VIII. HUMAN SOCIETY 1. Human Cooperation is concerted action, cooperation. Society is the outcome of conscious and purposeful behavior. This does not mean that individuals have concluded contracts by virtue of which they have founded human society. The actions which have brought about social cooperation | Part Two Action Within The Framework Of Society VIII. HUMAN SOCIETY 1. Human Cooperation Society is concerted action cooperation. Society is the outcome of conscious and purposeful behavior. This does not mean that individuals have concluded contracts by virtue of which they have founded human society. The actions which have brought about social cooperation and daily bring it about anew do not aim at anything else than cooperation and coadjuvancy with others for the attainment of definite singular ends. The total complex of the mutual relations created by such concerted actions is called society. It substitutes collaboration for the at least conceivable isolated life of individuals. Society is division of labor and combination of labor. In his capacity as an acting animal man becomes a social animal. Individual man is born into a socially organized environment. In this sense alone we may accept the saying that society is logically or historically antecedent to the individual. In every other sense this dictum is either empty or nonsensical. The individual lives and acts within society. But society is nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperative effort. It exists nowhere else than in the actions of individual men. It is a delusion to search for it outside the actions of individuals. To speak of a society s autonomous and independent existence of its life its soul and its actions is a metaphor which can easily lead to crass errors. The questions whether society or the individual is to be considered as the ultimate end and whether the interests of society should be subordinated to those of the individuals or the interests of the individuals to those of society are fruitless. Action is always action of individual men. The social or societal element is a certain orientation of the actions of individual men. The category end makes sense only when applied to action. Theology and the metaphysics of history may discuss the ends of society and the designs which
