The natural and cultural being of man unfolds only in the social system. The latter is an ordered whole, including both individual individuals and social groups, united by various connections and relationships. Belonging to such a group has traditionally been understood as social origin. In addition, a person is in a variety of social, material, political and spiritual conditions of his existence, formation and activity, which is commonly called the social environment.
The social system has its own specific laws by which it functions and develops. The basis of these laws is the interaction between individuals. Buber proposed to call this interaction “I-you”, Max Weber believed that all social relations were built on him, Pitirim Sorokin and Eugene Habermas derived the theory of communication from him. John Mill believed that social background also plays a role in this interaction, because, as a rule, we are dealing with the actions and passions of people belonging to different social classes.
Elements of the social system are interconnected by a whole network of stable and orderly connections called the structure of society. It is due to various factors - this is the distribution of labor, and the social origin of people belonging to different groups and classes and fighting for their interests. Social groups themselves are relatively stable communities of people who have common interests, aspirations, values and norms of behavior and are formed within the framework of a certain historical stage in the development of society. For example, in ancient India, such groups were varna. A caste society based on such a division served as a model for Plato, who praised him in his dialogues "Laws" and "On the State."
The philosophy of the state, in which a clear definition of social groups was first voiced, belongs to Thomas Hobbes. In his work Leviathan, he said that society consists of a certain number of people united by common interests or business. He singled out ordered and disordered groups, as well as associations of a private or political nature.
The Great French Revolution and its consequences forced philosophers to reconsider the role of such groups or classes in the historical process. Most English historians - contemporaries of those events - considered revolutions to be conspiracies and coups that violate the normal course of events. Hegel, in the literal sense of the word, applauded the revolution, saying that it liberates not the concrete, but the abstract individual and helps to form a civil society.
This universal nature of historical events, embodied in the categories of state, people, and certain institutions, so fascinated European historians and philosophers of the 19th century that they generally began to lose interest in individual phenomena. The national spirit, the class struggle, the national or social origin of people, and the impulses of relations between large public groups have become the main topic of philosophical discussions. Particularly acute was the question of which particular criteria determine membership in social groups. If English economists considered economic and political criteria, then Marx - relations of ownership of the means of production, Gumplovich - biological and racial, Cooley - family and clan, and so on.
The modern structure of social philosophy also includes the idea of social groups and classes, however, in a different interpretation. First of all, these are the theories of the “middle” and “new middle class” (Kroner, Aron, Myers), as well as “social stratification” (Sorokin). The latter theory defines the signs and criteria of stratification of society into groups, such as employment, income, education, psychology, beliefs and so on.
However, strata are more unstable than traditional groups and classes, since they imply vertical and horizontal social mobility both between groups and within them. Max Weber singled out such important factors in the formation of strata as social prestige and stereotypes, which form both norms of behavior and appearance, as well as status that implies certain social roles.