Abstract

In the Hobbesian model, the necessity for the state derives from a virtual contract originating out of a natural state of everyone against everyone. It thus defends self-protection by urging certain rights be given up to construct the state. Our contemporary situation demands that we consider an alternative model. Accordingly, the present chapter proposes to consider another view of the natural state considering temporality and affectivity. Every human being, while persevering in existence, is subject to multiple health variations, physical and psychological. Human temporal finitude is expressed in such vulnerability. A newborn baby needs motherly care. The aged often need help in their daily activities. Such are fundamental facts of finite human vulnerability. It signifies that living is not solitary monadic being but a being-together with other human beings. Furthermore, such interactions are not only causal or instrumental, but affective. The affectivity of social life constitutes an ontological need for intimacy. Being intimate with someone constitutes basic social interactions, an affectivity manifest in communal life. Based on these two factors—vulnerability and intimacy—the formation of community is founded on a very different foundation than more superficial analyses based in instrumentality, which treats of others by taking advantage of them, for profit, for efficiency. Confucian ideas can contribute to better understanding community in this way, so that we can imagine a social phenomenology inspired by Confucian ethical thoughts.