Social Science History - Six Essays For Budding Theorists

Citation preview

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists By Andrew Roberts Introduction: Essays in the History of Social Science A short course for budding theorists

Social Science History—Six Essays for Budding Theorists is designed to help you think for yourself about society and human relations. It is about theories that people have made to explain society scientifically. Although it traces the development of ideas historically, it is not a general history of social science, but a collection of essays that try to show the importance of imagination, and its consequences for people's lives. The theories discussed in the first essay are about what science is. The second essay outlines three 17th century theories of society that have been models for later theories. The third outlines theories that affected the lives of women and slaves at the time of the French revolution and the fourth the influence of theory on the lives of people who need to claim social security benefits. The last essay is an exploration of the imagination of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, two of the founders of the science of society called sociology. The general argument of all the essays is that science requires imagination. Imagination is needed to understand scientific theories and to develop new ones. I also argue that science starts with the imagination and that the individual imagination draws on a cultural inheritance of theories. To put these arguments the other way round: I am arguing against the idea that science is based only on the careful accumulation of facts, against the idea that we should not make theories before we have collected all the facts, and against the idea that old ideas are bad ideas. The essays are self contained, and so you should be able to read any one on its own without having read another one. I would encourage you to start reading the book where you like, and to follow through issues that interest you, rather than just reading passively. The index will help you relate an issue discussed in one essay to the same or similar issues discussed in others. People's reading styles are different, but most people will find they tire if they try to read an essay through at one sitting. The subheadings should help you to read in chunks small enough to digest. Essay one, Empiricism, theory and the imagination explains why I think that theory and imagination are important to science. It does so by outlining the “theories about theories” of some of the people who have made theories about what science is. These people, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Auguste Comte, James Mill, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Macaulay, were chosen because they are usually associated with the idea that science should be built on careful observation of data. I wanted to show from theories thought to stress the importance of empirical observation, that imagination and theory construction are just as important. I explain in the first essay how we use theories to look at the world. In science the problem is not just deciding which theory is right, it is also developing the theories in the first place. These essays are not about which theory is right. They are about the history of developing theories.

The ideas that social sciences use developed historically and so I think it helps us understand theories about society if we study where they come from. Comte, who is discussed most fully in essay one, argued that scientific ideas start as theology and develop to science via philosophy. Essay two, Hobbes, Filmer and Locke relates Comte's outline to three 17th century theories of society. Filmer's theory is theological, Locke and Hobbes are both philosophical. However, although it is fairly straightforward to distinguish theological from philosophical theories, it is much more difficult to say what makes a theory scientific. Hobbes, Filmer and Locke would all have claimed that aspects of their ideas were scientific, which may be why we find aspects of all three models still in use today. The ideas of science, especially social science, were developed from philosophy. But what is science? And have we any reason to have confidence in it? These are contentious issues and essay three, What is science?, is about three of the arguments. I outline the theories of knowledge of John Locke, David Hume and Mary Wollstonecraft. The essay starts by imagining each of them giving advice about how to be scientific. Locke tells us that we must reason carefully about sense data if we want to build up sure knowledge that is not distorted by the fantasies of our imagination or by the desires of our passions. Hume agrees with Locke about the basis of science, but tells us sadly that science is very limited and that reason is the slave to our desires. Wollstonecraft does not agree with Locke that imagination and desire are dangerous to science. She tells us that, although reason should control our passion and imagination, we should also let passion and imagination unfold our reason. The two must work together, passion or fantasy as the driving force, reason as the controller. And she also tells us to have the courage to make mistakes. My book follows Wollstonecraft's advice, but at the end of the essay I outline the choices so that you can make your own decisions about the style of scientific theorising you want to pursue. Essay four, Can theory redesign society?, is about the French revolution of 1789 and how it related to women and slaves. The French revolution was centred on theories; so this essay is about the power of imagination and theory. It shows how ideas generated by John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau were applied in the revolution and how the same ideas applied to women and slaves. The revolutionaries drew up a Declaration of the Rights of Man to focus the minds of the people on what their theories said were the basic principles of good government. Because it was based on ideas, the influence of the revolution spread round the world, being picked up by the slaves in the French West Indies, who began their own revolution. It also stirred the imagination of women, prompting the first organised feminist movement in modern Europe. Essay four showed that theories about society alter peoples lives. Essay five, Social science and the 1834 poor law, looks at how social security legislation was shaped by the theories of Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Malthus, and how it avoided the ideas of Robert Owen. It shows how the imagination of social scientists can have a powerful influence on the everyday affairs of our lives. Politicians argue about the ideas that social scientists make, and legislation and policies are shaped by those ideas. As a result the lives of ordinary people, who may never have heard of the social scientists, are altered. I illustrate this from the life story of two pensioners living in a two room flat in Camden Town, and dying in the local hospital.

