The discovery of society? - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The discovery of society?

MPSlide2

19th

C

Abstract Right

Morality

Ethical Life Family Civil Society State

Civil Society =

In 21

st

C =

Non-State, not-for-profit, voluntary entities formed by people in the social sphere that are separate from the State and the market. CSOs represent a wide range of interests and ties. They can include community-based 

organizations

 as well as non-governmental 

organizations

 (NGOs).

19

th

C Civil Society

For Hegel, it is the sphere of need, exchange, labour, and consumption – and its integrative elements – justice, the police and corporations, grow out of the interchange between free agents in market relations.

It

is a very urban, commercial picture. And one that is ethically distinct from the natural/instinctive/particular relations of the family; and the rational order of the state.Slide3

Renaissance Society

Let every man be master of his time

T

ill seven at night: to make society

The sweeter welcome, we will keep

ourself

Till supper-time alone: while then, God be with you! Macbeth III(i)

JAQUES: I thank you for your company; but, good faith, I had as lief have been myself alone. ORLANDO: And so had I; but yet, for fashion sake, I thank you too for your society. JAQUES: God be wi' you: let's meet as little as we can. ORLANDO: I do desire we may be better strangers. As you like it III(ii) Slide4

Society = company

purposeful and deliberate association

Michaelangelo

Merisa

da Caravaggio (1571-1610):

Representation of company:

The Card SharpsBut see also the Calling of St Matthew in Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi (Rome)Slide5
Slide6

Society/ Company

The state or condition of being politically confederated or allied; confederation.

Obs.

1533   J. Bellenden tr. Livy

Hist. Rome

(1901) I. 27  

Romulus..send

legatis to his nychtbouris desiring to haue societe [L. societatem] & mariage of thame to his new pepill.1548   Hall's Vnion: Henry VII f. xxvv,   To exhorte and requyre the kyng of England, to entre hys company and societee in armes.1623   J. Bingham tr. Xenophon Hist. 87   You haue now an opportunitie presented vnto you..by entring into societie of war with vs, to be reuenged.Usually as a mass noun: partnership in business or some commercial transaction; a contract of partnership. Obs.1555   in J. D. Marwick Rec. Convent. Royal Burghs Scotl. (1870) I. 11   That na fremen..tak vpoun hand to keip sociatie in merchandice or ressaif ony geir to trauffique thairwith fra ony vnfremen.1569   in J. H. Burton Reg. Privy Council Scotl. (1877) 1st Ser. I. 681   The said

Johnne enterit in societie with the said abbot.1592   W. West Symbolæogr.: 1st Pt. §26   Societie is a contract by consent about a thing to be had and used in common on both sides.1681   J. Dalrymple Inst. Law Scotl. ixvi §1   Society is..a commutative contract, whereby the contractors communicate each to other some stock, work or profit. a. The fact or state of being with another or others, esp. friends or friendly people; the presence of a companion or companions. Freq. with possessive adjective. Also in extended use with reference to things, abstract qualities, etc.c1275   Kentish Serm. in J. Hall Select. Early Middle Eng. (1920) I. 218   Lepre is man deseurd of þo compainie of gode and of alle his angles.▸a1393   Gower Confessio Amantis (Fairf.) vi. l. 2117   To take His compaignie.c1405  (▸c1390)    Chaucer Miller's Tale (Hengwrt) (2003) l. 18   A chambre hadde he in that hostelrie Allone, with outen any compaignye.a1425  (▸a1400)    Prick of Conscience (Galba & Harl.) (1863) 6844   Devels..sal be sene, Omang þe synful þat sal be in helle, In whas company þai sal ay duelle.a1500  (▸?a1450)    Gesta Romanorum (BL Add. 9066) 181   My sone... Be wele ware of womans companye.1590   R. Harvey Plaine Percevall 23   Stay good neighbors, now I am for your company.1631   E. Reynolds Three Treat. ii. 221   Entertaine no Treatie, have no commerce with it [sc. lust], be not in its company alone.1725   A. Ramsay Gentle Shepherd

iii. iii,   I

lo'ed

your company; And ever had a warmness in my breast, That made ye dearer to me than the rest.Slide7

