When discussing the development of the human being, we must first focus on man’s culture. Culture’s principal meaning is ‘to cultivate, or to make use of something for one’s own progress/use’. There are three types of culture: Objective (all the objects we produce such as houses, cars, etc.), Subjective (the human subject itself such as a ‘high-cultured’ person) and Functional (act of an individual’s intellect improving). These cultural acts can be either spiritual or material, the former being able to survive past the body’s death via the spirit, and the latter being only temporary.
The human being is a personal individual, who is able to develop through his intellect and freewill. Certain acts are organized in a hierarchy of man’s development, with the highest of the human being’s acts being for the purpose of coming into greater relation with the Absolute Good (God). Even though man is a free existing being with acts of his own accord, it has been stated many times that he is a social being and because of this he can only develop to his potential with the cooperation of other people (through a community).
A community starts with the family. The human individual establishes the ‘I-THOU’ relationship with a fellow member, seeing and recognizing the existence of another being. But beyond this binary relationship, the human also enters into the ‘WE’ relationship when there is a family. In the family, man is able to first perceive the common good.
The next form of the community is the state. The state carries the means and the responsibility of taking care of all of the members of its national community. As history shows, it is important that the state does not overstep it’s bounds, or else human freedom and expression will be subdued, leading to slavery. This view sees the state as the subsistent being and the individual as a mere ‘candle-flicker’ in the greater whole. It is the wrong and evil approach.
In the same way, the state must be sure not to neglect the community so much so that the human members have complete and total freedom, thus leading to anarchy and chaos. Both extremes lead ultimately to the degression of the human being’s potential of development. Because for man, the good is the continuous fuller revelation of the potentiality of his nature.
Hence the best way to achieve the common good of the community while also allowing man to develop himself, is by striving to keep a community in line with these three attributes: (1) An autonomous, substantial, and self-contained personality which needs community for existence, (2) community understood as a relational being and (3) Common good that unites all to a common goal which is, at the same time, the goal of every individual. These attributes that Krapiec details further provide the means of arriving at his definition of a community, namely that a community is a society of rational free persons who realize common good through acts of knowledge and love and creativity by being “for another”.
Krąpiec, Mieczysław A. I-Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology, translated by M. Lescoe et al. New Britain, Conn.: Mariel Publications, 1983.