After the three families divided up the state of Jin and the Tian family took over Qi, the political situation in the fourth century B.C.E. appeared even more chaotic. Wei conquered Chu's Luyang and Qin's Xihe, Qin defeated Wei at Shimen , and again at Shaoliang , and Wei moved its capital to Daliang. During the mid-Warring States period, Qin became dominant in the west, Qi in the east, Chu in the south, and Wei in the center. Rapid changes occurred (...) one after another; trickery and conflict were rampant. However, the shi , the intelligentsia, actually managed to expand their spheres of existence and activity accordingly in this state of tension between countries, states, and men. A few major states assembled quite a number of literati; and those men of the villages, who had in earlier times merely waited passively for opportunities to fall into their laps, crisscrossed the various feudal states; literati who previously had no cause to use military force became, one by one, the honored guests of the feudal lords. With the breakdown of the previously simple and obvious order, the gradually dismantling of the common body of the ancestral clan of the past, and the increasing complexities of social relationships after the dissolution of blood ties, social order became a matter of concern. Or, to reword this most practical issue: How could this universally chaotic society go from disorder to order? (shrink)

Central figures in the phenomenological tradition, such as Aron Gurwitsch, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, drew extensively on gestalt psychology in their writings. The dialogue between phenomenology and psychology they began continues today in the field of embodied cognitive science. We take up this conversation starting from Aron Gurwitsch’s rich phenomenological analysis of the perception of the cultural world. Gurwitsch’s phenomenological descriptions of the perception of the cultural world bear a striking resemblance to work in embodied cognitive science that takes (...) its inspiration from Gibson’s ecological psychology. Gibson coined the term “affordance” to refer to the possibilities for action that can be directly perceived by persons [Gibson 1979]. However, Gibson from his earliest writings made a distinction between a universal, strictly individual and nonsocial form of perception and a perception of the world that was subject to social and cultural influences. We use Gurwitsch to argue against Gibson’s individualist understanding of direct perception. Each affordance that can be selected as an object of perception refers to a wider sociocultural context, which Gurwitsch called an “order of existence”. We end our paper by taking up the question of the relation of phenomenological description of the perceptual world and explanations of perceptual experience provided by embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that though symbolism performs many roles in different cultures, it has a uniquely moral one in Igbo land. That unique role which symbolism performs in the pristine communalistic Igbo society concerns the regulation of human freedoms and actions in order to maintain social order. But is this something that can be sustained in a modern Igbo society that is more individualistic than communalistic? This paper is of the view that through the proper maintenance of (...) such symbolism: social control between individuals and groups shall be more coordinated in the contemporary Igbo world; regulate and checkmate the Igbo moral consciousness of oneness; control some cultural maladjustment and bring more about social unity in Igbo land. Keywords: Symbol, Symbolism, Social Order, Igbo, Oji. (shrink)

Over the past decade, genetically modified organisms have come to be viewed as problematic in Japan, as evidenced by a large number of newspaper articles covering questions ranging from the unknown ecological impact of GMOs to uncertainty about food safety, and by the fact that a number of consumers’ groups have organized activities including demonstrations at the experiment stations and the submission of petitions to the government. Against this backdrop, this article attempts to understand the changing interpretation of the perceived (...) rational social order in the context of the Japanese GMO controversies. Drawing on the French Theory of Conventions, the article will shed light on the conventions that serve as templates enabling actors to interpret what it means to introduce GMOs and what constitutes a rational decision concerning GMOs. The article will argue that rationality is best viewed as an emergent and interpretive process involving interpretation and negotiation by and among actors, and that conventions which may be taken for granted are nevertheless unstable and mutable. (shrink)

In a model of private good allocation, we construct social orderings which depend only on ordinal non-comparable information about individual preferences. In order to avoid Arrovian-type impossibilities, we let those social preferences take account of the shape of individual indifference curves. This allows us to introduce equity and cross-economy robustness properties, inspired by the theory of fair allocation. Combining such properties, we characterize two families of fair social orderings.