Essay six, Durkheim and Weber's contrasting imaginations is about the imagination of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, two founders of the science of society, which we call sociology. Both are usually praised for their adherence to facts, but Durkheim points out that whilst science needs facts, you do not even know what facts are relevant until you have created the science. So, he says, we need to use our imagination to create a science, before finding out (as we will) that the science we have created is imperfect. Fertilising theory Theory requires an active, creative mind. But our individual minds work best in company and other people's theories are the context in which we produce the clearest theories of our own. So reading this book, and thinking about the issues, will give you a short course in thinking theoretically. It will be hard work, because you will have to provide the active, creative mind. I will just apply the natural fertiliser of other people's theories. In any public library a vast bank of ideas are available to you if you have the time and energy to read them. This book contains some of them in a relatively quick access form. It is like a cash machine outside the bank of ideas about society. I have written it in a way that I hope will be open to anyone. The theories and authors it discusses are difficult, but the style of writing is as easy as I am capable of. The ideas are ones that I find interesting, so I have done what I can to make them interesting for you. I will have failed in my purpose if the essays are only worth reading to pass exams. The rest of this introduction deals with some of the technical problems that sometimes mean academic books are under used, or even closed, to people who have not been initiated. It deals with different ways to use this book, but much of what it says is relevant to reading others. Index Although the essays are self contained, they interrelate. Many authors, theories and concepts are dealt with more than once in different essays — So you can also read the book via the index, by looking up an author, concept or theory. In most cases, the index includes dates and a brief description of the people listed. Chronology A chronology is just a string of events arranged in date order. You can read the chronology through as background reading or you can refer to it when you are reading the essays to help you sort the events out in your mind. Primary and Secondary Texts I have written the book mainly from “primary texts” as distinct from “secondary texts”. A primary text is the one written by the theorist one is talking about. A secondary text is one that is written about original authors. This book is a secondary text with respect to all the books it is writing about. If anyone chose to write something about this book, it would become a primary text in relation to that person's writing. Although the words primary and secondary can change their reference in this way, the world of books is generally divided into books that are usually primary texts and ones, like this, that are usually secondary texts. In their own words Primary texts are not necessarily any harder to read than secondary texts. Often the only serious problem is that the language is not modern English, and this is something one get's used to. Reading antiquated English means

reading more slowly and thinking more about what the writer could mean by his or her words. The section of the book called In Their Own Words is a collection of extracts from some of the primary authors I discuss. These provide another way of thinking through the ideas in the book. The selection from Locke's Second Treatise of Government, for example, contains all the parts you will need to work out for yourself what the relationship is between Locke's theory of reason and his theory of society and state. Interpretation The big advantage to reading primary texts is that they allow you to make your own interpretation of what the author is saying. Then, when you find two secondary texts with different interpretations, you can look at the primary text to decide what interpretation you think is correct. But, what is an interpretation? When you read something, you make your own account in your head of what it means. This is your interpretation. A friend who reads the same passage will also make her own account. When you come to discuss the passage you will probably find that you have different interpretations of it. This may be because one of you has misunderstood part of the passage. It is just as likely to be because the passage can be interpreted in more than one way. In academic life people discuss their different interpretations of an author. You can practice this academic skill by listening carefully to other people's interpretations of passages you have read and comparing them carefully with yours. You will soon find that you are asking the other person to point out the part of the passage on which she bases her interpretation. This happens so often that modern academic writers have developed a system for telling readers what each part of their argument or interpretation is based on. This system is called referencing. The system of referencing I use is called the Harvard system and it links in with the bibliography. Bibliography A bibliography is a list of books. You will find one at the end of most modern academic books. It lists the books and articles which the author has referred to, and it can include ones that have not been mentioned, but which the author thinks you will find useful. If you write an essay in a university you will be expected to include a bibliography at the end that includes all the books you referred to in the essay. This bibliography will relate to the references that you provide. There are, however, different systems of referencing. Referencing the Harvard way I have used the Harvard system to reference this book because it is the simplest (and probably the best) system. In the Harvard system the bibliography and references are interrelated. The references are enclosed in brackets in the text, like this: (Smith 1776, p.117). The bibliography is at the end of the book or essay and lists books by the author's surname and initials, followed by the date of the book, followed by its title. It can have other material, but these are the essential items. This is an example: Smith, A. 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Penguin edition 1974. When you come across a passage in this book which has a reference like this (name, date, page) it means that if you look up the name in the bibliography you will find the title of the book that is being referred to. If that author has more than one book in the

bibliography, the date of publication will tell you which is the one you want. If the author has more than one publication for that year listed in the bibliography I will have devised a way that allows you to tell which one I am referring to. In respect to any reference that you look up in the bibliography you should be able to trace the source that I am referring to. For example, if you refer to a reference (Smith 1776, p.117) and find that it refers to his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, you can then get that book and look up page number 117. Unfortunately you will find that different editions of Smith's book have different page numbers, so you will have to make sure that you get the 1974 Penguin edition. I often provide the chapter and any subheading as a reference. These tend to be the same in all editions. The best way to read this book The best way to read any book is the way you find most useful. I would like to think, however, that this book is a gateway to the books it refers to, and that the references and bibliography will tell you how to link into the other books.

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists By Andrew Roberts ¶0 SUMMARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS USED IN ESSAY ONE I do not use the terms in this essay in a very strict technical sense. To do so would have meant defining terms separately for each theorist, because they use the terms differently. This is a summary of the meanings I have given to the terms. I think my definitions are reasonably consistent with the ways the authors use them, and reasonably consistent with conventional English. Argument: The case that someone makes. In a theory (for example) or in an essay (for another example). Axioms: The starting points of an argument, deduction or theory that, by definition, are not proved by the theory. Premise. Concept: Idea. Conception: Giving birth to an idea. Or another word for concept. Deduction: Argument or theory starting with axioms or premises and leading to a conclusion. Falsification: Testing a theory by using empirical data to try to disprove it. See verification. Induction: Argument or theory starting with empirical observations and leading to a conclusion Empirical:

Based on experience

Empiricism:

Theory that knowledge is based on experience

Hypothesis:

A tentative or unproved theory

Imagination: Creative mental faculty. Ability to dream up ideas of one's own and ability to create in your own mind an interpretation of other people's ideas. Positivism: Trying to understand or describe the world as a sequence of cause and effect between objects that one can observe. Seeking to understand the world as it is, scientifically, rather than criticising it. Proof: Can mean testing a theory by showing that one point follows rationally from another (as in Geometry). Can mean testing a theory by showing that its premises and/or conclusions conform with empirical reality. John Stuart Mill argued that to strictly prove a theory we would have to show its rationality, show the conformity of its axioms and conclusions with empirical reality, and show that there is no other rational theory which also fits the empirical reality. To fully prove a theory to this extent is either very difficult (Mill thought Newton had done it); or impossible (Einstein demonstrated that Newton had not done it. There may always be a theory, waiting for someone to imagine it, which is better than the accepted one). Theory: Set of ideas that we use to explain the world Verification: Testing a theory by using empirical data to try to confirm it. See Falsification.

