Which comes First the social or its critique The social People responding to a change in patterns of consumption and behaviour the development of a range of new social spaces inns coffee houses parks urban squares etc and to the activities that they see developing trade consump ID: 781100
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Slide1
The Critique of Society
MP
Slide2Which comes First, the social, or its critique ?
The social
People responding to a change in patterns of consumption and behaviour, the development of a range of new social spaces – inns, coffee houses, parks, urban squares, etc., and to the activities that they see developing – trade, consumption, fashion, the collapse of puritan censoriousness, financial irresponsibility, drink, gaming, etc.
The critique
Moral corruption – ongoing puritan anxieties, and anxieties about the city
Augustan age, and the collapse of
Rome
Concern with public instruments – money and debt and finance of government
The obsession with decline, transience, the eventual collapse of old orders and civilisations – so that signs of the new are also treated as signs of corruption and decay.
Slide3Enlightenment Optimism
Richard Price
1788
‘After
sharing in the benefits of one Revolution, I have been spared to be a witness to two other Revolutions, both glorious. And now, methinks, I see the ardour for liberty catching and spreading, a general amendment beginning in human affairs, the dominion of kings changed for the dominion of laws, and the dominion of priests giving way to the dominion of reason and conscience. Be encouraged all ye friends of freedom and writers in its defence…Behold the light you have struck out, after setting America free, reflected to Franc and there kindled into a blaze that lays despotism in ashes and warms and illuminates Europe.’
Slide4Forms of enlightenment critique
Partial critique of
eighteenth century
society
Treatment of womenTreatment of slavesDangers of irreligion and poperyDangers of the tableDangers of the
baizeDangers of consumption
Risks to freedom
Threat of international order/disorder
Distance from nature
Yearning for simplicity
Slide53 Discourses
Discourse on the moral effects of the arts and sciences
Discourse on the origin of inequality among men
Discourse on Political Economy
Slide6Arts and Sciences
Already concerns about corruption of morals – but much less about arts and sciences
Defends his work as the pursuit of truth;
Sees the arts as coming first and inspiring the sciences
So long as government and law provide for the security and well being of men in their common life, the arts, literature, and the sciences, less despotic though perhaps more powerful, fling garlands of flowers over the chains which weigh them down. They stifle in men’s breasts that sense of original liberty, for which they seem to have been born; cause them to love their own slavery, and so make of them what is called a civilized people.
Slide7And the virtues
Necessity raised up thrones; the arts and sciences have made them
strong.
Civilized peoples, cultivate such pursuits: to them, happy slaves, you owe that delicacy and exquisiteness of taste, which is so much your boast, that sweetness of disposition and urbanity of manners which make intercourse so easy and agreeable among you – in a word, the appearance of all the virtues, without being in possession of any one of them.
Slide8Spartan virtue vs the corruption by knowledge
We no longer dare seem what we really are, but lie under a perpetual restraint…
Our minds have been corrupted in proportion as the arts and sciences have improved…. And
twas
ever thusThe Romans were satisfied with the practice of virtue; they were undone when they began to study it.
Connection of arts and sciences with luxury: Politicians of the ancient world were always talking of morals and virtue; ours speak of nothing but commerce and money.
Slide9Natural virtue vs Artificial dependence
Amour de
soi-même
'is a natural sentiment which inclines every animal to attend to its self-preservation and which, guided in man by reason and modified by pity, produces humanity and virtue.'
'Amour propre is only a relative sentiment, factious and born in society, which inclines every individual to set greater store by himself than by anyone else, inspires men with all the evils they do one another, and is the genuine source of honour. '
Man's natural quality - pitié - natural capacity to empathize with and feel compassion for others.
The
question
is no longer whether a man is honest, but whether he is clever. We do not ask if a book is useful, but whether it is well written. Rewards are lavished
on
wit and ingenuity, while virtue is left unhonoured. There are a thousand prizes for fine discourses,
and
none for good actions.
Slide10Natural vs Social – or competing social orders?
Simplicity of manners
Natural virtue
Probity and integrity
Courage and commitment to the common good
Slide11Discourse on Inequality
The savage lives within himself, while social man is constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgement of others concerning him.
In the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, and civilisation, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.
