’, ‘planning thus’ and so on.

The most general distinctions of past, present and future appear in a new light when considered with reference to the process of interpretation.

…The present potentially interprets the past to the future and continues ad infinitum.

…The triadic structure of our interpretations is strictly analogous, both to the psychological and to the metaphysical structure of the world of time. And each of these structures can be stated in terms of the other”.

(b) Self: A Community?

“Let one consider that when my present judgement, addressing my future self, counsels: ‘Do this’, this counsel, if followed, leads to an individual deed

The will to interpret undertakes to make of these three selves a Community.

I, the interpreter, regard you, my neighbour, as a realm of ideas

…I seek unity with you. And since, the same will to interpret you is also expressive of my analogous interests in all my neighbours, what I here and now specifically aim at is this: I mean to interpret you my neighbour to somebody else, to some other neighbour who is neither yourself nor myself. Three of us, then I seek to bring into the desired unity of interpretation.

There would be no melting together. But for me the vision of the successful interpretation would simply be the attainment of my goal as interpreter. This attainment would as little confound our persons as it would divide our person. We should remain, for me, many, even when viewed in this unity.

Let us give to this sort of community a technical name. Let us call it a Community of Interpretation.

(c) The Status of Interpreter

In a community thus defined, the interpreter obviously assumes, in a highly significant sense, the chief place. For the community is one of interpretation. Its unity is the ideal unity of insight the interpreter would possess… The interpreter appears, then, as the one of the three who is most of all the spirit of the community.

These selves, in all their variety, constitute the life of a single community of interpretation… The history of the universe, the whole order of time is the history and the order and the expression of this universal community.”

(d) The World as Community of Interpretation.

“The world is the community. The world contains its own interpreter. Its processes are infinite in their temporal varieties. But their interpreter, the spirit of the universal community—never absorb­ing varieties or permitting them to blend—compares and, through a real life, interprets them all.”

These lengthy quotations from Royce fully express his total philosophy of society which seems to make community-structure the ultimate category of the process of reality.

Accordingly, the self is a continuity, in which three moments distinctly come out within its dynamic flow: the past, the present, the future. Royce says that these distinctions are relative ego-centres among whom the Present singles out itself as the synthetic bond. It restores the unity, connects the past with the future through its mediation, contains both the aspects and becomes the meeting ground of the isolate and sundered individualities, and thereby makes the continuity of Consciousness possible. Thus, the Self is itself a community. Every ego is a community of interpretation in its own nature.

V

(iv) Refutation of the Community—Nature of Self

The problem is: whether the life of consciousness is divisiblein to three selves. Is there really a past self, which wills to be inter­preted? and is there really a future self which seeks interpretation from the Present self?

(a) Indivisible Subject

There is the past, the become; there is the present, the becoming; and there is the future the outcome of the becoming. All these three moments are the data before the same ever present single self. Reviewing the past, the self is inspecting its already become performance. The become is not living; it does not stand as a living person before the self reviewing it. The self passes judgement upon it, as it passes judgement on all other things, maybe self, maybe not self. The self tries to carry its beneficial aspect to the future, tries to mitigate its harmful impacts on the present conditions, and in doing so it remains indivisible and in clear objectivity keeps itself above board. It is delightful over its past success and feels shame over the disgraceful deeds. What-ever may be the reactions, these are the reactions of the same self.

(b) Undivided Self in Internal Conversation

The internal conversation is a talk with ones own self; conversation is undoubtedly a transitive relation, but, nevertheless, it is reflexive relation also. It is called ‘monologue’ when addressed to one self. The self who talks, the self to whom the talk is addressed is the same undivided self. Speaker, the listener and the one (the past activity about whom the counsel is delivered are not separate selves hammered out in the process of speech, of the single original self-hood. The speaker, the spoken about and the listener do not convey a tracheotomy; they are merely distinct roles of the same self, assumed in successive moments. The listener totally carries over all that the speaker contains; and when in turn it becomes a speaker, thence it conveys fully all that it has, to the listener. The spoken about, the listener, the speaker, and then the listener may be conceived as the mode of conversation in the life of consciousness. The same self is assuming the successive roles. The subjectivity is identical throughout all the objectivities of the themes, speaking and listening. To speak, to listen, to think, do not multiply the self, simply differentiate its roles. Consequently Royce’s plea that in community-structure is posited the real mode of conscious life is not valid. To be self means to be a subject; and therefore we reject the different functions of consciousness as distinct selves. None of them is a distinct subjectivity.

George H. Mead who develops his theory on the basis of Royce is not right when he says, “the self, as that which can be object to itself, is essentially a social structure and it arises in social experience. We can think of a person in isolatory confinement for the rest of his life, but who still has himself as a companion and is able to think and is able to converse with himself as he had communicated with others

It is the sort of social conduct which provides behaviour within which that self appears. We divide ourselves in all sorts of different selves. The unity and structure of the complete self reflects the unity and structure of the social process as a whole, and each of the elementary selves of which it is composed reflects the unity and structure of one of the various aspects of that process in which the individual is implicated.”

(c) Reduction of Community

The whole argument is mistaken. Objective differentiation does not constitute a subjective multiplication of the self. Therefore, the conception of the multiplicity of selves in the inner life of consciousness is untenable. Mental structure does not project a case of social structure. Consequently, to conceive the social world on the model of this inner structure is an outright reduction of the real multiplicity of selves to the unity of one subjectivity, which is none the less an absolute renunciation of the plurality of egos and mutual otherness which is the essence of community life.

The interpreter in social world about \s horn Royce speaks is not short of single subjectivity which turns the whole experience into an ego-centric experience.