In this collection of essays, the first translation into English of the ground-breaking 'Normativität und Macht' (Suhrkamp 2015), Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles that guide our normative thinking. Forst's argument goes beyond 'ideal' and 'realist' theories and shows how closely the concepts of normativity and power are interrelated, and how power rests on the capacity to influence, determine, and possibly restrict the space of justifications for others. By combining insights (...) from the disciplines of philosophy, history, and the social sciences, Forst revaluates theories of justice, as well as of power, and provides the tools for a critical theory of relations of justification. Translated from German. (shrink)

There is a well-worn image and phrase for libertarianism: "atomized individualism." This hobgoblin has spread so thoroughly that even some libertarians think their philosophy unreservedly supports private persons, whatever the situation, whatever their behavior. Smith's Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism, corrects this misrepresentation with careful intellectual surveys of Hume, Smith, Hobbes, Butler, Mandeville, and Hutcheson and their respective contributions to political philosophy.

The generation of redundancy is specific for meaning processing in anticipatory systems. Variation generates entropy; redundancy is generated by selection mechanisms in inter-human communications. ….

Central to most intellectual debates on political organization is the issue of human nature, for one’s understanding of it influences one’s prescriptions on how best society can be governed. This paper examines the contractarian theories of Hobbes and Locke in their attempts to identify the conditions for social order. Deploying a critical and comparative method, the paper identifies the failure of the two theories to recognize the complexity of human nature, a complexity which forecloses the plausibility of a descriptive (...) straitjacket. The paper further argues that contrary to Hobbes’ pessimism and Locke’s optimism towards human nature, the individual has qualities which point to a delicate balance of both. Consequently, the paper highlights the imperatives of social order in a manner that accommodates the complexity of human nature. It concludes that it is on the basis of the appreciation of these dimensions of human nature that we can hope to evolve an enduring social order. (shrink)

In this article, the importance of ritual as a collective response to death is discussed. A case example, taken from a larger ethnographic study, is used to explore the responses and reactions of a group of Italian nurses to death as it occurs within an intensive care unit in Rome, Italy. The material presented is used to analyse the significance that cultural, religious and social beliefs and quasi‐beliefs can have in nursing practice. The issues highlighted in this examination of (...) the place of ritual in death are located and discussed within their highly specific cultural context and suggest that, where emphasis remains on nurses as a collective rather than on the individual nurse, ritual acts to ensure that social and moral order prevails. (shrink)

Although libertarians typically eschew coercion as a means to political ends, many theorists cannot avoid endorsing the coercion that is entailed by even minimal states when addressing the concerns of individualist anarchists. The dissertation first identifies distinct approaches to libertarian theory, then examines the arguments justifying the minimal level of coercion necessary for the state. I argue that minimal state libertarians implicitly appeal to a particular set of concerns that, despite the general presumption against the state, are taken to justify (...) political authority. I isolate and examine these core worries about the threat of chaos and compare them against anarchist responses to the challenges they pose. Although some economists and game theorists have worked on the problem of coercion and cooperation, this body of work has not yet been brought to bear on the philosophical discussion about the relationship of the individual to the state, at least not with regard to resolving the dispute between libertarian statists and libertarian anarchists. I conclude that the anarchists' conception of legal theory and social order, in light of the work on the evolution of cooperation, is sufficiently plausible to answer the concerns of libertarian statists. (shrink)

The Norwegian high-school drama series Skam is produced and published by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, a publicly funded institution distinguished by an explicit obligation to the public interest, not only serving their audience as consumers but even as citizens. Generally, the normativity expressed in Skam may be summarized by treating all with respect, involving not only moral considerations of what is right, but also ethical conceptions of what is good, offered, opened up and obstructed by the living social order (...) established there. In season three, given attention here, the plot revolves around issues concerning same-sex relationships, mental disorder and religion. Here Skam becomes interesting for the field of moral education, elaborating on how to encounter the challenges of pluralistic societies that undergo continuous changes and in which common values have become open questions. In this paper attention is drawn toward Skam’s ethical dimension, considering Skam as an instance of public moral education. Faced with tensions, hindrances and conflicts, the norm of treating all with respect, irrespective of how trivial it may appear outside of context, becomes loaded with meaning, while the actualization of the good life is at risk. Appalling is the way hegemonic religion is transformed in the living social order. Decisive is the active role taken by the youths in the series, recontextualizing the norm. The social order here is not a static, given condition, but a continuous, moving, cultivating project. In that respect, a certain democratic aspect of the public moral education of Skam also becomes visible. Together, the youths portrayed in the series seem to accommodate a variety of expressions of life emerging within their community. (shrink)