Oeconomy

/Yconomy/Economy

The art or science of household management,

esp.

with regard to expenditure. Now only in domestic economy

(see

domestic adj. and n. Special uses

). Cf. husbandry n. 1.▸c1454   R. Pecock Folewer to Donet 49 (MED),   Prudence is departid into many braunchis..as..into þilk kunnyng which is callid ‘yconomy’ or ‘husbondri’.c1487   J. Skelton tr. Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca Historica v. 346   Thurgh his moche industryous reson he fonde first the vsual drynke of wyne, And the iconomy otherwise callyd husbondrye.c1530   Pol. Rel. & L. Poems (1866) 29   The Doctrynal Princyplis and Proverbys Yconomie, or Howsolde keepyng.[1579   T. North tr. Plutarch Liues 392   A part wherof is Oeconomia, commonly called houserule.] 1616   P. Hay Vision Balaams Asse xi. 197   Who are you to oppose your selues against the rule of Oeconomie in families.Slide8

Early Modern Society

John

Barston

,

The Safeguard to Society (1576)Renaissance civic humanism, with societies formed for their members’ common weal under lawful government.Barston

is thinking of multiple societies within a state, not a single society with a government. He associates society with civility in urban settings (esp. Tewkesbury!).

And the ‘state economical’ –

ie. marriage and household – is the first society.Slide9

Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England (2010)

‘Whereas in 1576 ‘society’ was a species of social interaction through which and by which things were (or should be) done, by

1976

it invoked national and local crucibles in which things happened.

‘Society’ was no longer a means to instigate social action and change: an institution in its own right, like ‘the family’ or ‘the state’. Rather it described the systematic outcome – and structural prerequisite – of actions and changes.

‘….society was increasingly applied to a widening spectrum of social interaction, all of which was rooted in the basic concept of voluntary and peaceful association.’ pp.104-5Slide10

Hobbes

There is no natural society

And the act of the constitution of a political community is also an act of subordination to the sovereign, and has not inherent stability.

For Hobbes, it is either atomized agents, or political orders under a sovereign. And there is deep suspicion of any intermediary bodies, or associations – such as religious societies, etc

., (as in Rousseau).

Although, under a sovereign and peaceful order such societies might become possible and might be tolerated.Slide11

Individuals, Households,

Patriarchy

Locke:

Natural Society, compatibility with patriarchy

Civil government – requiring a new foundationInitial act of contract is to form a community to be bound by common interpretation of the law of nature – and to entrust certain institutions with fixing and applying that law.

The original society is one based on households and customary relations. The new order is founded on consent.

But also ‘trust’ – as a legal and sociological concept.

But what Locke doesn’t have much idea of, is an associational life inside the polity, and made up of many associations and organisations. Partly a function of the Calvinist roots of his account – individual calling.Slide12

Vice and Passion

Classical world of the virtues

Plato: Courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice

Aristotle: virtues and reason; and the mean

Cicero: Virtue is a disposition [habitus] of spirit [animus] in harmony with the measure of nature and of reason. So when we know all its parts, we will have considered all the force of simple

honor

. It has four parts: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance.

Prudence is the knowledge of what is good, what is bad, and what is neutral. [...]Justice is a disposition of spirit which, having preserved the common utility [communis utilitas--perhaps the "common good"], gives to each his due [dignitas*]. Its origin derives from nature; then some rules become custom because of the calculation of utility; and after that both the things that derive from nature and those that have been proved by custom are sanctified by religion and by the fear of law ...Fortitudo [courage] is considered the undertaking of dangers and the enduring of labors ...Temperance is a firm and moderate control exercised by calculation over lust and other impulses of the spirit that are not right [not straight] ...Fallen Man of Reformation WorldSlide13

Fallen Man of Reformation World

No account of natural goodness, virtues are remedies for vices, and passions need restraining by law and punishment. But why trust government to be any better?

