He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
societyquotes
But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.
And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the [completed] nature is the end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.
We should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.
Words like society and state are so concretized that they are almost personified. In the opinion of the man in the street, the state, far more than any king in history, is the inexhaustible giver of all good; the state is invoked, made responsible, grumbled at, and so on and so forth. society is elevated to the rank of a supreme ethical principle; indeed, it is even credited with positively creative capacities.
In so far as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists.
Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.
It has long been our contention that “dread of society [soziale Angsty]” is the essence of what is called conscience.
But it is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it. Society thus brands what is unpleasant as untrue, denying the conclusions of psychoanalysis with logical and pertinent arguments. These arguments originate from affective sources, however, and society holds to these prejudices against all attempts at refutation.
arguments / idea / Psychoanalysis / society / untrue
Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.
power / society / stable / totalitarianism