The Origin of Sociality

Abstract

What is the condition that distinguishes human being from other animals? It is the basic negativity: i.e. the basic prohibition for which there is no reason. The domain where a basic negativity is valid defines the boundary of social system. Therefore, the quest for the origin of the basic negativity is the research for the origin of human sociality. This paper is preparation for this research. According to the theory of 'selfish gene' in sociobiology, the primitive sociality is possible between individuals in each animal species. We can define the sociality proper to human being as the difference from the primitive sociality. By contrasting two cases of sacrificial murders - the infanticide of chimpanzees and murder of Christ - I will propose a hypothesis that human sociality is marked as the success of projection of the instance of the third person into the transcendental level. On the one hand, we can interpret the infanticide in chimpanzees as repetitive failures of the projection of the instance of the third person, if we compare it with the unique sexual behavior in bonobos that can be considered as a kind of functionally equivalent alternative for the infanticide. On the other hand, the murder of Christ can be interpreted as deconstruction of the projection of the instance of the third person. Two cases elucidate the mechanism of the projection of the instance of the third person from both sides.