ESSAY ONE: EMPIRICISM, THEORY AND THE IMAGINATION John Stuart Mill and his problems with Francis Bacon

¶1 I want this essay to explain why I think that theory and imagination are important to science. It will do so by introducing you to some of the theorists who have made theories about what science is. I have not chosen these writers because they are ones I agree with, but because they are theorists most often associated with the idea that science should be built on careful observation of data. I want to show, from their work, that imagination and theory construction are just as important. I will also mention Karl Popper, who is usually associated with the idea that imagination and theory construction are important, but who also stresses the importance of testing theories against the data. The other theorists I discuss are Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and Isaac Newton from the 17th century; James Mill, John Stuart Mill (James Mill's son), Auguste Comte and Thomas Macaulay from the 19th century; and Bertrand Russell in the 20th century. In particular, I try to illustrate the importance of theory construction in the work of Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton and John Stuart Mill. ¶2 Epistemology Technically, this essay is about epistemology. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. So this essay is not about theories about society, but about theories about theories. Books about epistemology frighten many people, including me. This is because theories about theories include a lot of technical words. The advantage of learning these technical words is that they will give you a vocabulary to analyze and talk about theories. ¶3 Many words used in this essay may be new to you. It should help you understand them if you realise, as I explain below, that they are words for describing things you already do. Science develops faculties that we already use all the time. So, if the essay confuses you, take it in smaller doses, and check that you understand the meaning of the words. To help you, I have put a summary of the most important technical terms used on the facing page. ¶4 Theory as you know it Theory should not frighten you. You have been making it for yourself ever since you started thinking. Nowadays we use the word “theory” for sets of ideas that we use to explain the world. The word comes from a Greek word for observing, and this may suggest something that is not self-evident: which is that we use theory to look at the world. The world will appear different to you according to the theory you use. When you wake up in the morning do you lie in bed wondering who you are? Or do you feel your body to discover your identity? Or do you immediately bring into use a set of ideas you already have about yourself? If you are woken up by a baby crying your perception will be different if you think you are the baby's parent, than if you think you live next door to the baby. If you think you are a student and that you have a lecture in a few hours you will behave differently than if you think you are a Prime Minister who is facing a vote of no confidence in a few hours. Reality may come crashing in on you to suggest that your theory about yourself is wrong, but we do not wait for reality, we start with theories. It is the same whether we are dealing with the everyday concerns

of nappy changing and parliamentary votes (according to who you are) as it is when we are trying to understand the world “scientifically”. To look at the world we use theories. ¶5 Theories about science The theories I discuss in this essay are theories about what science is. You may have looked for science already in my list of technical terms. But it is not there. People disagree about what science is and it is important that you learn different definitions and theories about it. Then you will be able to discuss, with yourself or other people, the different theories, and possibly reach conclusions for yourself. ¶6 Empiricism Empiricism is the name given to an idea about science that most people in Britain and America seem to believe. Empirical knowledge is knowledge based on experience. A strict empiricist is someone who believes that all knowledge comes from experience or observation. You might guess from this that empiricists would want us to build our theories on observed facts instead of theorising before we start. This is only true of some empiricists. Let me summarise what some of the empiricists we are discussing say on this point: • Macaulay argues that we should observe history carefully before making theories. (But he did not do this himself). • Bacon wants us to derive part of our theories, (called “axioms” and “conceptions”), from observation. This, he argues, will ensure that the rest of our theory has sound foundations. But he does not suggest, as Macaulay seems to, that theory as a whole could be (tentatively) derived from a mass of observations. • John Stuart Mill thinks that we often have to theorise with axioms created in our imagination. For Mill, therefore, all of a theory might need to be created in the mind. John Stuart Mill also stresses that empirical testing is not the only testing that one applies to a theory, one also needs to examine it to see if it is logical, that is that the parts of the theory hang together in a rational way. ¶7 The majority of empiricists are like Mill in that they accept that all of (at least some) theories are created in the mind. They still claim to be empiricists because they believe that the empirical test of the theory lies in how it relates to the empirical world after it has been created in our imagination. Mill called this empirical testing “verification”, or finding out if the theory is true. Karl Popper, a 20th century theorist, calls it “falsification”, because his idea of science is that one creates theories that one tests by trying to show that they are false. • Bacon, Hobbes, Newton, and both Mill's all think it vital that we have theories developed from axioms that reason deductively to conclusions. These theories are created in the mind. Bacon, however, believes that the axioms can be “induced” from empirical experiments. John Stuart Mill thinks that “hypotheses” would most often have to be the axioms. • For John Stuart Mill the relationship between theory and empirical reality can be at either or both ends of the theory: at the axiomatic start or the conclusions. If the

conclusions are found to be consistent with empirical reality, Mill calls this “verification”. These issues will become clearer as you become more familiar with the terms empiricism, axiom, deduction and hypothesis through reading this essay. ¶8 Mill's spectacles or Bacon's blinkers? Theoretically you are a very rich person—you have inherited a civilisation worth of theory. A little of it you already know, but most of it is waiting for you to claim when you read books, surf the internet, listen to a lecture, talk to someone who thinks they know the truth, watch television, or whatever. But are these theories blinkers or spectacles? Do they stop you seeing things to the side of you, or allow you to see in front of you more clearly? Francis Bacon thought he had inherited a bundle of theories that were blinding him to the real world. John Stuart Mill thought he needed some of the same theories that Bacon discarded in order to discover the real world. Could they both be right? Can theories stop us seeing and help us to see? I am going to leave that question for you to think about.

