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Chapter 5 - Plato: Human Society as Organism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2022

Frederick Neuhouser
Frederick Neuhouser
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University
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Summary

Chapter 5 examines Plato's account of the "fevered" polis in exploring the thesis that societies are to be understood as composed of parts well suited to carry out specific functions and that it is primarily in this respect that they resemble biological organisms. Thus, in the healthy polis each part carries out the specific function appropriate to it, and functions are coordinated such that all are well executed and society's essential needs satisfied. From Plato we learn that a defensible account of social pathology embraces a weak holism, according to which "ill" may apply to society as a whole without any part of it being ill (since it is institutions or societies that are dysfunctional, not individuals). At the same time, it eschews strong a normative holism that holds that things can be good or bad for societies without them also being good or bad for individual members.

Keywords

social pathologysocial ontologysociety-organism analogyPlatofunctionalismdependencedivision of laborpolishealthholism
Type
Chapter
Information
Diagnosing Social Pathology
Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim
 , pp. 92 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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