What is the Reason Why Man is a Social Being?

Man is a social being because man is a being that forms a social collective and lives and acts in social relationship.

General Secretary Kim Jong Il said:

Man is a social being. This implies that he is a being who lives in a social relationship. This term is used to distinguish man from a natural being.

Man forms a society unlike the other natural and biological beings. All his activities are made only in a social collective which is combined on the basis of certain social relations.

Of course some animals live in groups, make their nests and get food jointly according to certain orders. However, there are limitations and qualitative differences between the gregarious life of animals and the living mode of man who forms a social collective and lives in social relationship.

Monkeys or chimpanzees keep the sound and walking style peculiar to them though they grow up apart from their groups. This tells that the mode of existence and characteristics of individual animals depend not on the gregarious relationship but on their gifted instinct.

But different is the case of man. Though man was born with excellent talents, he can grow up physically but cannot do upright walking which is peculiar to man to say nothing of linguistic and thinking activities, if they live apart from social relationship. After all, man cannot be said to be a human in a true meaning only with his birth. He can live and develop only when he makes social relationship, living in a social collective. This is the reason why man is a social being.

Man is one and only social being in the world.

Society consists of man as well as social wealth and social relationship that are not natural things and phenomena. Social wealth and social relationship are created by man, the social being. If we insist that social wealth and relationship made by man are also social beings, there can be no difference between man and them. Therefore, we should consider that a social being is the man who makes social relationship and creates and enjoys social wealth.

We should not understand the meaning of social being used in the Juche philosophy as that of the previous philosophies.

The Marxist philosophical thought divided society into the material and the spiritual and regarded the former as a social being and the latter as social consciousness. So the concept of “social being” used by the preceding classics included man. The preceding classics studied man in social relationship but they never used the word of social being as a peculiar meaning that defines the essential attributes of man.

Admitting the aspect that man is restricted and influenced by social relationship, the Juche idea explained that it consists of the basic and essential aspect that man makes social relationship actively and transforms and dominates it in a purposeful and conscious manner, thus perfectly clarifying that man is a social being.