FRANCIS BACON ¶9 Francis Bacon, who wrote in the early 17th century, is often thought of as the originator of modern empiricism. He was a very influential English writer on theory and science who lived in the early 17th century. All over Europe thinkers sought out his writings because he wrote of a radical new way for discovering truth. ¶10 Bacon's new way was by not doing what I suggest you do. He was opposed to theories that come before the facts. He thought we should start with observations and build our theories on them. However, he did think theories are important. The issue he would have disagreed with me on is where we should get our theories from. I am saying that the wealth of theories that you inherit from the past are an asset. He argued that they are a hinderance. ¶11 Bacon said that the theories that people had were leading them astray. He did not want people to use the theories they had inherited, he wanted them to build knowledge on experience. He also did not want it built on a little experience, or on unsystematic experience, but on a great deal of systematic experience. Finally he wanted the results of that systematically acquired experience to be rigorously converted into a true science. ¶12 In Bacon's time science just meant knowledge. Bacon's belief that there is a true way of gaining knowledge, different from the way that was taught in the universities of his time, gained a wide acceptance in the following centuries and this changed the meaning of science. People began to use the word science for knowledge that is rigorously built on the secure foundations of experience. ¶13 Bacon's new directions Bacon wrote a book called Novum Organum; Or, True Directions for the Interpretation of Nature. Book one of this was headed: Aphorisms on the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man. An aphorism is a short saying, and just refers to the way he wrote. By the interpretation of nature he was

referring to what we now call the natural sciences. By the interpretation of the kingdom of man he meant what we now call the social sciences. “We certainly understand”, he said, “that what we have said holds universally”. “Our method, which proceeds by induction, embraces all subjects” (Bacon 1627 aphorism 127). So Bacon prophesied that there would be a true natural science and a true social science if people followed the method that he called “induction”. ¶14 Deduction and Induction To understand what induction is we must bring in another term: deduction. A deduction is when you work out consequences from premises that you are told, or that you accept as true. The premise is the starting point. For example, let us start with the premise that “everything that Andrew Roberts writes is incomprehensible”. If this is true you could deduce that you are unable to understand what I am saying. The statement “everything that Andrew Roberts writes is incomprehensible” is a general statement because it applies generally to everything that I write. The statement that “you are unable to understand what I am saying” is a particular statement because it applies to this particular instant of your trying to understand this particular piece of writing. In deduction we work out a particular conclusion from a general premise. ¶15 Do you think you may have understood that? If you have then the particular conclusion that “you are unable to understand what I am saying” is false. Experience has shown you that it is false. But how did we get to a false conclusion? Was it because we reasoned falsely? Or was it because our general premise was false? I think you will find, if you look back at the example, that your reasoning was in order (we call that valid reasoning). The problem is that the general premise is false. If you can understand this piece of writing it can not be true that “everything that Andrew Roberts writes is incomprehensible”. This piece of writing, at least, is an exception as far as you are concerned. ¶16 Induction and statistics Now let us try it the other way round. Let us say that someone has tried to read this book and has failed to understand anything. They can certainly say from experience that this particular piece of writing by Andrew Roberts is incomprehensible to them. They might, in exasperation, say “everything that Andrew Roberts writes is incomprehensible”. If they did they would have reasoned from a particular experience to a general statement. In fairness, however, you would have to point out to them that you understood something that I wrote, so their general conclusion is false. In both cases we arrived at a false conclusion. But in the second case we started from a premise that we knew was true because it was a direct experience. The person who could not understand this knows that he or she cannot understand this, and we have no reason to doubt it. Bacon thought that the problem with culture in his day was that it was not built firmly on enough experiences. Let us see how we could get a true general conclusion from particular experiences about the comprehensibility of my writing. ¶17 We could send out a letter with everything I write, asking the reader if he or she can understand it. Obviously I should not write the letter, because we would have to be sure that the letter could be understood. Perhaps we would enclose a stamped addressed envelope and ask the reader to tick a box marked yes if they understood the book, a box marked no if they could not understand it and a box marked don't know if they were not sure. Then, when we got the replies, we could count how many people

ticked each box. The general statement we could then make might have the form: 5% of people can understand what Andrew Roberts writes, 20% do not know if they can understand and 75% cannot understand him. (Or whatever the figures were). To reason thus, from experience of particulars to a general conclusion, is what Bacon means by induction. As you can see, it seems a lot more secure and scientific than deduction. ¶18 Axioms and conceptions Bacon did not envisage science as something that just describes the external appearance of the world. He said he rejected “for the most part that operation of the mind which follows close upon the sense” ((Bacon 1627 Preface) and believed that science should penetrate below the surface. “The discoveries hitherto made in the Sciences are of a kind usually bordering upon common conceptions; but, in order that we might penetrate to the inner and more remote parts of nature, it is necessary that conceptions, as well as axioms, should be abstracted from things by a more certain and better constructed way, and that a method of applying the intellect, altogether better and more certain should be brought into use”. (Bacon 1627 aphorism 18). Our example of a statistical investigation of how many people can understand what I write has not got much hidden depth. It is just descriptive. For science to have power it needs to create theories that are built on axioms and conceptions that let us look behind appearances to the reality. Think of the movement of the sun. It appears to rise on one side of the flat plain of the earth and sink on the other. It appears to die on one horizon, to be born again on the other the next morning. Scientists did not conclude that the earth is a sphere circling the sun by carefully watching this process day after day. They built complex theories based on conceptions and axioms. It is these conceptions and axioms that Bacon thinks should be based on careful observation. ¶19 Axioms and geometry If we can understand what axioms and conceptions are we will have a better understanding of the importance of theory and imagination to science. Axioms are the parts of an argument that have to be accepted as true for the argument to work. Aristotle in his Metaphysics said that you cannot prove everything because you have to start somewhere. That somewhere is with the unproven axioms. “By the starting-points of demonstration” Aristotle said “I mean the common beliefs, on which all men base their proofs; e.g. that everything must be either affirmed or denied, and that a thing cannot at the same time be and not be, and all other such premises”. (Aristotle/Metaphysics Book 3, section 2) ¶20 You may have come across axioms in geometry. Euclid defined a straight line as “that which lies evenly between its ends”, which is much the same as saying “the shortest distance between two points”. One of his axioms was that “it is possible to draw a straight line joining any two points” (Kline 1953/1972 p.62). For Euclid's proofs to work, you have to accept his definitions and his axioms. By creating new definitions and axioms, mathematicians have created different geometries.

