Social Order Theory

As an indispensable element of social life, social order is closely related to the survival and development of every social subject. It's therefore always man's aspiring target of value to construct a reasonable social order to create conditions for man's survival and development. In the history of the evolution of thoughts, social order has been a key issue concerned with thinkers. In different times, different thinkers put forward different answers in different methods to this issue. Today, the practical demand of our social development has obviously made it necessary and urgent to deepen the study of social order issue on basis of our present times.Based on the demand of theoretical study and the requirement of social practice, this dissertation studies mainly the general essence and law of social order in social life from the aspect of social philosophy and tries to give out forcible answers to questions such as"what is social order?"and"How does social order exist?". Because there are different dimensions such as synchronic dimension, diachronic dimension, factual dimension, and value dimension in the study of social life from the aspect of social philosophy, this dissertation, required by its object and aim of study, tries to combine all these dimensions into a whole. The study of this dissertation is therefore from a general perspective from which this dissertation tries to organically integrate different levels of methods of study such as the method of historical materialism, the method of dialectic thinking, the method of structural and functional analysis, the method of systematical study, and the method of semantics and pragmatics, to achieve the aim of study.The main body of this dissertation has seven chapters. The preface explains the premises such as the meaning and methods of this study, and hackles the achievements in the study of social order from the evolution of thoughts and the present status of theoretical study. In the main body, this dissertation focuses on: the essence and relevant attributes of social order (the first chapter); the practical foundation and ontological premise of social order (the second chapter); the structure, strata, and types of social order (the third chapter); the functions and conditions for the maintenance of social order (the forth chapter); the motives and law of the transformation of social order (the fifth chapter); the basic principles, measures, and means of the evaluation of social order (the sixth chapter); the basic characteristics and prospect of the transformation of social order in China today (the seventh chapter). This dissertation holds that, by the analysis and explanation of the above issues logically relevant, it can reveal systematically the essence and general law of social order from the aspect of social philosophy to lay a necessary theoretical foundation for the practical study of social order.The study of this dissertation shows that: from the aspect of social philosophy, social order is a category that expresses the attributes and status of social existence. In the sense of relatively separating fact from value and reality from idealism, social order is both an objective fact showing social stability or status of stability and an inclination of value showing harmony or status of harmony in the social operation and development. However, the two are integrated in the process of the practice of the social subjects or the process of the social operation and development. As the result of the integration of the two, the ideal social order is a harmonious order, whose realization is a dynamic process when the social subjects seek social harmony.As a category of totality, society can be understood from aspects such as social entity, social activity, and social relationship. As a social attribute and a kind of status, social order can be therefore understood also from aspects such as social entity, social activity, and social relationship. The consistent status of social activity, the structural status of social relationship, and the restrictive status of social attributes are therefore the concrete embodiments of the essence of social order, that is,"the status of social stability and harmony", which is the generalization of the concrete content of the three aspects. This dissertation holds that, only from these aspects, can the essence of social order be understood really deeply.As a kind of special social existence, social order has many essential attributes, in which the combination of the basic social attributes and the essence of social order, including the integration of the subjectivity and objectivity, the concrete and the abstract, and the stability and changeability, reveals the essence of social order from different aspects.Practice is the real starting point to seek the essence of social order, because social order, whose subjects are made up of individuals or groups or states, is generated from practice. Social relationship is the ontological premise of social order, because social order is an attribute and a kind of status of social order. The social structural system is the inherent warrant for the existence of social order. The social regulating system forms the institutional carrier of social order. Social institution has the affections such as restriction, direction, and regulation on social subjects whose effective implementation makes the generation and continuation of social order possible.Social relationship, social institution, and social order are interchangeable.As the structural existence, social order is a systematical and organic whole composed by different elements according to their inherent relationship. But its basic elements are the kernel of value, social rules, and social authority. The kernel of value filters and governs the other elements, social rules regulate the concrete content of social order, and social authority is the real dominant power for the generation and continuation of social order. Meanwhile, social order has a structural relation between different levels which is constructed by economic order, political order, and cultural order in the one hand, and regional order, national order, and world order in the other hand. From the perspective of ideal types, social order can be classified into hierarchical order, equal order, monopolar order, multipolar order, spontaneous order, man-made order, etc.The chief functions of social order are integration and control. When the functions of social order are weakened or dismissed, there will be serious social problems such as social conflicts, social disassembly, and lack of social regulations.For the transformation of social order, the evolution of the social structural system is its inherent motive; the extension of individual's need, the gaming of interest between groups and organizations, the promotion of the state power system, etc, are its subjective motives; the innovation of social regulation system is its direct motive. So, the transformation of social order is comprehensive, unbalanced, spontaneous, and selective, while the status between different orders is only a special stage in the transformation of social order.The evaluation of social order is an integrated process of factual cognizing and value judging. So, we should hold principles such as the combination of science and value, reality and history, and rationality and validity in the evaluation of social order. Because good operation and harmonious development of social structural system is the objective measure of the evaluation of social order and the development of social subjects is the subjective measure, we should combine absoluteness, relativity, reality, and idealism into a whole in the evaluation of social order. As for the means of the evaluation of social order, they are both qualitative and quantitative, and we should therefore make efforts constantly to perfect the index system of the evaluation of social order.Today, Chinese social order is experiencing rapid transformation which is originated from double social transformation. So, the way of the transformation of Chinese social order today is gradual but rather difficult. And the possible prospect as the result of Chinese social transformation may be that it will be more valid, reasonable, and just.The innovations of this dissertation are mainly the following three aspects: Firstly, it constructs a logic frame to review the essence and its related questions of social order. Secondly, it discusses the essence and law of the existence of social order from the aspects of social philosophy and the perspective of study of totality. Thirdly, it integrates organically different levels of methods of study such as the method of historical materialism, the method of dialectic thinking, the method of structural and functional analysis, the method of systematical study, and the method of semantics and pragmatics from specific theoretical aspects and perspective of study. In some sense, these three aspects offer the logic premise and lay a theoretical foundation for the practical study of social order.