‘Society on its own’: the sociological promise today

Abstract

Several prominent sociologists believe that the concept of society has become inapplicable because of its Enlightenment roots in belief in progress and rationality. This article assesses this claim. The Enlightenment critique of Hobbes's account of order showed that social order in modern societies is possible without an external sovereign state. The legitimacy of the political order is derived from the social, not vice versa. Drawing on Koselleck and Donzelot the article discusses the totalitarian potential of democratic societies, and argues, first, that sociology has contributed essentially to politics of representation. Secondly, the article stresses the recent, state-driven but individualistic progress of modern societies towards autonomy and intimacy. Today these values are no longer ideals but taken for granted principles of legitimation of the social order including the state. These principles are contradictory and create conflicts. Political legitimacy can only be maintained respecting the autonomy and right to intimacy of citizens, but on the other hand autonomy and intimacy can only be assured with the help of the state. Understanding these contradictions is essential for understanding social order. The promise of sociology today involves an effort to contribute to this understanding, holding on to the Enlightenment idea of society on its own.

Keywords:

• democracy
• enlightenment
• society
• sociology
• state

Funding

This work has been supported by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Notes

1. It is often thought that the state of nature in Hobbes is one in which humans are with no society, and sometimes he himself thinks in this way. However, Bernard Mandeville remarked in the Second Part of his Fable of the Bees that the passions that lead to the bellum omnium contra omnes (“perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth onlly in death” [Hobbes 1971/1611, p. 34]), were already a product of society. Rousseau (1998/1755, p. 56) adopted the same criticism of Hobbes from Mandeville. This point is essential in the turn away from Hobbes in Mandeville's thought and more widely in early eighteenth-century social thought (Tolonen 2013, pp. 41–42). The corrupting effect of society is echoed in Léon Bourgeois’ view that ‘society, with its state, commits itself to resolving the iniquities that it produces … ’ (my italics; see section ‘Critique and crisis today’ in this paper). For this reason, the ‘natural state’ here is not the state of nature, properly speaking.

2. This is the prime target of Bauman's (1991, p. 190) critique: ‘ … sociological theories of modernity (which conceived of themselves as sociological theories tout court) concentrated on the vehicles of and conflict-resolution in a relentless search for solution to the “Hobbesian problem.” This cognitive perspective (shared with the one realistic referent of the concept of “society” – the national state … ) a priori disqualified any “uncertified” agency … as a destabilizing and, indeed, anti-social factor … prime importance was assigned to the mechanisms and weapons of order-promotion and pattern-maintenance: the state and the legitimation of its authority, power, socialisation, culture, ideology etc.’ In my opinion, Bauman's caricature misrepresents the Parsonian project in an essential respect: it would not accept a state-centred – in a way a Hobbesian – solution to the problem of social order.

3. Rousseau (1998/1762, pp. 39–41).

4. Members of the military body originally comprising Caucasian slaves that seized the throne of Egypt in 1245 and continued to form the ruling class in that country during the eighteenth century. Praetorian bands were the bodyguards of ancient Rome.

5. We would now call them principles of justification.

6. The term, originally Durchkapitalisierung, comes from a German author Joachim Hirsch (1980).