(v) The Constitution of Community

Moreover, community does not follow the pattern of interpretation which makes the group dependent on an Interpreter who mediates between all of them. In a community of three, one is not mediated by an Interpreter (the most significant of them) to another. All the members of the community, A, B, C are directly linked in the communal relations so that (1) A—B, B—C, A—C, and their reverse are directly realized, (2) A—BC, B—CA, C—AB also at once come into being; and (3) A’s image of A—B—C, B’s idea of A—B—C, and C’s precept of A—B—C are immediate processes belonging to the various facets of this community.

Community is a web of direct relations between the member and in a small community of three individuals there are more or less three groups of immediate connections, as we have shown above, which come to operate without the intermediation of any of the participants. Royce’s theory neglects them all in the service of Monism, and thus has no place for genuine social systems.

VI

Spatial Nature of Society

Social relations are the constructive rules of social experience. This nature of social experience involves the presentation of the relata and the relatum. Consequently, in every social experience the related terms are also affirmed, otherwise the experience loses its social charac­ter, and succumbs to ordinary external or egoistic experience.

t is our business to explore the most general properties of the relations, shared by all of them.

(i) Generic Character of “Relatedness”‘

(a) La Aian Wa La Ghair (لا عین و لا غیر)

Let us conceive a society in which there are two individuals A and B inter-related in the social Relation R. R in its nature is dependent on A; for if there is no A, there is no R. But R is also dependent on B, if there is no B, there is no R. Consequently, R. is dependent on as well as independent of A.

It may be said that R is other than A, but this is false for R is identical with A, but it too is false. R, then may be defined as, it is neither identical with nor different from A. Similarly R is neither identical with nor different from B. This character reveals a categorical nature. They are La aian wa la Ghair i.e. “not-identity not difference.”

From this class character of the social relations, one may be led to argue (1) to the extent to which R is identical with A, it is different from B, and to the extent to which it is different from the former, it is identical with the latter, consequently (2) the entire social relation is reducible to the individuals who are brought under its fold. It is what the advocates of Individualism believe. Individualism is based on the conviction that the social Realities are re­ducible to their component individuals ; its methodological version makes this conviction a guiding precept of the analytical techniques for the investigation in the social problems.

However, to us, it is plain that the premise (1) and its consequence (2) both are unsatisfactory, rather distorting formulations. Our analysis has led us to the points that, in the society under review the relation R is neither identical with A nor with B, nor is different from A nor from B. From this information it never follows that to the extent to which R is different from A, it is identical with B and vice versa. The truth is: ‘R’ has a ‘Sein’ which is indivisible between A and B.

(b) Indivisible Wholeness

Related terms do not divide the relations for the relations are indivisible. It is never the case that a part of the love is myself and the rest is the alter; a section of the competition is A-group of firms and its another part is the B-group of enterprises. The indivisibility of relations among the individuals is the most important characteristic which clearly marks off the reality of society as distinct from that of the individuals. ‘Love’ is identical with the lover and different from the lover. Without being bisected in its essence it is implanted in the lover. The Gestalt character of the social relation say of ordination governs the order of the social hierarchy. It installs itself in every individual of the social system. Similar is the case with every relation. It is morphological, it grows and changes, it blossoms and decays, but whatever it is, it exists there without admitting fragmentations and distribution among the individuals. Therefore, it is an immense distortion to imagine that it has segments, some identical with one individual, and others identical with the alter-individual.

The class-characteristic that a social relation is identical with and different from the individual is a necessary property of the total seen of the relation. In a competitive society, competition is identical with every member and yet is different from him. Every one competes with and is exposed to competition from other individuals. Competition, thus, in its total feature is operative with every individual; it is a ‘whole­ness’ coincident with and yet different from everybody. Every individual is directly initiated in the struggle as it is identical with his being, continuous with his self; yet is initiated in a different realm, a realm which is other than his personal existence. It is this realm which is named as society. Individuals are akin to the beds of the plants, and the relations to the seedlings growing into plants. A growth quite distinct and separate takes place. A formation is accomplished, which can be reduced in no way to the ‘beds’ from which it has developed and unfolded. There is a lot of sense in the assertion that the bed are identi­cal with the plants and the plants have identity with the beds; but this assertion needs supplementation by another truth that the plants are different from the beds. It is in their gestalt property that they are neither different from nor identical with the soil that their real essence is concealed and exposed. They are indivisible, and make totalities; they have no segments which could be said to be identical with the earth, while others are to be conceived as different.

The simile between botanical growth and social order is not per­fect; for there is one fundamental difference that the plants are not relations and the social order, on the contrary, is a network of rela­tions. But, still it serves an important clarity by pointing out how there are other examples of indivisible “identity and difference” which result in new orders of existence.

VII

(ii) Spatial System

Social order as a network of relations is perfectly akin to space—a relational system composed of neighbourhoods or say of simultaneities. In fact, the most general properties discerned in the social relations are the properties of all sorts of relations and by way of implication of space itself.

(a) Identity with the terms

Space is identical with all the things which are found in its span. It is dependent for its existence on all the entities which are related in its fold. Remove the entities one by one, and the space transforms, changes, ‘contracts’. Remove all of them save one and no space is there. This is what the space is.

(b) Difference from the terms

But it is irreducible to the presentations of its terms. In space, every entity is introduced to an objective order different from its own being. Consequently, it is not a sum or an aggregation of entities; its essence is not exhaustible in the nature and wholeness of the dis­crete particular things which are inter-connected in it. Its difference from one existing thing does not make its identity with other compresent things. Consequently, its universal characteristic may be summed up as a ‘gestalt’ which cannot be extenuated to its component terms (entities), although it is identical with every thing which is there in it. It is this ‘wholeness’ which is invulnerable and is inviolably exhibited in the nature of space.

