ABSTRACT
The doctrine of a real communal soul in the form of a Folk Ghost seems first to have received prominence in the romantic reaction against the French Revolution and the doctrines of the Enlightenment as to the rights and powers of reasonable man. Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics bear testimony as to the vitality not only of their own but also of previous Greek thought in this field. But, though Plato draws a significant analogy between the individual and the body politic, he does not speak of a communal mind distinct from the minds of the individual philosophers. Gierke, who has become a sort of patron saint of political pluralists, goes to the greatest extremes in this hypostatizing of the principle of unity. In the presence of the obvious conflict between the principle of individual responsibility and that of collective responsibility, the philosopher is tempted to decide for one or the other of these principles.
