Q&A: Collective, Organism, and Soul
Collective, Organism, and Soul
Question
Have a good week!
1—Materialists see a human being as a fiction made up of many interacting systems that together create one function called “a person.” I would like to argue that one should seemingly distinguish between a collective such as a “nation,” which is a fiction composed of many individuals, and the relation between the soul-like “I” and the organs. After all, we experience our existence as an “I” in a whole and undivided way, and that is not derived from the interactions among our organs; whereas there is no complete and unified entity that is “the nation.”
That is, we perceive the nation as a whole that, with respect to certain things, expresses the “I” as an individual, and all our knowledge of a nation as a collective is derived only after our grasp of the private “I.” By contrast, we do not perceive our organs as part of the existence of the “I,” but only as a material collective that sustains our unified entity.
2—If so, then I would like to argue that what differentiates and defines an organism is derived only from the use a person makes of it. For all natural systems maintain interactions with one another—an atom builds a molecule, which builds a cell, or builds a stone, which builds a mountain, and so on. So what defines something as an organism? Therefore it is only when it stands and serves the human being (or a living creature). So even a computer does not really have full organic significance, because who decided whether to define the hardware or the various particles as unified? Only because a human being uses it as one thing does it have one meaning.
And likewise regarding reality itself, I would like to argue that it has no meaning as an order, except because a person stands before it and relates to it that way?
Thank you very much!
Answer
I’m not sure I understood the argument. The wording is cumbersome. If you are claiming that a human being is a more natural organism than a nation, I agree. If you conclude from this that a nation is a fiction, I do not necessarily agree.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t see the difference that way. In the human “I” there is a soul that turns the physical aggregate of cells and organs into an organism. In a nation, there does not seem to be such a spiritual component (unless you are Hegel). But I’m not at all sure, because from my point of view, the “I” that I am aware of is my “I” because I have an inward perspective. Even regarding the “I” of others, I cannot say it exists except by analogy to myself. So a nation too is something other than my “I,” and therefore I cannot identify it from an inner point of view. And still, there is room for an intuition that sees it as an existing entity, or as a people with a shared spirit (like Hegel, or the guardian angel of Esau in the language of the Sages), or not.
I am arguing that there is no indication at all that a nation is a unified organism and not merely a fiction, and this is because we know the “I” directly and immediately, and therefore we know that the functionality of the organs does not create the unified “I.” By contrast, we know the collective unity of the “nation” only by virtue of its function, and therefore there is no reason to say that it has something beyond that (a soul?).
And here I added that the same is true of every organism in the world: the only reason we define its web of interactions as one thing is because of the functions we have currently decided to use it for (but these are arbitrary with respect to an essential unifying definition), except for the human being, whose essence as a unified being does not stem from functional use, but from our soul-conscious, direct awareness. Therefore there must be a soul beyond that!