(c) Social Space

Space comes into being as soon as there is plurality. As we have told earlier, it is not itself the principle of individuation and thereby of plurality. On the contrary, it presupposes the latter; as soon as some entity comes into being along with an already pre-existing entity, the primitive spatial nexus also comes into being. A third thing added, the space transforms, and so on. A Science of all the possible trans-formations of space i.e. Mathematics may also develop along with.

Social system has all the properties of space and consequently falls within its general category.

VIII

(iii) Inadequacy of Individualism

Discovery of the essential nature of society in the class character of spatiality renders methodological Individualism exposed to the most powerful and logical criticism. It is very hard to imagine somebody rash enough to reduce the being of a triangle to the being of the three points. A triangle has its own constructive principles, possesses dis­tinctive structual properties, and has no similarity or resemblance with the constitutive character of the point or sum of points. Reduction to points cannot be carried away as a methodological principle. But, Individualism, obstinate and unhesitant, carries out reduction to the vanishing point, erazes the social Sein to the individual existence, and turns down to peep through the essences like circles, triangles, etc.

Shrinked to a very primitive thinking, Individualism is restive at the discrete atoms, without responding to the order which is generated in their compresence. Even the lower organisms develop a keen perception of space and move in it. What a Paradox! No Reductionist has doubted the credentials of a science of space nor has ever attempted to level the Geometric patterns down to the component points, yet hastens to fly in the face of social facts and insists on their treatment in terms of the individual persons.

Realism of space and Nominalism of Society are anomalous, for society itself is a space.

(b) Inconsistency of Individualism

The Individualist may argue that he moves in search of the society, but always comes across the individual persons. He is right; he does not see society in the sense in which he sees individuals. This difficulty is not unique; is not peculiar with the society alone. All kinds of space display it. We see the sense-data but do not see the physical space. This difficulty never forbids us to obtain the firm grasp of the spread of space; of the configuration and the gestalt in which the sensa are related with each other. We become aware of their mutual positions, their intervening distances and their relative directions. Similarly, in the perception of the society, we do behold the individual persons but that awareness does not run counter to our intuition of the society; we behold their relative status, their mutual distances, their crossing point and various constellations. Lower animals do not remain at sense-data level; they intuit distances between the sense-data; observe the pattern of their mutual connections and adjust their behaviour accordingly. Perhaps no organism indulges in the cynical resignation from space on the basis that it is not a sensory material, no human be­ing, consequently, is justified to claim that he does not observe the society on the plea that it does not appear to him as a person.

IX

(c) Existentialistic Reaction to Space and Society

It is something, not accidental, but correlative that all the philoso­phies that pose a contemptuous attitude towards space also have a derogatory disregard for society. Undoubtedly, the reaction is consistent; space and society are discredited on a uniform basis, because they exemplify the same principle in their givenness.

Existentialism, in Heidegger and Sartre, Jasper and Berdyaev is in search of existence and unveils it in the depths of subjectivity. This philosophic valuation which puts subjectivity on the highest point of the scale of Existence disvalue space as the principle of distraction and society that of dissipation of Existence. Authentic life starts with the power and process whereby the self regains and reconstructs itself as the central existence, and moves away from the invasions of nothingness. Absolute Personalism (Existentialism) conceives in space and society the encroachments of the threatening nothingness, inertia and immobility; and attempts to redeem itself in the dynamics of inner freedom, which is becoming, a-relational, ever-flowing and uncommitted.

Existentialism is thoroughly consistent in its treatment of space and society at the same plane. Society is an example of space. Existen­tialism is further right in its reaction against absolutism which looks in the social Existence a Sein of Higher Subjectivity. Like space, society is antithetical to the principle of subjectivity, and therefore, it is repugnant to the Existentialists.

Spatial character of social system and its being identical with and different from all the individuals inter-laced in its nature is the only adequate conception which steers away clearly from the vagaries of Individualism and Collectivism. Individualism is reluctant to go beyond the separate individuals and cogitate the system instituted in their compresence. Collectivism goes beyond the individuals to a higher Ego Activity and contradicts the Law of Mutual Otherness the cardinal principle of social Experience.

(iv) Conclusion

It is the concept of Spatial nature of society. We have pro-pounded, that complies with the constitutive Law of Social System. It recognizes in society formulation of a distinct order of being which contains the essential fulfilment of the law of Mutual Otherness.

Society comes into being necessarily; it is a natural and logical fact. The very actuality of plurality logically involves the formation of space. Likewise, the very becoming of the multiple of living indi­viduals logically entails the existence of society. This insight belies the Individualistic view that society is a human innovation.

Society is never a living Individuality, nor is it reducible to indivi­duals. It is a Sein in its own right; a Sein that does not warrant a subjectivity in its nature. It is an objectivity through and through. Just as it is ridiculous to portray a subjectivity in the constitution of Space, it is erroneous to imagine a subjectivity as the essence of society.

Space is not something over and above the points connected in it, it is continuous with them. Society, too, is not over and above the individuals; does not make a higher stage in their evolution; it is spread along with them. The individuals have subjectivity, but the society enjoys objectivity. Individuals have mind, but the society mere givenness. It is known but not a knower.

Space and its example society are objects without ever becoming subjects.

An examination of the degree of objectivity of society and its place in the formal scheme of being is our next inquiry.

X

4. SOCIAL IDEALISM TO SOCIAL REALISM

Every individual observer has an intuition of space, there are as many space-perceptions as are the perceiving individuals. It is also common place that every person carries with him an image of society; and there are as many pictures of the social order as are the spectators and participant members of the society. Since society is spatial in character, the transition from private spaces to the public space, from personal imageries of the society to the objective social order have one and the same principle in common.