In this paper, we undertake a genealogical study to illustrate how Karl Marx derives his concept of class conflict from Adam Smith’s theory of social order. Based on these findings, we argue that both Smith’s and Marx’s political economies should be interpreted in relation to each other – from the perspective of social philosophy, in particular their shared concepts of social order and necessary opposition of class interests. By appeal to process philosophy, we also argue that this (...) reinterpretation needs to take into account two other ideas shared by Smith and Marx, namely the social individual as person-in-community, and the pursuit of desirable social forms from a humanistic perspective. We conclude by contending that business management practice would benefit from understanding the role of class tensions and social order in stakeholder relations. Specifically, management and organization scholarship should focus on philosophical examinations of the influence of social order on economic activities in an organization in a way that is far more appreciative of the social relations of individuals as being the primary, rather than a secondary, concern. (shrink)

Normal Rationality is a selection of the most important work of Edna Ullmann-Margalit, presenting some influential and widely admired essays alongside some that are not well known. She was an unorthodox and deeply original philosopher whose work illuminated the largest mysteries of human life. Much of her writing focuses on two fundamental questions. (1) How do people proceed when they cannot act on the basis of reasons, or project likely consequences? (2) How is social order possible? Ullmann-Margalit's answers, emphasizing (...) what might be called biased rationality, are important not only for philosophy, but also for political science, psychology, sociology, cognitive science, economics (including behavioral economics), law, and even public policy. Ullmann-Margalit demonstrates that people have identifiable strategies for making difficult decisions, whether the question is small (what to buy at a supermarket) or big (whether to transform one's life in some large-scale way). She also shows that social dilemmas are solved by norms; that invisible-hand explanations take two identifiable (and dramatically different) forms; that trust can emerge in seemingly unpromising situations; and that considerateness is the foundation on which our relationships are organized in both the thin context of the public space and the intimate context of the family. One of the distinguishing features of Ullmann-Margalit's work is its close attention to the details of human experience, and its use of those details to offer fresh understandings of social phenomena. Her essays cast new light on a diverse assortment of problems in philosophy, social science, and individual lives. (shrink)

No social life is possible without order. Order being the most constituent element of society, it is not surprising that so many theories have been developed to explain what social order is and how it is possible, as well as to explore the features that social order acquires in its different dimensions. The book leads these many theories of social order back to a few main matrices for the use of theoretical and practical reason, which are (...) defined as 'paradigms of order'. The plurality of conceptual constructs regarding social order is therefore reduced to a manageable number of theoretical patterns and an intellectual map is produced in which the most significant differences between paradigms are clearly outlined. Furthermore, the 'paradigmatic revolutions' are addressed that marked the most relevant turning points in the way in which a 'well-ordered society' should be understood. Against this background, the question is discussed on the theoretical and practical perspectives for a cosmopolitan society as the only suitable possibility to meet the global challenges with which we are all presently confronted. (shrink)

In response to Strydom, Nicoll and Gregg's queries, I draw out some further implications of my analysis of theory classrooms. I aim to clarify the theoretical basis of my concepts of social order and fetishism. I end by considering the pedagogical implications of my analysis. It seems to me that the contradiction between critical values and the classroom's forms of authority remain irresolvable.

Despite immediate appearances, this book is not primarily a hermeneutical exercise in which the superiority of one interpretation of canonical texts is championed against others. Its origin lies elsewhere, near the overlap of history, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and social theory of the usual kind. Weber, Pareto, Freud, W. I. Thomas, Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim, and many others of similar stature long ago wondered and wrote much about the interplay between societal rationalization and individual rationality, between collective furor and private psychopathology—in (...) short, about the strange and worrisome union of “character and social structure” (to recall Gerth and Mills). Pondering the history of social thought in this century can lead to the unpleasant realization that such large-scale questions slipped away, especially from sociologists, sometime before World War II. Or, if not entirely lost, they were so transformed in range and rhetoric that a gap opened between contemporary theorizing and its European background. Perhaps this partly explains Weber’s continuing appeal. By dealing with him, one might again broach topics long at odds with “social science” of the last forty years.—From the Preface. (shrink)