¶21 Conception, babies and universals A conception is either the receiving of something into the womb and its formation there or, by analogy, receiving something into the mind and its formation there. The conception in the mind is different from the sensations that are received, just as the baby is different from the sperm and the ovum. What you receive into your mind is particular. It is this particular bundle of sensations. The concept that you have of those sensations is general or universal: it applies to all bundles of sensations of that kind. For example, I know a bundle of sensations that I call Randolph. To explain Randolph to you I tell you that he is a cat. Cat is a conception or universal. It does not just apply to Randolph but to all bundles of sensation that we categorise as cats. ¶22 Science deals with axioms and conceptions, and arguments developed from them. Bacon points out that you can reach different conclusions in science in two different ways. You can reason differently from the same conceptions and axioms (in which case you would check the reasoning to see if some of it was invalid) or you can reason from different conceptions and axioms. I am arguing that it is our imagination that creates these conceptions and axioms and that theory is the development of the argument from them. Bacon thought the axioms and conceptions could be induced from observation. By this he might have meant that they could be induced without imagination, or that the observations could exercise a tight control on the imagination. ¶23 Hobbes: an example of a Baconian science Thomas Hobbes helped Bacon by writing down his ideas when Bacon's infirmities prevented him doing it for himself. Sometime after Bacon's death, Hobbes presented a theory of social science which he claimed was based on axioms rooted in careful observation, rigorously argued through. If we look at how Hobbes starts his theory, we will see what is meant by saying that the Baconian method of science is to root one's concepts and axioms on empirical observation. ¶24 Hobbes starts by defining his terms. He says that we have some natural faculties, three of which he calls “sense”, “imagination”, and “memory”. By defining these terms he means being clear about the concepts and rooting these in the real world. ¶25 Sense Hobbes devotes the first chapter of his book to defining sense. His definition is to say that sense is the effect of objects on parts of our bodies. He then gives us one of his axioms. This is that there is nothing in our minds that has not, at some point, been started off by the effect of an object on our senses (Hobbes 1651 chapter 1: page 1). ¶26 This is a concept and an axiom that he thinks can be clearly understood and can be shown to be true because it corresponds with our perceptions. He says that he shown this “natural cause” of sense in another book. This refers to his writings on optics: or the study of the way objects create sensations in our mind via our eyes. ¶27 If we are clear about our definitions, in relating them to natural causes, Hobbes believes, we will achieve accuracy between our concepts and the real world. The force of what he is saying may be clearer if we look at his example of the alternative definition of visual sense used in the Universities and based, he said, on Aristotle. He

calls this “insignificant speech” because it is not clearly defined, and so not rooted in careful observation: “the philosophy schools, through all the universities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle,say, for the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species, (in English) a visible show, apparition, or aspect, or a being seen; the receiving whereof into the eye is seeing.” (Hobbes 1651 chapter 1) ¶28 Imagination and memory Hobbes defines imagination and memory in terms of sense. Here the points to notice are two: 1) that he has rooted his definitions of imagination and memory in something (sense) he thinks we can clearly identify in the real world. 2) that he sticks to the definition he gives, without allowing all the other confusing meanings that can be attached to the terms imagination and memory. ¶29 Hobbes says that senses conjure images into our minds. These images are our ideas. They are not just there when we are receiving the sensations, but persist afterwards. They have what Hobbes calls a `motion' in our minds. This movement of images through our minds is what Hobbes calls imagination. “Imagination is nothing but decaying sense” (Hobbes 1651, chapter 2: paragraph 2). Images fade because they are obscured by stronger ones. The faded images are called memory. (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 2, margin: Memory). So images and memory are the same thing—the one fresh and virulent, the other faded. ¶30 From such clearly defined concepts and axioms, Hobbes reasons that a human being is a stream of images and desires seeking its own satisfaction, that this satisfaction runs into conflict with the desires of other human beings and becomes self defeating, that the power of a ruler imposed on the multitude of humans is necessary to produce order and to enable the mutual satisfaction of desires, etc. This, schematically, is the structure of Hobbes' science. It is Baconian in that: • The empirical ground is at the beginning in the induction from experience of axioms and concepts • There is a theory constructed on the basis of these concepts and axioms that allows us to find out something that would not be self-evident from observation. In this case, the conclusion that the power of a ruler imposed on the multitude of humans is necessary to produce order and to enable the mutual satisfaction of desires. Hobbes, in fact, concludes much more than that, but I am not going to attempt compressing the whole argument of his book into a few lines! ¶31 James Mill, who I discuss later, formed his theories on the same pattern as Hobbes. I give an example (under James Mill's Deductive Argument for Democracy) of how he reasoned from similar axioms and conception to Hobbes, to a different conclusion. Hobbes reasoned that government would have to be authoritarian, James Mill argued that it should be democratic. The fact that different conclusions can be argued from similar axioms and concepts does not mean that the Baconian method is wrong. It could mean that the axioms and concepts are not correctly defined, or it could mean that there is a fault in the theory: that the argument is not sufficiently rigorous.

