I don't
believe in these isolated individual arguments.
People never existed in a state of nature and
they never existed on separate islands.
If Dee is asking for a
reason why individuals owe something to
society, I can offer an answer. We all owe
something to society because society has
literally created us as human beings. All of
our innate capacities are no more than raw
potential when we are born. It is society that
cultivates those capacities so that we can use
them. And it is society that gives each of us
the tools to use those capacities. One of the
best examples of this is language. We all
learn language from those around us. But it is
language that gives us the concepts that allow
us to think and do anything of value. In a
word, without society we are simply wild
animals.
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