Unidad 1: El Ser Humano, Sociedad y Cultura PDF

# UNIDAD 1. ## "EL SER HUMANO, SOCIEDAD Y CULTURA" Given that human beings express their behavior in a normative way, we need an order to regulate our attitude in the social sphere. Law can facilitate or hinder the realization of human freedom or any other purpose or value of law. The justice of th...

# UNIDAD 1. ## "EL SER HUMANO, SOCIEDAD Y CULTURA" Given that human beings express their behavior in a normative way, we need an order to regulate our attitude in the social sphere. Law can facilitate or hinder the realization of human freedom or any other purpose or value of law. The justice of the law has to do with the way in which legal rules and institutions guarantee and protect human rights and develop democratic procedures. Law is part of the culture of a society and presents specific cultural traits that attend to the historical time and geographical space, as well as to the legal family in which it is integrated. This leads us to ask the following questions: * How would society be without legal rules? * Wouldn't it be a completely different world than the one we live in now? Human nature makes us complex beings, which is why it is necessary to transcend. Human complexity is the result of the intertwining of many domains: whether of spirituality, sensitivity, emotion, will, reason, conscience, instinct and sociability. Social interaction allows men and women to relate, live together, communicate and participate in mutually beneficial behaviors with energies, interests and values that contribute to the development of human communities. * It is a biological organism that fuels reasoning. * It regulates the community and provides a set of norms that aid in maintaining order. ## 1.1 EL SER HUMANO Law deals with social human life, organizes it and establishes patterns of behavior for human life in society. Human beings and social life are the conditioning elements of law. * Human being * Culture * The other * Society * Right * Society is a group of people who have the ability to think * Human being as an individual * Person ## 1.2 SOCIEDAD Society is the organized group of individuals who live and establish different types of relationships in a given time and place, where law is an aspect of society, a very important one, although it is not equivalent to the entirety of society, as there are other types of relationships (economic, social, political, cultural, etc.) and different rules from legal ones (religious, moral, social and customs, among others). The jurist and philosopher Recaséns Siches expresses that society is human life itself, therefore, the urgent need that the human being has to live together, not only because in this way his existence is less complicated, but also because together they help each other and even, thanks to that union, progress exists. It is important to note that the term society has several meanings, it is generally applied to any group of living beings with a certain degree of internal organization, whose goal is to obtain food and defend themselves from other factors that endanger their survival as a species. Each relationship is given from assigned or won positions, to which they associate and recognize duties and specific advantages (*status*). Some social relationships are motivated, organized and directed to carry out common purposes that require coordinated actions, cooperation to achieve goals or objectives; individuals acquire a sense of solidarity and develop a feeling of belonging; in this way, social "groups" are formed. ## 1.3 CULTURA Y DERECHO Culture has a function of life, since thanks to it every society is capable of perpetuating itself. Culture is transmitted from generation to generation, because descendants will take what is useful to them, will discard the old and will incorporate the improvements that are more appropriate and, once this process is finished, they will transmit their culture to contemporary individuals. In its historical evolution and in the constant search for collective organization, humanity has invented regulatory instruments of order: norms of different kinds intend to contain the natural selfishness and the propensity to violence of men. Religion, morals, ethics, conventions, along with law, discipline communal relations. The distinctive factors in these groups of norms are sometimes very subtle; later, we will make the differentiation. The jurist and philosopher Recaséns Siches also clearly summarizes that it is culture when he says that it is "what the members of a given society learn from their predecessors and contemporaries in that society, and what they add and modify." In every society that has a culture we see the presence of law, because it is necessary to regulate relationships between humans, since every act of man is aimed at a particular interest, and there will be cases where interests clash and problems arise. Here is where law comes in to reduce conflicts and try to ensure that everyone achieves their goals. In short, law is a set of rules that govern the external conduct of men in society, and these rules, along with other normative bodies and other factors and social institutions make up culture. Here, then, is why law is culture: * Law is part of tradition, religious holidays are examples of traditions made into law, recall the toga and wig of the 17th century in some courts as symbols of tradition in the legal field. * Repeated and accepted acts by a community, over time, become mandatory and their fulfillment may be forced by a court, even if the fulfillment of a specific custom is not found in the legislation. Anglo-Saxon customary law exemplifies custom as a feature of its culture. * Law is also a collection of vast and organized thoughts, doctrine, jurisprudence, laws, judgments, contracts, treaties, are an essential part of the cultural life of a country, because they regulate social coexistence and at the same time are a characteristic hallmark of their idiosyncrasy. Respect for the law becomes (or should become) one of the common individual habits of man, from the one who goes to religious services on Sundays, the one who is a good father, a good neighbor, votes in elections and pays his taxes. Thinking legally can be something powerful in the way of being of a people, as happened with the Romans. Respect for the law has been part of the discourse. * Law, like a cultural product, also has its language, its fashions, its myths, its legends, its picaresque, its rituals, lawyers have their clothing, their social circle and even their geographical location. Law, therefore, is an essential element of culture that distinguishes, together with other elements, a society at a given time and place; law that evolves and transforms alongside that community and responds to its needs and interests. It is impossible to have a culture without law and a law outside of or against a culture.