Consequently it may be hoped that investigation into the epistemology of space-intuition would cast enormous light on the problem of the conciliation and integration of the private imageries into the comprehensiveness and totality of the objectively given spatial and social realities.

Some philosophers believe in the atomistic origin of the spatial presentations. Wundt in his “Physiological Psychology” adopts the principle of Ingression and says that all psychical processes are compound sensations; and are produced by the cerebral processes in their mutual fusion. Consequently, a spatial presentation may be regarded as a case of fusion of the discrete sensation-elements. Durkheim ex-tends this principle to society and talks about social representation as a case of welding together of the ideas of several individuals. This principle of ingression misses the important characterization of a sensation that it is, phenomenologically speaking, indivisible and simple presentation; a collective representation, similarly, is a simple event. It does not seem to be present as an impression upon impression or as idea of one individual impressed upon the idea of another individual.

Kant appears to be more correct in holding that space is not obtained from other particulars. He considers it apriori in origin. The apriority of an object in the Critique of Pure Reason, at once, involves two senses (1) self demonstrative character and (2) Ontological independence. When Kant concedes apriority to space, he recognizes its essence as independent of the particulars which it contains. Spatiality is a sui generi being; it is not obtained in the mutual fusion of the isolated sensations defining the discrete particulars. This Kantian exposition contains a grain of insight that cannot be weakened with the passage of time.

If space is apriori, in this sense, then what is its ontological status and morphological essence?

(i) Ideality of Space

Kant, regards spatiality as transcendentally ideal; and conceives its essence as ideation in nature. Therefore, it belongs to an observing mind.

Kant, thus offers Idealistic Interpretation of the principle of spatia­lity; and assigns to it the function of systematization and organization of the contents of sensibility. Ultimately, it is an ordering frame work which is introduced in the atomic data of experience represented through the sense organs to a perceiving mind. On the basis of this formulation, society in its nature, must be viewed as transcendentally ideal; and part of the structure of the observing person. It is operatively present as the ordering principle which works upon the presentations of discrete living entities. The sensibility of the spiritual beings—a possible faculty corresponding to our sense-organs, to be informed of the living individual persons—supplies the necessary atomic data upon which this principle works and reproduces them as formed con­nected and synthesized presentations known as associations.

(a) Society as a form of Intuition

Thus, society resides in the mind of the observer as a form of ‘spiritual’ intuition; its nature is subjective givenness; its function is objective arrangement. We have not yet brought out one important thread of Kantian thought, the conception that space is a particular and that it is Universal. It is such a particular that it contains other particulars; and consequently enjoy a distinct status. Its universality is proved according to Kant, by the fact that all the (limited) spaces are part of the Universal space. It may also be conceived that every particular society is a fragment of a larger society. Every given space can be expanded hence already seen as a part of a larger space. Every society may also be broadened without contradiction; and thus pre-supposes an unlimited and absolute society. The universal society constitutes the universal ground of all the societies on the model of the Absolute Space.

But, where do the Absolute Society and Space exist? In imagination. They are the Forms of observation which can work infinitely without contradiction. Their being is imaginative and exist for some subject of experience. Beyond the mental structure of the subject they do not exist. Complete Kantian exposition of the nature of space runs as follows :

(b) Absolute Particularity

It is an absolute particularity, which possesses an imaginative essence existing in the percipient and operates as the ordering set of the data given by the sensibility. Grafted on this model, society would be a universal particularity with an imaginative nature in the intuiting mind working upon the contents supplied by the ‘spiritual sensibility’.

Consequently, social Sein has the ontological nature of Ideality, transcending the particular individuals just like the space. Beyond the apprehending consciousness it does not exist. Its essence is the mode of apprehension.

(ii) Social Idealism

Society has Sein as an object to a subjectivity. Collectivism mis­construcs social order as itself of the nature of subjectivity. Idealism of Kant--as applied to social facts—takes it as an ‘object’ which is

never a subject, yet only exist so far as a subject apprehends it. In this philosophy, society is not a Mind, but given to or made by the Mind as a mode of perception. So, to this philosophy we give the name of social Idealism, which in its direct meaning is but Space-Idealism.

XI

Reduction of space (and by implication of society) to the form of perception has a tradition which does not start from Kant; it evinces support from Leibnitz also, who viewed space as a manifold of rela­tions in opposition to Newton (and Kant). For him, all relations, nevertheless, are intellectual; it is the knowing act which connects the discrete existing entities. Consequently, Leibnitzian space, in spite of its relational character as opposed to substantial nature, is ideal in its Sein just like the Kantian space. By implication, the Leibnitzian concept of society would reduce it to an Ideal manifold of relations imposed by the apprehension on the plurality of the living persons.

Reality, in Leibnitzian philosophy, is instituted in windowless monads, who according to a pre-established harmony (a sort of invisible hand) are synchronized with each other. The intuitive faculty, in the act of knowing, connects them in a system. This systematization and convertibility constitutes the phenomenon of space. Therefore, Idealism of society is an outright consequence of this philosophy; Phenomenal and imaginative character of space (and society) pronounced in Monodology falls in line with the Kantian approach, charged with the denial of Factual Objectivity of social system.

Society is an imaginative scheme in which the spectator fits the individuals; the Kingdom of Ends is a realm of autonomous wills acting on the principles of consistency and universality, the criterion of Moral behaviour. There is no social experience, no sympathetic response, no mutual commitment. There is simply an idea of moral duty which should not admit the influence of love hate indifference etc. The category of social relation as something real is absolutely foreign to the directions of Kantian thought.