Only at the end of 17

th

C do we find a transformation of passions into a source of order (potentially destructive, but potentially beneficial):

Out of ferocity, avarice and ambition, the three vices which lead all mankind astray, society makes national defence, commerce, and politics, and thereby causes the strength, the wealth , and the wisdom of republics: out of these three great vices which would certainly destroy man on earth, civil happiness emerges. This principle proves the existence of divine providence: through its intelligent laws the passions of men who are entirely occupied by the pursuit of their private utility are transformed into a civil order which permits men to live in human society. G.

Vico

paras 132-3.Slide14

Conflicting accounts of nature

Smith’s Wealth of Nations vs Moral Sentiments

Ferguson’s Essay on the History of

CiVil

SocietyThere is a Hobbesian view of man’s natural unsociability.

Appetitive/Voracious

Order only through coercion

No natural sociabilityNatural successors: Mandeville, Rousseau; but also those focusing on trade and commerce. But responded to in the late 17th early 18th CShaftesbury and Hutcheson, on natural sociability, the pleasures of society, and a life of the virtues.Concern with importance of social virtues in Scottish EnlightenmentSlide15

Mandeville

…it is a great while, before that Nature can be rightly understood; and it is the Work of Ages to find out the true Use of the Passions, and to raise a Politician, that can make every Frailty of the Members add Strength to the whole Body, and by dextrous Management turn private Vices into

publick

Benefits.

The root of evil, avarice, /That

damn’d

ill-

natur’d baneful vice,Was slave to prodigality,/That noble sin; whilst luxuryEmploy’d a million of the poor/ And odious pride a million more;Envy itself and Vanity,/Were Ministers of IndustrySlide16

Avarice, Vanity, Consumption and Society

Part of this emerging discourse involves the recognition that the things we want – what our passions drive us to seek – are in part dependent on pleasing others, requiring that they too disguise their motives.

Men endeavour to hide themselves, their ugly nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true motives of their hearts in the specious

cloke

of sociableness

, and their concern for the common good, they are in hopes of concealing their filthy appetites and the deformity of their desires; while they are conscious within of the fondness for their darling lusts, and their incapacity,

barefac’d

, to tread the arduous and rugged path of virtue. [Orig ed. 262]Glory: - a superlative felicity which a man, who is conscious of having perform’d a noble action, enjoys in self-love, whilst he is thinking on the applause he expects of others. [41] MandevilleSlide17

Hogarth: A Rake’s Progress 1733: The heir; The LeveeSlide18

The orgy The ArrestSlide19

The marriage; The Gaming HouseSlide20

The prison; the madhouseSlide21

Seeing oneself in the imagined other

Edward Ward, Character of a Beau (London Spy, 1703)

He is a Narcissus that is fallen in love with himself and his own shadow. Within doors he’s a great friend to a great glass, before which he admires he works of his tailor more than the whole creation…His head is a fool’s egg which lies in a nest of hair. His brains are the yolk, which conceit has addled. He is a strolling assistant to drapers and tailors, showing every day a new pattern and a new fashion,…Though his parents have given him an expensive education, he’s s dumb to rhetoric as a fool to reason; as blind to philosophy as an owl in the sunshine; and as deaf to understanding as a priest to charity…All that I know he is good for is to give a poor fellow a dinner, so that he will do him homage, and to help him serve the turn of an insatiate woman, instead of a dildo.Slide22
Slide23

An economy of regard or a Market?