This article offers a conceptual analysis of the implications of the sociology of emotions for the restoration of social order in failing states. The authors mainly draw on ritual theories of emotions, but also use insights from dramaturgical, power and status, and exchange theories. It is argued that social order emerges from interactions among human individuals developing and internalizing emotional beliefs about their place within a wider social environment in the form of a social contract. Examples (...) from states such as Afghanistan and Somalia illustrate the authors’ thesis that macro-level restoration of order is possible through change agents’ efforts at restoration of emotion-generating interaction ritual chains. (shrink)

Although this book bears a copyright date of 1980, it is obviously the fruit of a lifetime of reflection. One does not have to share the author's perspective or concur in every judgment to recognize the wisdom, both speculative and practical, that is manifest throughout. The first part of the book develops a theory of positive law and its place in the natural order. The last part examines the place of law in the social order and the role of (...) legal action as one form of the social control. (shrink)

Political oeconomy in the 18th century operated in the absence of the conception of an autonomous social order articulated in the later concepts of `the economy' and `society'. Without a self-sustaining mechanism oriented to stability and endogenous economic growth, national prosperity and social order were assumed to depend upon the detailed interventions in economic life that are characteristic of mercantilism and the police of the poor. Smith's theory that autonomous economic growth underpinned a stable order of social (...) interdependencies based upon the division of labour allowed him to move beyond or modify these assumptions. It freed him from the ideas that constant interference in the relationship between agriculture and manufacturing was necessary in order to guarantee food security and that social order and national prosperity depended upon enforcing constraints upon the interests of wage earners. (shrink)

-- v. 3. Voluntary versus coercive orders.

Endeavours to map out a piece of the intellectual history of this century which once almost faded from memory. In 1941 William Temple, then Archbishop of York, called for a Christian social philosophy and in so doing voiced a concern that had been gathering momentum all through the 30s, sharpened by the challenge of authoritarian regimes, left and right, and had formed the focus of the Oxford Conference of Church, Community and State in 1937.

This article examined Augustine’s just war theory through René Girard’s scapegoat mechanism, as posited in his theory of mimetic desire. Augustine, in his development of just war theory, adopted a realist approach to justify the ethical criteria for judging the morality of conflict. Just war theory, in its historical form, interpreted as a positive rule of action based on just war principles that were developed over time. Therefore, through a comparative approach, this article argued the rationality of modern warfare and (...) violence on the notion of the surrogate victim, which is necessary for social order and the formulation of cultures, as posited by Girard. In his corpus, Girard highlights the role of scapegoating and victimisation in the process of unifying a community. Thus, a comparative analysis of just war theory and the scapegoat mechanism can be developed to study the conditions for peace, religious liberty and social cohesion. This article discusses the following points: (1) the modern relevance of just war principles; (2) the effects of scapegoat mechanisms in modern societies and their impact on social order and political discourse; and (3) the role of missio Dei in the context of warfare and violence.Contribution: This article contributes to a comprehensive study of moral philosophy through the thoughts of Augustine and Girard. The convergence between violence, war, peace and justice is studied through anthropology and religious cultural lens. Arguably, this process has the potential to develop an empirical framework to study war and violence acts in our modern polarised world. Furthermore, it considers the ideal praxis for missio Dei in the context of social order and the common good in the 21st century. (shrink)

Despite the fact that many of us live in secular societies, religions are also a factor in our daily lives. New information technologies and highly efficient modes of transportation have made it possible for people from various continents to encounter each other. People of different religions and ethnicities have become neighbors in our cities. Religious dialogue is more necessary in our contemporary world than it has ever been in history. This essay analyzes how the Islamic faith shapes the believers worldview (...) and the way of life. A good understanding of religions is viewed as making dialogue and respect possible, especially between Muslims and Christians in our contemporary societies. Focusing on areas of shared beliefs and practices further promotes collaboration on issues of human flourishing. This essay explores the social-political dimensions of the strict monotheism in the religion of Islam and also argues for its relation to the Christian beliefs and practices. The Islamic understanding of human persons as created by God first before all other creatures is viewed as the foundation of human responsibility. A human being is believed as endowed by God with an inherent responsibility to promote economic and social equality. (shrink)