Thus, in Leibnitz and Kant, depreciation of society and space to a form of intuition devour them with a ghostly existence, which has no reality-claim beyond and independent of the knowing mind. This reductionism to perception cannot be read along with Berkeleyanessist percipii. Berkley, in ontological sense, reduces every object to perception; but the perception does not remain the know-ledge of the mortal individuals; it is the universal consciousness which essentializes the nature of the existing objects including space; and they continue to be there even though we are not holding them in our thought. Berkeley’s thought, as Dr. M. M. Ahmad very sagaciously analyses, is definitely tended towards impersonalism and absoluteness of space; a sort of objectivity and continuity which is not modified by your perception or mine.

Berkeley’s ideas on that interpretation necessarily entail the following: If the particular objects have X value in the total scheme of being, space, which contains them, also has the same value. The degree of objectivity and reality of space is the same which belongs to the objects which are discovered in it. Leibnitz and Kant radically differ from Berkeley. To them, the space, I behold, is a framework bestowed on the sense-data by my mind; the space you perceive is the form of perception your knowing set imposes on them. There is multiplicity and relativity of space absolutely dependent on the subjective structure of the apprehending spirits. Berkeley would object to this position, and would remark that all of us apprehend the same universal space, which in its essence is dependent on the universal consciousness. There is, thus, a certain degree of realism in Berkeley, which is never found in Leibnitz and Kant. To them, if the objects, which are noticed in the space have X degree of reality, the latter would always have a Y degree of reality, which entails a knowing mind Z.

XII

We have taken to elaborate the Leibnitzian-Kantian view of space because of the tremendous influence it yields on the later thought deve­lopment, both in the theory of perception (of space) and in the theory of social formation. The influence is explicit in the developments leading to the maturity of Gestalt school; and implicit in the shaping of social theory.

The Graz school, for instance, considered that the external world does not contain configuration. The ‘shape’ is a product of the nervous structure, which receives atomic sensations. Wundt, propounding his concept of creative synthesis, writes, “The product which results from any collection of elements is more than the mere sum of these elements.” Meinong speaks of the mental synthesis, which presupposes elements which are synthesized and the result is a “Gestalt Qualitat” Benussi gives a very nice illustration that the four dots (A,B,C,D) of a square, if put without so joined by an intellect, may mean two oblique lines; may mean two triangles, etc. What they mean is the product of the perceiving mind. There are some inner processes, psychical factors which determine the shape-character of the presentations.

(ii) Kantianism in Social Theory

The traditions of social sciences are also saturated in this Kantian approach which is so much pregnant in the history of psychology of perception. It decisively makes the ‘form’ a function of imaginative creation.

This line of approach is followed by some of the most illustrious social thinkers.

C. H. Cooley writes, “In order to have society, it is evidently necessary that persons should get together somewhere; and they get together only as personal ideas in the mind. He further says, “The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society. I do not mean merely that society must be studied by the imagination—that is true of all investigations in higher researches—but that the object of study is primarily an imaginative idea or group of ideas in the mind that we have to imagine imaginations.”

This theory does not rob society off existence; it concedes reality to it. However, the reality is but ideal one. Hence it is social Idealism. Social Idealism is the philosophy, which conceives the nature of society as subjectively real (as an object), and objectively unreal (as a fact), and which makes it dependent on the imagination of the perceiving individuals.

Philosopher-Sociologist Florian Znaniecki upholds social Idealism under the principle of Humanistic Coefficient. He remarks: “In a word, the data of the cultural students are always ‘some-body’s’ never nobody’s data. This essential character of cultural data we call the humanistic co-efficient, because such data, as object of the students theoretic reflection, already belong to somebody else’s active experience and are such as this active experience makes them. If the humanistic coefficient is withdrawn the system would disappear and in itsstead he would find a disjointed mass of natural things and processes, without any similarity he started to investigate.”

He explains further, “Since the cultural system is what it is be-cause of human experience, and since the basis of its reality is its actual construction, the fact that it may be simultaneously constructed by many human agents must have a bearing on its the cultural world as much as the fact that it may be successively constructed time after time.

“A rite, a custom, even a personal habit remains identical as long as the agent intends to uphold it as the same, though it may change greatly in composition and structure; whereas at other times a slight deviation from a custom may constitute a break of the custom, if it is intended to break it. The logical implication of social Idealism, as presented above, is that the inquiry into the structural principles, functional connectives, and axiological patterns of a given society is essentially a survey of. the opinions, intents and images of the individuals who live in it. If it were true, the research as to the structure of the Soviet society would be accomplished in the mapping of the modes of apprehensions in which each citizen holds it; the nature of the Pak-society would be surveyed in the stock-taking of opinions of the Pak citizens. Reduction of the society to the imaginative operations and subjective intents would deprive the former of objective reality at par with the individuals which participate in it.

XIII

(iv) Establishment of Social Realism

(a) Irreducibility of Society to Conscious Experience

Social Idealism tends to deal with social facts in terms of the conscious experiences of the individuals. Treated as an imaginative construct, social system is equalized with the conscious states of the individual persons. This reduction is unable to explain the undesired turns the social events takes place, and ravages the whole social life. Nobody, neither the capitalists nor the working class like the cyclic changes and consequent instability in economic system, yet it takes place, and ravages the whole social life. Nobody wants war, yet war becomes inevitable; no one has planned the growth of slum areas, yet they exist and develop. There is a gulf between the logic of facts and the imaginative constructs. The society follows its own principles of becoming, its own law of fulfillment, and the fascinating individual images, ideal pictures are overthrown in the emergence of new facts. All of us know the ‘American Creed’ which is the image of society and life of more or less every American, yet also know the tragedy how far it differs from the real organization, causal processes and the total structure of the American Society. The analysis at the conscious level fails to grapple with such problems, which always pre-suppose a ‘social unconscious’ in their nature. The simple and innocent image that every one is free and pursues his ends anticipates a society of free mobility, but the accumulation of facts produces social conditions which engineer monopolistic concentration of powers threatening the very existence of ‘little man’. It is because facts, social facts, follow their own path independent of the awareness of the individuals. Their path represent the social unconscious.