‘The great transformation’ from customary exchange to impersonal markets is incomplete. Reciprocal exchange pervades modern societies. It takes the form of ‘gifts’, reciprocated without certainty. Reciprocity is driven by the pursuit of ‘regard’. Money is avoided in regard exchanges, because it is impersonal. Instead, regard signals are embodied in goods, in services, or in time (attention). The personalization of gifts authenticates the signal. Reciprocal exchange persists in family formation, in intergenerational transfers, in labour markets, in agriculture, the professions, in marketing, entrepreneurship, and also in corruption and crime. Reciprocal exchange is constrained by time and psychic energy, but is likely to persist as a preferred source of regard.

Avner

Offer EHR 1997Slide24

And reciprocity

Craig

Muldrew

‘…the contractual bargaining of trade was described as mutual benefit, and the word interest was not used in the sense of self-interest, but referred to mutual advantage, benefit or profit of two or more parties.’Slide25

economies

Of Regard

Of Honour

Of Appearance

Of PowerOf WitOf InterestLady Armelia

Braddock and

Mrs Elphinstone 1792Slide26

Understanding social change

Readings: origin of Society

changing character of civilisation

The Scottish EnlightenmentSlide27

John

Millar,Origin of ranks

Condition of many little better than that of brute animals

Capacity and disposition to improvement

Similarity of wants produces uniformity to progressMeeting basic wants results in further development of wants, further refinements, advances in sciences and manufactures, increasing commerce and population.Slide28

Further changes

Influence on paternal authority – moderation ‘ by living in affluence and security, he is more at leisure to exert the social affections …. Being often engaged in the business and conversation of the world, … he becomes less impatient of contradiction and less apt to give way to sallies of passion. (169)

(and) the progress of arts and manufactures will contribute to undermine and weaken his power, and raise even the members of his family to a state of freedom and independence.

As improvements and conveniences increase, more are exempted from labour, and endeavour to improve their enjoyments, and become addicted to all those amusements and diversions which give exercise to their minds, and relieve them from languor an weariness, the effects of idleness and dissipation.

BUT…the love of pleasure, when carried to excess, is apt to weaken and destroy those passions which it endeavours to gratify…the effect of great luxury and dissipation is to diminish the rank and dignity of women and render them subservient to the purposes of animal enjoyment…as in the voluptuousness of eastern nationsSlide29

Punishment and Government: Lord Kames

Where the motive to society is defence, there is little sense of common interest (especially in peacetime); it is only when government becomes more mature that the nature of public good becomes understood and the impact of private quarrels on public realm is recognised. So government begins to fine for violations – compositions - (see vendettas).

From there begin to fine for violations with no private dimension

and from compositions to punishment (first with, then crowding out compositions) – and then claiming sole right to punish.

The power of the sword add great authority of government – yet not instantaneous since great strength is beyond the legislature until its authority is firmly established

Then can become more rigorous; but ‘when a people have become tame and submissive under a long and steady administration, punishments become less necessary, and therefore also more mild.Slide30

Stadial Theory

Age of Hunters

Age of Shepherds

Age of Agriculture

Age of CommerceDifferent types of activity, associated with different forms of property, different types of exchange, different laws and types and targets of punishment.Develop more complex legal systems as character of property is transformed –

eg

immediate possession and consumption, to property in animals and land, to exchange value; from common property, to mixed, to exclusive property; copyright, intellectual property, etc.

But also has an impact on the way people think about morality, and the respect they accord each other.Slide31

Montesquieu vs Scottish Enlightenment

Montesquieu

Sees the interconnections between the different elements of society –

education, institutions

, form of rule, types of punishment, culture, religion, etc.But there’s no consistent causal account – its about the need for about internal harmony and equilibruium.

Scottish Enlightenment c 1740-1800s:

Group of writers and philosophers from c 1740 who reflected on the nature of society: Adam Smith, John Millar, Henry, Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson and others.

In their accounts reproduction of conditions of life becomes central – and becomes a central causal mechanism. Moves economy to the heart of their theory of progress and civilisation.