Riza C.

Camacho

1211114

Theory 4 (Social Dimensions of Education)

Saturday, 1:00-4:00PM

Society and the Self in the Philosophy of George Herbert Mead

By Andrew J. Reck

Similar to the Philippines, American culture includes the customs and traditions of its people. It

is said also that the America is the “melting pot” in which different cultures have contributed their

own distinct flavors.

In the essay "The Philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey in Their American Setting,"

published in 1930, George Herbert Mead wrote that culture in America-history, literature,

and philosophy- was shot through with a nostalgia for the richer and profounder spiritual

experience across the Atlantic. It followed from the situation that culture in America was

not an Interpretation of American life.

Considered to be a diverse country, culture war is still a part of American life. This culture war

brings together a various collection of political, religious and culture ideas into a contradiction

that has manage to persist through decade of social change.

 "America's native culture accepted the forms and standards of European culture," Mead

charged that it "was frankly imitative . . . confessedly inferior, not different . . . not

indigenous. The cultivated American was a tourist even if he never left American

shores."

Building relationship to its neighboring country, America is vulnerable of adapting their cultures

and traditions. As people come and go, they bring and leave footprints of what they believe in.

These traditions and culture are up to this day a tradition rampantly observe in American land.

The relation of philosophy to society pivots on the relation of the individual to society.

The statement implies that society has a huge impact in the formation and development of an

individual’s personality. It is rooted to what a person believes in. It may also be derived from the

idea of other people surrounding the individual.

No organism can live in complete isolation from other organism, whether same or of

different species. (Mead)

As the saying goes, “No man is an island”. Humans get to interact with people around him/her.

Individuals as a member of the society share a common culture with his/her fellow being.
 Selfhood is a social achievement. Selfhood is subsequent to human socio-physiological

individuals and their earliest social grouping. It emerges as a consequence of social

processes of communication and interaction.

Selfhood mainly concerns with how a person apprehend and understand who he or she is in the

society. Society somehow affect the perception of an individual to himself/herself, to that of

others and to the society in general.

Mead traced the origin of mind and, by consequence, of human society and of the self-

back to the gesture. By definition a gesture is the act of one organism in order to

stimulate a response on the part of other organism(s). The gesture is inherently social.

Gestures is the instant reaction of an individual. It is inherently social because man gets most of

his reactions and gestures through socializing. These gestures has something to do with the

language we use as stated below.

Language is essential to the development of the self. Its origin in the vocal gesture is not

grounded on the imitation of sounds. Assuming the attitude or the role of the other is

reminiscent of the idea of sympathy in eighteenth-century moral philosophy.