In psychology, we have discarded the analysis at the conscious level and go to the depth of the individual’s unconscious. In social analysis, too, we are bound to discard social Idealism and confront the real logic of facts, which is independent of the individual imageries. It is, to the logic of facts, we refer, as existing in its own right, unarti­culated by the imaginations of the individuals, that constitutes the realm of social unconscious.

(b) Objective Logic Of Social Events.

A social event juxtaposed with another social event gives rise to a spatiality which has its own logic of structure and properties of exist­ence, that cannot be deduced from the image of any single component event. Social system refers to this real core of connection which makes the component events mutually committed in the generation of the social space. This basic insight makes possible the transition from social Idealism to social Realism.

XIV

(c) Objective Bases of Image

The stand-point of social Realism is further consolidated at the epistemological level by the analysis of an “image”. An image does not constitute the reality but simply reflects it. The reality is not dependent on it; it is, on the other hand, the image which is dependent for its existence on reality and its processes. In short, images do not have subjective origin for their specific character, they have objective basis. The subject of knowledge simply entertains them, and the objective world is reflected, not made in them.

Images are the plastic medium through which the objective facts communicate with the subject of experience. Social images are mirrors of social reality; and presuppose for their being possible not only the bearer of experience, but also the objective and real existence a the social order. Consequently if any piece of social inquiry, in its primitive level and ‘protocol’ stage is based on the images, it volunteers itself to the condemnation which attends to a second hand collection of facts.

Instead of direct social facts, their images in the individuals lend an inquiry to a charge which is difficult to meet. It makes the effort unnecessarily subject to the principles of image making and the laws of their translation to the objective facts. An image is a work of selec­tion; it gathers those pieces of reality, which are discerned by the sub­ject, under his own system of valuations, and thence integrate them in accordance with its own peculiar logic of synthesis. This is true of every image, system of images; and there are at least as many systems of images as are the individuals with their personal values, selections and constructions.

An inquiry which sees in the images, the stuff on the basis of which a real theory of society should be formulated, makes itself a prey to the psychology and principles of imagination, not only to the general laws but also to the empirical facts. If there is a slight mistake in the apprehension of the relation (Translation) between the image and the reality, the whole inquiry collapses. This analysis is alone sufficient to reject the principle of starting with the images rather than the objects of which they are images.

(d) The Stuff of Social System

Images do not constitute the social system; they are its selected reflections. The stuff and material of the social system is given in the nature of the ‘relations’ which are there between the individuals.

And what are the relations?

They are such ‘acts’ which have bi-polar or multipolar references; commit one individual with another individual, and condition every-one with everyone. The individual consciousness may have or may not have grasps of these ‘acts’ and their logical implications. When-ever, they are, they have their own impacts, which are inherent in their particular nature. It is in their givenness that the entire social system is generated.

The wishes of the individuals that they are part of the same social system or that they have broken away from it have no meaning. It is an irrevokable objective fact unconditioned by the intents (of the in­dividuals) whether the present social system is a continuity of some old tradition or makes a rupture from it. Bare intents and wishes do not create or destroy the identities, similarities and continuities. We can not accept Znanieki’s thesis of social Idealism. It needs not be some-body’s experience, before it is known to some foreign observer. It may be for the first time known although existing since long.

The distinction between a social fact and its image is always valid even when the primitive social connections are under review. A may be acquainted with A-B Relationship, but the acquaintance may not be thorough; it may be covering some elements of the entire fact. Moreover, even if it is of the whole of the relation, it does not make it, it is simply informed of what it is. In this manner, we come out of the reduction of Social Sein to Social image and out of the Social Idealism which is often implicit and sometimes as bold as in Cooley, Spengler, Znaniecki, Mannheim and others.

Transition from the position of Social Idealism to the philosophy of Social Realism leads towards the general conclusion that society is a spatial being independent of, though known partially or completely to, the individual observers.

XV

Is it a substance-like entity or a relational manifold?

Kant states his position as denoting the substance like nature of space that it is a particular like other particulars. It is a being in the same sense in which others like man, tree, ocean, etc are beings. He also points out a fundamental distinction of space in its being a Universal.

(i) Substantialism

The overall position of Newton and Kant is that space is a parti­cular characterized by universality.

Being a universal particular, it is the ground of all the sensuous entities and persists even at the removal of all the ‘particular’ parti­culars. Society, too, being spatial in nature, is a universal particular which must subsist even though there is no individual contained in it.

This is Substantialism.

From it, it follows that we may have a direct intuition of space and society independent of the entities that are arranged in their con-tents. The motion of particular individuals, their transformation from one point to another, their direction and location are absolutely deter-mined with reference to their respective ground of existence. Absolute rest and change, localization and stationing are meaningful terms in this scheme of thought.

(a) Ground Framework

Consequently, space-awareness is intuition of the ground frame-work that enables us to grasp the character and significance, status and importance of the entities that are found in it. This is the approach which is adopted by the varieties of Holism and various Gestalt schools.

Priority of the ‘Ground’ over the ‘parts’ is the common core of contact between the multiple of configurationistic and organismic theories. The most vital point in all of them is the specific use of the term “whole”. The whole is the earlier condition of the particular entities and provides the essential basis of their mutual connectedness. If it is withdrawn they fail to communicate any ‘Total’ sense and are nonetheless a heap of unconnected dissociated particles. It gives them the Gestalt Qualitat of synthesis and unity. Second law of Whee­ler states that the parts receive their properties from the ‘whole’, and the third law defines that the whole conditions the activities of its parts. It is the presence of the whole that puts the parts on a higher synthetic plan. According to Eherenfel, the whole is a content that is witnessed in the complex patterns; and confer on them the special properties they are noticed to possess. If there are six notes in a me­lody, it is the seventh character of wholeness that makes it what it is. The whole is not derived from the parts but predetermines them in its totality which produces the higher order of experience—called the melody. Burkhardt contends that Gestalten are Qualitatively irreducible.

