Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality among men

Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques; Rosenblatt, Helena

doi:10.1093/owc/9780199555420.003.0002

Cited by 114 publications

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“…As Bobbio points out, there are two ways of legitimizing inequality. Starting out, on the one hand, from Rousseau’s (1992) premise that men are born equal but are made unequal by civil society and, on the other, from Nietzsche’s (1973) premise that men are born unequal by nature and that this, in turn, is good for the structure of society, Bobbio (1996: 68-9) points out:Just as Rousseau saw inequality as artificial, and therefore to be condemned and abolished for contradicting the fundamental equality of nature, so Nietzsche saw equality as artificial, and therefore to be abhorred for contradicting the beneficent inequality which nature desired for humanity. The contrast could not be starker: the egalitarian condemns social inequality in the name of natural equality, and the anti-egalitarian condemns social equality in the name of natural inequality.…”

Section: A Deductive Approach To the Left-right Dimensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualizing Left and Right in comparative politics

Jahn

2010

Party Politics

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Despite the importance of the Left-Right dimension in comparative politics, establishing an index that captures this dimension in both a theoretically and empirically sound manner remains an ongoing challenge for political scientists. Having reviewed existing attempts to construct measures for the Left-Right dimension, and having concluded that they are merely inductive and problematic from a methodological perspective, this article proposes a deductive approach based on Norberto Bobbio’s theory of Left and Right and suggests a combination with statistically robust measures drawn from the data provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP). The fundamental features of the proposed index are: first, Left and Right are theoretical concepts which should be accounted for in the empirical analysis. Second, the Left-Right dimension is time- and country-specific. Third, different statements have different meanings on a Left-Right scale. Fourth, the importance of the Left-Right dimension itself varies over time and across countries. Finally, the data have to be analysed adequately.

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Section: A Deductive Approach To the Left-right Dimensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualizing Left and Right in comparative politics

Jahn

2010

Party Politics

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“…In civil society, humans have become 'slaves to the conventions of social tastes and habits', imposed upon them by the behavioural, ideological, and institutional forces of their culturally codified environment (Hall and Trentmann, 2005: 8). In civilized forms of life, then, humans are estranged from their true nature: 'the savage lives in himself; the man accustomed to the ways of society is always outside himself and knows how to live only in the opinion of others' (Rousseau, 1996(Rousseau, [1755. This leads to the 'loss of independent consciousness' (Hall and Trentmann, 2005: 8) and, correspondingly, to the thriving of opportunism in the struggle for recognition, status, and prestige.…”

Section: Montesquieu (1689-1755)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, Hobbes's and Rousseau's respective accounts of the state of nature are diametrically opposed to one another: anthropological pessimism versus anthropological optimism. Rousseau's (1996Rousseau's ( [1755: 465) famous contention that '[m]an is born free, and everywhere he is in chains', summarizes his optimistic conception of the state of nature and his pessimistic conception of civil society. On this account, inequality between humans is, above all, socially constituted, rather than biologically determined.…”

Section: Montesquieu (1689-1755)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Civil Society

Susen¹

2020

The Cambridge Handbook of Social Theory

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The task of defining the concept of civil society is far from straightforward. Within the history of social and political thought, one is confronted with an abundance of conflicting and 'competing definitions' of this term. This lack of definitional clarity indicates that '[i]n the social sciences, there is no consensus as to the theoretical and empirical separation of political, economic and social relations' (Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner, 2000: 48). It is far from obvious in which particular sphere, or set of spheres, civil society is located and on what grounds it can be distinguished from other domains of human reality. Yet, irrespective of its definitional ambiguity and referential elasticity, the concept of civil society has hadand, arguably, continues to havea significant impact upon contemporary discourses, not only in the humanities and social sciences but also in both mainstream and alternative politics. In a general sense, civil society may be 'best understood as a confrontation with the very possibility of society itself' (Beyers, 2011: 3)that is, as an intersubjectively constructed, discursively constituted, democratically organized, and publicly accessible participatory realm in which the normative parameters underpinning particular sets of social arrangements are at stake.

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“…How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors,'' he adds, would humankind ''have been spared by him who, pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had cried out to his kind: Beware of listening to this impostor; You are lost if you forget that the fruits are everyone's and the Earth no one's.'' 27 In Azar Gat's extensive study, War in Human Civilization, in which he actually studies the origins and evolution of war among humans across two million years-effectively the entire span of human civilization, and then some, depending on your definition of human-Gat argues that of the two, ''Hobbes was much closer to the truth.'' 28 Admittedly, this conclusion sounds appealing and is probably rather comforting to most of us in the relative safety of our civilized surroundings.…”

Section: Civilization and Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Thin Ice of Civilization

Bowden

2011

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political

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It is widely accepted that as time passes, the more we progress as both a species and as individual human beings; the more we progress, the more civilized we become individually and collectively; the more civilized we become, the further we are removed from the vestiges of savagery and barbarism. But is this really the case? It is also generally accepted that civilization is a good thing, both in terms of a process and as a destination. The markers and trappings of civilization-social organization, urbanization, competent government, the rule of law, the arts, material well-being, and so on-are seen as desirable and much preferred to the absence thereof. But what is the cost of this progress? And is civilization sustainable? Some years ago it was also suggested that there is a direct relationship between civilization (both the process and the state of being) and the proliferation of increasingly lethal armed conflict. This article takes a closer look at these troubling issues in light of the current state of affairs of our world and wonders whether it might not be time to rethink and reframe what is meant by civilization.

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Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality among men

Abstract: I shallbe speaking of man, and the issue I discuss tells me that I shall be speaking to men, for such questions are not raised by persons who are afraid to acknowledge the truth. Thus, I confidently defend humanity’s cause before the men of...

Cited by 114 publications

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Conceptualizing Left and Right in comparative politics

Conceptualizing Left and Right in comparative politics

Civil Society

The Thin Ice of Civilization

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