¶32 Make a list Different theorists start from different axioms and conceptions. In reading the theorists in this book you should find it useful to keep your own checklist of the axioms and conceptions you think are peculiar to each. A list of basic principles will help you to recall the different theories and to compare them. The list could include items like: “Hobbes pictured people as streams of impressions and selfish desires, forever in motion”; “Locke considers that people are naturally aware of a law of nature guiding them”; “utilitarians claim that "good" is what avoids pain and maximizes pleasure”; “Durkheim thinks that society is real”. Such basic premises are very close to being axioms of their theories, and they contain conceptions like “impressions” (in Hobbes), “law of nature” (in Locke), “good” (in the utilitarians) and “society” (in Durkheim), which you need to understand in the way that the theorists use them. ¶33 Anticipate From the axioms and conceptions you should be able to anticipate what a theorist will think about a subject. For example, from “utilitarians claim that "good" is what avoids pain and maximizes pleasure” you might be able to work out what kind of laws they think are bad and what kind of laws they think are good. You may get it wrong, but the fact that you and they are both using reason will mean that you will often get it roughly right. It is thinking through the arguments of theorists, in this way, that will teach you what theory construction is and set you on the path for making your own theories.

BERTRAND RUSSELL ¶34 Hypotheses: are they dangerous or essential? At this point I want to compare Bacon's 17th century claims about a new method in science, with the way that the scientific achievements of the 17th century are described by a 20th century empiricist, Bertrand Russell. In his History of Western Philosophy, Russell has a chapter called The Rise of Science which begins “Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century”. He says that the seventeenth century pioneers of science had two virtues: “immense patience in observation, and great boldness in framing hypotheses”. (Russell, B. 1961 Book 3, chapter 6, pp 512 & 514). A hypothesis is an unproved theory. The Greek origin of the word (something placed under) suggests that hypotheses are the foundation of science. So the clearest difference between Bertrand Russell and Bacon's descriptions of science is that Russell thought science could use unproven theories (Russell 1961 p.529) whilst Bacon thought that we can make our theories reliable by building them on the foundations of observation. I would equate “boldness in creating hypotheses” with having the imagination to create theories. ¶35 Culture Theories can start in the imagination by learning them from our culture or by creating new ones. The new ones may be stimulated by direct observation, by a conflict between theory and observation, by a conflict between theories, by dreams, or whatever. In reality, I do not think one can learn from culture without recreating a theory in one's own mind. The theory that you recreate will be your understanding of the theory that you learnt and will contain features from your own imagination that will not be in the version of the same theory that someone else recreates. This is what we call interpretation. We cannot learn from our culture without adding to it

something of ourselves. Nor can we learn theories without missing aspects of them that other people will recreate. On the other side, I do not think that we create our own theories without using elements of theories we have learnt. This is what I meant when I said that the individual mind works best in company. Even theories that emerge from dreams have this characteristic. For example, the central idea of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, emerged from a day dream, but when she wrote it down she became aware of numerous interconnections with the scientific culture of her time. ¶36 Russell's first quality of science, “immense patience in observation”, is the virtue that Bacon was calling for. One reason that Russell adds the importance of “hypothesis” is that John Stuart Mill had discovered problems in Bacon's philosophy that he could only resolve by suggesting that science often needs to make its theories before its observations, instead of building its theories on observations. Mill thought that theories would often have to engage with observations after the theory had been created.

ISAAC NEWTON ¶37 Bacon, Hobbes and Newton Bacon believed that we should make sure our axioms and conceptions are true by systematically deriving them from careful observation of the real world. If we build our theories on such sure foundations, he thought the theories would have the power to discover the hidden truth of the universe. Within fifty years of his death, two English theorists appeared to have followed his method through with astounding success. The first of these was Hobbes, whose theories provided a very comprehensive account of the human world. Hobbes' theory, though very influential, was not accepted as the orthodox account of society. The second, Isaac Newton, presented a mathematical theory of the whole physical universe. Newton's theory received recognition throughout Europe as the true “scientific” explanation of nature. It, therefore, became the example that people looked at to demonstrate what Bacon had meant by a new method, science, that would enable modern humans to far outstrip the ancients in understanding and control of the world. ¶38 The problem is that, in some respects, Newton's theory of physics did not fit Bacon's theory of true knowledge. I will list first the ways in which it did. It had clear axioms and conceptions. The theories developed with these axioms and conceptions were rigorously argued. Anybody with the requisite skills could check the arguments through. It also enabled people to predict the movements of the heavenly bodies with great accuracy, so its conclusions fitted in very well with the world as carefully observed. The problem was that it was not immediately clear that its axioms and conceptions were based on systematic and careful observations. There is a lot of mathematics in the book, and once the argument gets going Newton brings in examples that look as if they could be turned into experiments. But his basic premises do not appear to be based on observation. We will look at Newton's basic premise to see something of the problem. ¶39 Newton's basic premise is in his Preface to his first edition, where he says “I offer this work as the mathematical principles of philosophy, for the whole burden of philosophy seems to consist in this—from the phenomena of motion to investigate the