(b) A-relationality

The whole, is, then a-relational. It is the ground of the things an( their relations. Rubin explains that a ground is relatively homogeneous and simpler than the figure in it. It lies beyond the operator of analysis.

Organismic theories, scrawling with their concept of the ‘whole’ ripple in the mystic epistemologies are bellicosic to the principle of analysis. Wertheimer deplores the extreme analytical approach to the scientific problems and Krueger holds that the unitary property of all experience is aboriginal and it is most intensely professed in the regions of feeling. An experience approaches the dimension of a feeling, the more perceptual content it embraces, and the less indistinct it becomes from the rest. But, “an emotional complex loses the intensity and plasticity of its emotional character to the degree that it be-comes analysed.”

(c) Mystical Experience

Consequently, the ‘whole’ is envisioned in an a-relational a-con­ceptual aperque.

Holistic thought and Gestalt theory, at this level of philosophizing are hardly discernible from Bergsonianism. Allama Iqbal and Khalifa Abdul Hakim, in line with them, entertain the intuitive mystic approach towards the Ground-reality which bestows wholeness and unification upon the particular atomic entities. The ‘whole’ does not admit any marking off; dots and lines are mere artifices of the apprehending Intellect; they are incisions which serve only pragmatic motif and destroy the ‘Ganzheit’ in atomic derangement of the intellectual abstractionism.

It is interesting to note, that Kant too is not far away from this conclusion. He conceives space as the background of the sensuous entities, and grasps in it a substance like a-relational being so much so that points, dots, lines, angles, etc. are mental inventions and imaginative constructions with the obvious character of ‘phenomenal’ trans-formation.

The organismic and voluntaristic philosophy is, indeed, a maturation of the ideas lurking in the First Critique of Kant. If intellect distorts the Reality, then anti-intellectual faculty grasps it; so says the contemporary organismic philosophy as an advancement upon the original Kantian view.

(d) Beyond Language

The Ground reality—space—is beyond discrimination and so it cannot be put in words. Words are atomic, particularistic and discrete therefore, it is uncommunicable. It can be grasped, apprehended but cannot be couched in language. It is pure perception; and in pure perception alone it discloses itself.

One who is privileged to intuit it, at once knows the form-quality it would accord on the figures, shapes, and patterns that emerge in its comprehensive pervasion. To him, the entire Geometry must be revealed apriority.

Society, being as pace, is mystically contacted in our perception. Apriorism is the method. One who becomes aware of the ground social space very well knows in advance what Qualities the particular groupings, social constellations, and community-forms, would assume. His knowledge is flashy, direct and independent of the particular observations.

Space is independent of the figures that are generated in its spread, is free from the atomic points, determined lines; it is basic to them and determine the essential irreducible properties of their formulation. Society is not an exception. Spangler, Muller, Frobenius must appear to give the aprioristic schemes of the “High Civilizations”. They are the choicest persons to enjoy the splendid intuition of the Primeval symbol the Ganzheit of every society, and consequently command a right to prophesy what is destined to become. History merely places at their service a stock of supporting evidence. “This high plane of contemplation once obtained” declared Spangler, “the rest is easy. To this single idea one can refer, and by it one can solve, without strain­ing or forcing, all these separate problems of religion, art-history, e.pistomology, ethics, politics, economics, with which the modern intellect has so passionately—and so vainly busied itself for decades.”

XVI

(ii) Relational Nature and Formalism

(a) Analysis of a Pattern

The spell of this ‘intuitive perception’, which moves beyond elements and components to seize the Gestalt—Qualitat and Unity, is broken as soon as some structure of organization is set before eyes there is no evidence of a higher synthetic plane, an isolable Ganzheit which governs the components and reproduces them into the patterns of units and organizations. The pattern of a series, the style of a clustre, the structure of a mass are not over and above the ‘elements-in-mutual relations.’ The Holistic stand-point of the unanalysability of a synthesis is not true. Every whole is composed of parts; and does not refer to some higher quality which systematizes it into the organiza­tion it has. If there are six notes in a melody, it is their functional succession and not the Seventh property of wholeness, that makes it what it is. Samuel Alexander explains, “Pure or absolute music is formal, because its subject is exhausted by the tones themselves as the musician designs them.” Remove the tones, one by one, and the music loses its character. It is entirely made of the tones and does not wait upon the so-called Totality (over and above the tones) to be-come a melody. Thus, the Holistic point of view of the distinguishable pragnanz is repudiated by the Principle of Formalism.

By formalism, I mean the philosophy which conceives that a whole comes into being in the relations, its constituent elements have with each other, and which rules out a distinct Ganzheit or pragnanz to be the apriori condition of their being what they are as part of the whole. A building, too, is a form; it consists in the bricks and their relative arrangements horizontal as well as vertical. The spectator views it from different angles, keeps them in his memory and orders them in his mind corresponding to the arrangements of the external building and enjoys the whole without completing it with some synthesis or imposing on it some form-quality from his own mind. When Herbert Read* writes to N. Gabo “Our modern civilization has to a large extent lost the sense of form Even in music, a great many listeners get on very comfortably without it, allowing their senses to be flooded formlessly and indiscriminately by the flow of sound”, he does not disprove our thesis; simply complains that the public is not generally attentive to the fulness of music. The people are satisfiedin the short limits of the immediately present flow; but the short limits are large enough to contain a number of the bits of sound in relative position to make a musical presentation enjoyable by the audience. If people do not appreciate a melody in its totalness, they enjoy its individual notes; and if their immersement in the immediacy delves them further, then parts of a musical note are sufficient forms consisting in small audible data in a concrete systematics to attract their attention.