This is a detailed reply to Kurtuluş Gemici’s article, in this issue of Theory and Society, “Uncertainty, the problem of order, and markets: a critique of Beckert, Theory and Society, May 2009.”.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 3, Page 386-415, March 2022. In light of a growing body of scholarship that has cast doubt on the analytic import of spontaneous order, the purpose of my article is to rethink the intellectual relationship between Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek by suggesting that reading spontaneous order into Burke’s thought introduces greater tensions between the two thinkers than prior scholars have suggested. One crucial tension, I suggest, is that Hayek believed that contractual (...) arrangements, competitive markets and the rule of law could sustain the growth of social order, while Burke maintained that particular social institutions and practices should remain protected from the full power of voluntary contracts and exchange relations. I conclude by suggesting that the tensions between Hayek and Burke could serve as complementary instruments, rather than as foes, in strengthening the liberal project in modernity. (shrink)

I criticize Rawls’ coherentist methodology and argue using the ideas of Talcott Parsons and Karl Popper that social and political structures flow from and are founded on human nature and arise from human beings seeking to satisfy their needs. For societies to exist and function in an efficient manner, certain ethical and political structures must obtain and that these structures would, in general, be required by the key elements of Rawls’ theory of justice and, as such would provide some (...) of the necessary foundations for most components of his theory. (shrink)

Transparency International has consistently maintained two prominent assertions: that corruption remains a global threat because no human society in the world has a clean record, and that Africa is the most corrupt region in the world. These assertions raise some fundamental philosophical concerns. The former assertion re-opens the need to ascertain whether corruption is an essence of humans, or an acquired disposition. Howsoever this is resolved forms the fulcrum of concerns on the second assertion. This paper engages these philosophical concerns. (...) The paper takes two paths to achieve this goal. The first draws from Aristotle’s essentialism and Thomas Hobbes’ accounts on human nature to engage the debate on the relationship between human nature and corruption. The second derives and discusses the plausibility and fundamental implications of the claim that Africa is the most corrupt region in the world. It was found that neither on the basis of Aristotle’s nor Thomas Hobbes’, nor even a possible African cosmology as discussed, can it be said that official corruption is essential to humans. The paper concludes that what is at issue concerning corruption as measured by Transparency International pertains to different African expectations of recompense in a protective communalism from which relatives in public offices must have drawn care, now termed “corruption” by Transparency International, which is not so regarded in the African social order. (shrink)

There is a story, which historians of modern France often tell, of the ministerial official in Paris who had only to glance at his clock in order to know the exact passage of Vergil being construed and the law of physics being expounded in every school throughout the country. Invariably, the story is told for a purpose. It is used to demonstrate the high degree of centralization and the attendant rigidity of the French educational system, usually with special reference to (...) the nineteenth century. The story, which has its roots in the rich corpus of Napoleonic legend, serves this purpose very well, but unfortunately it is both apocryphal and misleading. For while it is true that most nineteenth-century ministers with responsibility for education aspired to the ideal of total control, not one of them came close to it in reality. (shrink)

In the practice of social criticism, the concept of human dignity has played and still plays an important role. In philosophical debates, however, we find widely divergent accounts of that concept, ranging from views based on a conception of human needs to religious approaches trying to explain the ‘inviolability’ of the person. The view presented here reconstructs the basic claim of human dignity historically and normatively as resting on the moral status of the person as a reason-giving, reason-demanding and (...) reason-deserving being. The person as holding a basic moral right to justification is the true ground for the claim of having one’s dignity respected: as someone who must not be subjected to norms, rules, or institutions which cannot be properly justified to that person in appropriate practices of justification. To possess human dignity means being an equal member in the realm of subjects and authorities of justification and to be respected as such. This is the moral ground of social criticism, implied in particular social and political demands raised in given historical contexts. Thus, critical theory has to be reoriented towards a critique of the relations of justification in a given social order of justification. (shrink)