forces of nature, and from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena”. After indicating how this applies to physics and astronomy (which his book deals with) he adds that he wishes “we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles, for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend on certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards one another, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from one another. These forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of Nature in vain.” (Newton 1686/1729 pp xvii-xviii) ¶40 Newton wants to explain everything in terms of the motion of particles of matter and the forces by which they interrelate. There may be some people in the world who, by carefully observing it, can induce that it all consists of particles of matter in motion that repel and attract one another. To me it sounds much more like a very imaginative hypothesis than a careful observation. ¶41 Let us move into the body of Newton's book to look at the formal conceptions and axioms with which it starts. I will take from list of definitions one that contains a very empirical observation. In his definition of “centripetal force” Newton draws on the empirical illustration of a stone swung round in a sling. The person holding the swing twirls it round and round and then, when one end of the sling is let go, the stone flies of with great force. I will come back to this sling when I have quoted the definition and the immediate illustrations that Newton gives. ¶42 The definition Newton gives is: “A centripetal force is that by which bodies are drawn or impelled, or any way tend, towards a point as to a centre”. (Newton 1686/1729 p.2 Definition 5). He gives three illustrations, or examples: •gravity, by which bodies tend to the centre of the earth; •magnetism, by which iron tends to the loadstone; •that force; whatsoever it is, by which the planets are continually drawn aside from the rectilinear motions, which otherwise they would pursue, and made to revolve in curvilinear orbits ¶43 A centripetal force is the opposite of a centrifugal force. Centrifugal forces throw things away from a centre, centripetal forces draw them in towards the centre. To be clear about what Newton means by gravity it might be better to phrase these definitions a little differently: Centrifugal forces throw things away from each other, centripetal forces draw them in towards one another. For Newton, gravity is not just a pull of the earth that makes a stone fall if you drop it: it is also a pull that the stone has on the earth. Newton claims that all bodies exert on one another such a pull. Every object has a power, that he compares to that of a magnet, that draws other bodies towards it. ¶44 To see how much Newton's theory depends on his theoretical imagination, we will look at his third example of a centripetal force: “that force; whatsoever it is, by which the planets are continually drawn aside from the rectilinear motions, which otherwise they would pursue, and made to revolve in curvilinear orbits”. Newton

sought to show that this force was the same as the force of gravity “by which bodies tend to the centre of the earth”. When John Stuart Mill sought to explain what Newton did in terms of theorising from observations, he did it with reference to the empirical observations that Newton could (hypothetically) have made to “measure” the force of gravity at both ends of the argument: on earth and in the heavens, to show that planets and objects on earth obey the same laws. Mill acknowledged that when Newton published his theory, he had not made the heavenly measurements. At that stage the heavenly end of the theory was a hypothesis. But the theory is a creation of imagination at a more fundamental level. Prior to the tests that Mill talks about, Newton had to form his conception of gravity and create the theory of how it operates with respect to bodies. ¶45 A tradition tells us that Newton's theory began when he saw an apple fall from a tree. If the apple hit him on the head, as it does in comedy sketches of the event, it would have been a very distinct observation on which to build his theory. But we have already seen that his conception of gravity is more than just the force that makes apples fall to the ground when they become detached from apple trees. Newton argued that a basic force exists in the whole universe that draws all bodies towards one another. In terms of apples, he imagined the apple drawing the earth towards it, as well as the earth drawing the apple. Even if we assume that the apple hitting him on the head made him see stars, and thus induce that the same forces operate in the heavens as on earth, Newton's conceptualisation of gravity requires a leap of creative imagination. The same applies to his theory. ¶46 Newton theorises (following Galileo) that any object that is moving will carry on moving at the same rate and in the same direction for ever unless it is slowed down or diverted by something else. He theorises that planets have an impetus to travel through space in a straight line, but are diverted from that straight line by the pull of the sun's “gravity”. As a result of the balance of these forces, he theorises, that planets revolve round the sun. Not one item that he has theorised here could he, or anyone living at his time, have observed. Since the invention of space craft, some people have seen the earth as a globe in space, but in Newton's day even that was speculation. ¶47 To return to that sling. You may have been confused by the image of a sling appearing in connection with centripetal force. The centre of the swirling sling is the slinger's hand, and the stone in the sling is impelled away from this centre. It is centrifugal (fleeing from the centre), not centripetal. Newton brings in the sling merely as a metaphor for the invisible force of gravity that he claims draws the sun and the planets towards one another. Any body whirling round another, he says, will have a tendency to fly away from the centre like the released stone. Planets have this impetus, but (just as the stone is held back by the sling) they are held back by a powerful counter force. The difference is that the sling is visible, but the counter force of gravity is invisible. You have to imagine it. ¶48 Newton's mathematical theory, all 500 or so pages of it, was based on foundations of speculative concepts and axioms like this. To Newton's second edition a Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy (Roger Cotes) provided a Preface that tried to show Newton as the example of inductive philosophy. Like earlier philosophers, he said, the experimental philosophers “derive the causes of all things from the most simple principles possible”, but they do not use unproven

hypotheses as their basic principles. Instead “from some select phenomena they deduce by analysis the forces of Nature and the more simple laws of forces” and on that basis they construct the theories that show how the world works (Newton 1686/1729 pp xx-xxi). Cotes recognised, as most people did, that the force of nature at the centre of Newton's theory is gravity. The best he could do in relating this to experimental observations, however, was to show that if we assume gravity to exist and to follow certain laws, the theory that Newton had based on that assumption was capable of explaining, in a very impressive way, recent experimental observations on earthly bodies, and astronomical observations. (Newton 1686/1729 p.xxi following). ¶49 Cotes argument has the same form as that of John Stuart Mill over a century later. As with Mill's argument it takes for granted the conceptualisation of gravity and the overall theory of universal interactions that is the basis of Newton's achievement. This aspect of Newton's work was not so much the achievement of careful observation, but one of theoretical imagination. Bertrand Russell was acknowledging this when he listed the virtues of scientists like Newton as being, not only, “immense patience in observation”, but also “great boldness in framing hypotheses”. In order to explain the world of observation, the scientist has to create theories.