(b) Analyzability of Forms

Forms, then are analyzable Triangleness is not an added property to three intersecting straight lines. It is synonymous with their interlocks. A circle is composed in the movement of a point maintaining an invariant distance with some other point. No irreducible, supra-relational pragnanz of circularity; no mystic element; no contribution from the mind.

Holism must give way to Formalism; mystic fervour to analytical sobriety. From the angle of composition, a shape is a construct; a natural form is a construction in nature; develops as the natural ele­ments get-together in specific contacts and relations. All artistic works are constructions in this sense; they do not depend on some indivisible wholeness; they are formulated in the relative ranking and inter-position of their particular pieces.

Modern Gestalt Theory adopts the philosophy of Formalism in its rejection of the Holistic stand-point and thus replaces Kant by Leibnitz      “to apply the Gestalt theory”, says Koffka, “means to find out which parts of nature belong as parts to functional wholes, to discover their position in those wholes, their degree of relative indepen­dence and the articulation of larger wholes into sub-wholes.”

(c) Space: Construction in Sub-parts

Space is a ‘whole’ consisting in the sub-wholes and as such it is a relational manifold. Consequently, it is not the ground of configura­tion but itself a configuration. It does not possess an apriori claim. It is constructed in the events that take place and becomes the direct object-matter of mathematics. Holistic formulae of its a-relationality makes it the basis of the Gestalten, we experience in the external nature, of the shapes we find in the physical universe, with the implication that it does not remain an object-matter of Mathematics, but becomes the presupposition of Mathematical intuition in the study of the figures and shapes that are said to emerge in its ground. The implication is not restricted to this limit; they are accentuated by their very logic to deny even that much to Mathematics. As the form-quality of figures is bestowed on them by their ground-reality, they are not amenable to Mathematical approach. Such are the necessary consequences of the seemingly innocent Kantian thesis that Space is a Universal Particular containing other particulars as their apriori ground.

But happily this thesis is incredible. Space is nothing beyond the particulars; it occupies the level of being that belongs to them and comes into being as they do become compresent. The particulars are directly related with one another (a simple case of spatial illustration); and in their relatedness they are constructive events of the spatial composition.

Space is not a particular but an interlock of relatedness of the particulars. A datum when apprehended as surrounded by others is a functional aspect of a configuration.

XVII

(iii) Objection to the Vacuousness of the Forms

We deny that a form or space contains (as Kant says) other parti­culars as distinct from its formality or design. To say that forms are empty and that any content may be put in them is a contradiction. If they are conceived in the Kantian manner (that they are particulars like other particulars) then they may be empty things to be filled up by other things. Newtonian space is such a particular which houses many particular bodies. But, this idea constitutes a misrepresentation of the nature of a relational manifold. Since, we have adopted the position that space is not a particular but a relational manifold, it should be demonstrated that the idea of containing something else, of accommodating any datum is foreign to its nature. A song, let us be illustrative, is a relational manifold; it is not vacuous; can contain nothing besides its Sein. It may be said that it has a content; sound is the datum the form of song contains. This is incorrect analysis. Sound is a common name of many sounds; and each sound is a moment of the form, a fabric of its becoming, an element in its architactomic. A song is a network of relations between many sounds. The song does not contain them ; on the contrary, they construct in their inter-relations the song as it were. Similarly, the structural properties of a gravita­tional field are functions of many chunks and parameters of gravitation. The stars, moons, and other celestial bodies individually determine the properties of the space around them. “Einstein’s gravitational laws specifically, one group of these laws set forth the relation between the mass of a gravitating body and the structure of the field around it; they are called structural laws.* Just as a fish swimming
in the sea agitates the water around it so a star, a comet, or a gallaxy distorts the geometry of the space-time through which it moves.” This means that the stars and other heavenly bodies are part of the design of the space-time. Gravitation is a name of the relations that make the field, and as such it stands for the warp and woof of the structure that comes into being in the co-existence of the bodies. Seeing in this light the entire gravitational field contains nothing beyond its Constitution.

It may be said that a triangle is capable of containing some point within its fold. (Figure I). This is definitely wrong.

The presence of D inside or outside A B C (figure II and III) constitutes a new form which may be represented as a manifold of triangles. D is a structural part of the design and not a something contained in it. Form is complete and contains nothing. It has structure and has nothing within its structure. Kant’s theory that space contains other particulars is contradictory to the nature of Formality.

(iv) Conclusion about Society

Space and society being forms (network of relations) contain noth­ing beyond their structure. They are not vacuous forms. ‘The smallest, social group is made of the two individuals. In the pair, there is but a single relationship possible… With a group of three individuals, there are no less than six potential relationships… In addition, there are the relationships among the sub-groupings.... With a group of four people, to carry the process of increase only one step further, the possibility of inter-relationship becomes enormously complicated, and the number increases 30 to 25.” The social system is an enormous space (or say form) it contains no individual within its structure; the individuals compresent by entering into social relations with each ether are the integral components of its design. Therefore, the idea that society is an a-relational ground reality that contains the individuals is an awful confusion.

Society is an objective being; it is relational in character and occu­pies the same level of being which is occupied by the individuals. It is directly constructed in the real social relationships of the individuals. It can be studied in its constructability; and can be analyzed into its components.

It is in short, a real spatial system. It is Leibnitzian rather than Kantian; it does not become ground of anything else.

NOTES