What is Meant
Shahrur sees society as passing through successive stages, beginning with the family and then moving to the clan, the tribe, and the people, until it ends in the state. In this sense, the state is not the beginning of human association but the final stage of its organizational development.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: Historical
- Argument movement: Society progresses from the family to the state.
- Central terms: family, clan, tribe, state.
- Degree of centrality: Central.
The atom presents an evolutionary conception of the construction of human association, in which the structure shifts from small kinship circles to a broader political entity, namely the state.
Links That Help with Reading
Grounding
- Supporting text: “It moves from the family to the clan, then the tribe, then the people, reaching the state.”
Place of the Grounding in the Book
- Book: The State and Society.
- Location: In the middle section of the book, within his discussion of the development of human association and property.
- Type of grounding: Close evidence.
- Marker for verification: this instinct developed
- Reading note: The passage is appropriate because it places instincts and social structure within a movement of development inside society, and it is close to the atom presented here.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: Directly documented
- Meaning of the level: The atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of reading: The wording above is an analytical summary and is not to be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted word for word.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is declarative; it establishes a result on which what follows in the argument depends.
Editorial Note
The sequence has been kept as is, with clearer wording.