Social perichoresis

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Social perichoresis (from ancient Greek περιχώρησις perichóresis , to give each other space and to penetrate each other ') is an interaction model designed by the Catholic theologian Wilhelm Korff and, in contrast to the term trinitarian perichoresis used in Christian dogmatics , describes the mutual entanglement and interaction of the different behavioral drives that consistently determine people's social interactions .

Drive components

Initially, three drive components clearly stand out from one another:

  1. The impetus based on the impulse to use and dispose, aimed at fulfilling one's own needs, to deal with the other in an objective, functional manner .
  2. The competing behavioral drive that is rooted in the intraspecific impulse of aggression and is aimed at self-control and self-assertion .
  3. The evolutionary and phylogenetic history, probably the youngest interactive drive to benevolent and caring behavior that grew out of the brood care impulse .

If a genuinely humanly determined, ultimately interpersonal style is to be ensured in the respective execution of the concrete interaction, then this appears in truth - and this shows the particular ethical relevance of the whole - only while maintaining the differently coordinated, but simultaneous presence and participation of all three components possible: the human being is the human being of need, competitor and carer at the same time. Wherever interactions are therefore monocausal , this inevitably has to be at the expense of their human reason. Nonetheless, the individual act of interaction only receives its special orientation from the fact that one of the three components has the dominant, goal-determining function, and this regardless of the fact that ultimately it is the rules and norms that ultimately unfold and convey as specific cultural elements from the logic of perichoresis are - the faits sociaux as faits moraux in the sense of Émile Durkheim , from which the respective interactive act in the end gains its own, also individually binding form.

Given these given premises , for example, an act of purchase aimed at a decidedly objective exchange differs from a sporting competition based on tough competition rules or from an act of inter-individual assistance that allows self-interest to subside. The behavioral processes named here are functionally highly different forms of action, but with those that can be consistently identified as in principle ethically justifiable social manifestations.

Double function of the social term

If one assumes that the social term not only marks the ontological difference to the individual, but also, with its contrasts to antisocial , antisocial and antisocial, at the same time marks an ethical difference, this indicates that, irrespective of its dual function, it is also consistently an ethical one Salary in itself. The current linguistic usage emphasizes this ethical content here, of course, predominantly from the specifically altruistic- caring behavioral component, as is expressed in some attribute terms such as social question, social conscience, social character, social services or social justice in their own way.

So it makes sense to assign the ethical pair of opposites social - unsocial in the end at the same time unreservedly to the classic altruism-egoism scheme. Nevertheless, in view of the elementary importance of these interrelationships for practical action, a decidedly more differentiated point of view is required to record the actual ethical structural content of the social. For this, however, we are in fact referred back to the seemingly much more complex, previously determined social perichoretic facts, since the social is not a simple, self-defining quantity whose ethical proprium can be reduced to the altruistic component.

Functional, objective and competing components

The functional, objective and competing components are no less ethically relevant in the phenomenon of the social. Since Adam Smith (1776) at the latest, we have known about the immense importance of the self-interest of the individual, ethically positive, competition for the maintenance and expansion of overall economic prosperity, or since Georg Simmel (1908), and ultimately since Immanuel Kant (1784) the productive importance of the conflicting element for any prospective development of the individual as well as society, or since Emile Durkheim (1883) about the importance of the functional-factual component as perhaps the most efficient interdependence and solidarity factor in a highly complex world of modern division of labor .

Nonetheless, it is the functional-factual component in the phenomenon of the social, particularly emphatically worked out by Durkheim, in the view of which it has indeed become one of the fathers of modern sociology , which has been around since the end of the 19th and then even more so in the first Half of the 20th century was targeted by a diverse, socio-philosophical criticism, some of which still have an impact today: According to this, the ethically “real” of the social does not go together with the functional and material. This already applies to the conception of a “pure sociology” by Ferdinand Tönnies (1887) with his pejorative evaluation of “society” compared to the “community” that is built up from the we-consciousness. This applies to Martin Heidegger's Existential Philosophy (1927) with its almost mystical “concern” about the being of being-self that turns against everything objectifying. But this also applies to the specific philosophical approaches of Martin Buber (1923), Ferdinand Ebners (1921) and Eberhard Grisebachs (1928) with their disqualification of the "id" in people's dealings with people as "improper" in favor of a pure you -Immediacy. And finally, this applies to the negative dialectic of the critical theory of Adorno and Horkheimer (1947), according to which the human true form of society can only be found in “anticipation of totality”, and d. H. at the same time appears in the permanent process of critical negation of what is ever given and can be planned.

This is countered by the fact that the functional-factual component in human social behavior has its own task that cannot be represented by anything else: It is it that makes the almost inexhaustible variety of human relationships, including their socially overarching normative coordination, possible in the first place. This gives it its due moral relevance. If such relationships are to preserve their humane character, this also necessarily includes the preservation of the competitive and benevolent drive components in the actions of the actors that come into play here at the same time. But this is exactly what the logic of assignment and the inherent dynamics of social perichoresis, which pushes towards human coherence, mean. It confronts human action, even before any further question about the possible reason for its unconditional claim ( conscience , human dignity , likeness of God ), with the claim that it is naturally given unpopularity . This opens up a problem access to the understanding of the social, which at the same time points the way to the elucidation of further ethical fundamental questions, such as the contribution of Gerfried W. Hunold on an ethics of the finding of identity (1978) or Markus Vogt's interaction-theoretical analysis of the basic elements of justice (1997 a . 1999) show.

literature

  • Wilhelm Korff: Norm and morality. Investigations into the logic of normative reason . Mainz 1973, 2nd edition Freiburg Br. 1985, esp. 78-101 ISBN 978-3-49547567-6 .
  • Wilhelm Korff: The natural and historical unpopularity of human normativity . In: Handbuch der christlichen Ethik, Freiburg-Basel-Wien 1978. Updated new edition 1993, Vol. 1, 147–164.
  • Wilhelm Korff: Social Perichoresis . In: Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche Vol. 11th 3rd edition Freiburg 2001, pp. 237–240.
  • Gerfried W. Hunold: Identity and Norm. Studies on the moral structure of the individual in the social . 1978.