Slide12Adam Ferguson
1723-1816
An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)
Slide13Systematic thinking about the relations between war, commerce and politics
When war becomes bent on acquisition, then get despotism:
‘If riches are by any people made the standard of good and evil, let them beware the powers they entrust to their prince…When interest prevails in every breast, the sovereign and his party cannot escape the infection: he employs the force with which he is
entrusted
, to turn the people into a property, and to command their possessions for his profit and pleasure.’ (Essay,
102-3).
Slide14Commercial society
Happens to barbaric states and empires
But modern commercial empires, too, remain vulnerable.
Not against commerce – believes it is productive of benefits
Not anti –’social’ or ‘anti-commercial’– sees commerce as an outgrowth of ingenuity faced with scarcityUnites peoples; furnishes materials for human ingenuity and ambitionBut there is a problem about combination of moral and political corruption
Slide15Civilisation
Hume identifies civilisation with commercial progress
Ferguson sees Rome and Sparta as civilised
They ‘…succeeded so far, that, without riches, in the midst of nations who were admirers of wealth , and in the most cultivated part of the earth, they enjoyed a degree of consideration, superior to that which the lustre even of literary genius and the fine arts, as well as commerce, bestowed on their neighbours.’
Principles 1. 252.
Accepted utility of commerce, but concerned about national defence and international trade.
Slide16Double threat
For Ferguson, commercial
societies see division of labour between commerce and politics
That threatens patriotism and the unity of the political community
Mechanisation of the labourer in commercial societies narrows his sphere of identificationCommerce encourages the division between civil and military departments of government‘by this separation, we in effect deprive a free people of what is necessary to their safety; or we prepare a defence against invasions from abroad, which gives a prospect of usurpation, and threatens the establishment of military government at home. Essay 208
Slide17evidence
Britain in North America
Britain in
india
Increasing pan European war – jealousy of power and jealousy of tradeConcerns with empire as against competitive states – the latter avoids centralization, maintains identification, retains venues for
ambition
Slide18Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
An argument for the rights of woman? Or a contribution to the critique of society?
Slide19Female education
Women’s education has been based on books written by men: ‘who, considering females as women than human creatures, have been anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers…civilised women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues earn respect.
Slide20The pestiferous purple – renders civilization a curse and warps the understanding
Critique of Kings
(OWC: 80
)
Standing Armies and Sailors (81)Clergy (82)Every man is in some degree formed by his profession (82)
…as wars, agriculture, commerce, and literature, expand the mind, despots are compelled to make covert corruption hold fast the power which was formerly snatched by open force.’ 82-3
Slide21Wollstonecraft’s position on society
Nature vs society
‘society is formed in the wisest manner, whose constitution is founded on the nature of man’ Intro.
‘It may be made a question, whether they (the bulk of the people in Europe) have acquired any virtues in exchange for innocence, equivalent to the misery produced by the vices that have been plastered over unsightly ignorance, and the freedom which has been bartered for splendid slavery.’
ch 1Critique of aristocracy and inequality
Slide22Social construction
Liberty is the mother of virtue, and if women be, by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe
the
sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish as exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws of nature. 103
Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming around its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. 114Women in general, as well as the rich of both sexes, have acquired all the follies and vices of civilisation, and missed the useful fruit. Their senses are inflamed, and their understandings neglected, consequently they become the prey of their senses, delicately termed sensibility, and are blown about by every momentary gust of feeling. 131
Slide23Forms of Enlightenment
Despair
Fuseli, 1782, The Nightmare
Slide24The sleep of reason breeds monsters
Saturn devouring his son
Slide25Decline and fall
Narratives of the collapse of
Civiisation
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall
Montesquieu, Considerations sur les causes de la Grandeur
des
Romans et de
leur
Decadence
Volney
, Ruin of Empires
John Martin
Slide26Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire 1836
Savage, Pastoral; consummation of empire, destruction, desolation
Slide27Slide28Slide29Slide30Slide31Thomas Paine 1737-1809
A thousand years hence…perhaps in less, America may be what England is now! The innocence of her character that won the heart of all nations in her favour may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruins of liberty that thousands bled for, or suffered to obtain, may furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of that day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact. (And when it does fall it shall be said) here, ah painful thought! The noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of freedom rose and fell.’
Slide32Mirabeau and the French Revolution
The problem of public debt and life annuities
Consuming wealth before its production
‘Life annuities were the quintessence of what Mirabeau called that misanthropic sentiment , après
moi la déluge.’M.
Sonenscher, Before the Deluge (2007)