SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

MR. R. BRONNER'S LECTURE AT THE TECHNICAL COLLEGE

The following is a digest of a lecture on "Social Philosophy" delivered on Thursday night at the Technical College by Mr. R. Bronner, resident tutor of the Workers' Educational Association:—

Social philosophy, Mr. Bronner said, represents that modern attempt to solve the problem of the true relation of the individual to society. History never discovers men living in isolation; they are always in some form of association and subject to some form of government. The perennial quest of civilised society is for an organisation which secures co-operation and harmony between governed and governors. The progress of organic evolution reveals on the one hand a decay of the social instinct which secures co-operation and social life in such communities as the ants and bees; and on the other hand a growth of conscious or purposive association. In primitive human life association was based on material or economic grounds. It gave an advantage in procuring food and also in preserving life, that is, in hunting and in war. With the progress of civilisation the basis of association becomes more ideal. Society no longer exists entirely for the material interest of the individual, but also for the development of his higher or moral nature. Thus it becomes essential to comprehend the moral nature of man and determine what is his highest good. This is an ethical problem and is basic to the political problem, which is to secure a form of government consistent with the claim or the individual to realise his highest good. Greek philosophy made an enormous advance in both the ethical and the political problem, and the Athenian state represented an ideal of citizenship, where the individual felt himself in harmony with the laws of the State. The Greek State was a city-State and the modern nation State presents a more difficult political problem. The Greeks regarded a slave population, existing outside the pale of citizenship, as necessary for the drudgery of social life.

The modern state, Mr. Bronner continued, does not sanction slavery, and another way of accomplishing the menial tasks of society has to be devised. Already in the Roman state, the ethical basis of the Greek state was replaced by a merely legal basis. From the break-up of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the modern period in the 16th century, political theory made little or no headway. But from that time the political consciousness of civilisation has never ceased in its progressive attempts to comprehend the nature and function of the state. The impetus given to the physical and mathematical sciences by the discoveries of Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Newton, gave rise to the mechanical explanation of society. The laws which governed the physical universe were held to be supreme in the region of human affairs also. Human freewill was discredited, and the reign of natural law held supreme. Such a philosophy left no scope for a humane interpretation of society. The continued advance of physical science, and the great inventions of the 18th century further strengthened this materialist philosophy. It was also extended by a misapplication of the discoveries of the biological and evolutionary sciences of the 19th century, especially Darwin's formulation of natural selection in 1858. In accordance with the principles of this philosophy, man's life was wholly determined by natural causes. In Huxley's phrase, "all spirit and spontaneity" were to be banished from human life. The state became the unexplained and purely negative embodiment of "do not," and the anti-state individualism of "Laissez-faire" and "self-interest" accordingly became the prevailing political and economic gospel. The social evils which followed were denounced by Carlyle, Ruskin, William Morris, and the Christian Socialists, and it soon became manifest that an entirely different social philosophy was needed. The Idealist school formed in England towards the end of the 19th century represents the idealist or spiritual reaction against this prevailing individualist creed and material philosophy. On the principles of idealism the State is regarded as being the product and organ of the moral will of man; and man is regarded as being determined, not by the natural laws which govern the physical and organic universe, but in accordance with the dictates of his moral or spiritual nature. Social philosophy combines and unifies the results achieved by the social sciences, such as economics, politics, ethics, jurisprudence, biology, and, in the light of this knowledge, formulates a theory of the state on the philosophical grounds of the fundamental moral and political nature of man.

Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW : 1888 - 1954), Wednesday 16 April 1919, page 3