JAMES MILL, JOHN STUART MILL AND THOMAS MACAULAY ¶50 James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill were amongst a group of people who created the sciences of society that were most widely accepted in nineteenth century England. There were two of these sciences: Political Economy and Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism was often called Benthamism. Both utilitarianism and political economy depended on constructing deductive theories from axioms in the way that we have seen Newton do. Newton and Hobbes were the two examples of deductive theories in science that utilitarians were most likely to point to as early examples of their scientific methods. The main axiom that utilitarianism used was to the effect that all human actions are to be explained in terms of the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. From axioms like this they constructed theories that explained human conduct in a way that they regarded as scientific. Further on I will give an example of James Mill's deductive reasoning in which he argues scientifically that representative democracy is the ideal system of government. John Stuart Mill defends deductive theory ¶51 Induction and Ratiocination (Deduction) John Stuart Mill's first book became the main British textbook on how to make a social science. Published in 1843, it was called A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive - Being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation. With a title like that John Stuart Mill did not expect it to be a best seller in the new W.H. Smith railway bookshops. It was a book for (very) serious thinkers and scientists. Which is a pity, because once you break the language down it becomes quite interesting. Loosely translated the title means “In order to create a science you have to use two types of thinking or logic. One type, called inductive, is a way of working out generalisations from particular facts in the empirical world. The other type, called ratiocinative, just uses reasoning (ratiocination). [Ratiocination is also called deductive thinking or theory construction]. In order to make a science you need both types of thinking and

you need to know how to fit them together. This book presents my system for doing this.” ¶52 Inductive logic is the process that Bacon promoted, of developing theories that are grounded in observations. John Stuart Mill's book was mainly a defence of the importance of deductive (ratiocinative) logic to science. He was led to write it as a result of attacks made on his father, James Mill, by the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. Macaulay said that James Mill based his science on deduction (ratiocination), a method promoted by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, whose methods Bacon had discredited. ¶53 Neither of the Mills's made any secret of their enthusiasm for deductive logic. As a twelve year old boy, John Stuart Mill was taught Aristotle's deductive logic by his father because, James said, when arguing a scientific point it is important to do more than just put your own point of view. You need to be able to analyze the theory behind your argument and the alternative theories that other people may present. As father and son walked on Bagshot Heath, James explained that a training in deductive logic would help John to do this. John Stuart never forgot the walk or the talk. As an old man he admitted that his father's careful explanations “did not make the matter at all clear to me”. But his confusing experiences, as a twelve year old, made sense as he grew older. “The first intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay.” (Mill, J.S. 1874, chapter 1, p.12) ¶54 Advanced science must be deductive. John Stuart Mill agreed with some of Macaulay's criticism of his father, but not with Macaulay's basic idea that science should be built on induction without deduction. Elementary chemistry, Mill said, had made great use of induction, but for more complex sciences, including modern chemistry, deductive methods are essential. Most people who reason on political subjects, Mill said, “know nothing whatever of the methods of physical investigation beyond a few precepts which they continue to parrot after Bacon, being entirely unaware that Bacon's conception of scientific inquiry has done its work, and that science has now advanced into a higher stage. In an age in which chemistry itself, when attempting to deal with the more complex chemical sequences, those of the animal, or even the vegetable organism, has found it necessary to become, and has succeeded in becoming, a Deductive Science, it is not to be apprehended that any person of scientific habits, who has kept pace with the general progress of the knowledge of nature, can be in danger of applying the methods of elementary chemistry to explore the sequences of the most complex order of phenomena in existence” (Mill, J.S.1843 6.7.5). Physics and astronomy, as developed by Newton, were deductive sciences and the social sciences also need deductive methods. Empirical observation could, as Macaulay had pointed out, show that James Mill's theories were wrong, but this meant there was something wrong with James Mill's theory, not that he should not have used theory in the first place. James Mill's Deductive Argument for Democracy ¶55 I will now give, as an example of deductive (ratiocinative) science, the theory that James Mill constructed from utilitarian axioms in order to demonstrate the superiority of representative government over any other form of government. This is

the example of deductive logic that Macaulay criticised as unscientific because it is not inductive. In the 1820s James Mill argued that the vote for all males is necessary to make sure that the government acts in the majority interest (Mill, J. 1820). His article on this, called Government, was published as an appendix to the Encyclopedia Britannica and widely circulated separately as well. James Mill's argument was a formal one, based on axioms and reaching conclusions by a chain of reasoning from them. I have laid out his axioms and reasoning in the form that fits our discussion. ¶56 This is James Mill's argument to show that representative democracy is an essential of good government. It was an argument put at a time when very few people in Britain had a vote. Axiom: The only motive of human beings is the pursuit of one's own pleasure and the avoidance of one's own pain. No individual is motivated by the pursuit of another's pleasure or avoidance of another's pain. Interim conclusion that becomes 1st premise of argument: any “human being will desire to render the person and property of another subservient to his pleasures, notwithstanding the pain or loss of pleasure which it may occasion to that other individual” (Mill, J. 1820 p.9) Axiom: “The desire of the object implies the desire of the power necessary to accomplish the object”. (Mill, J. 1820 p.9) Interim conclusion respecting basic law of human nature: “The desire, therefore, of that power which is necessary to render the persons and properties of human beings subservient to our pleasures, is a grand governing law of human nature”. (Mill, J. 1820 p.9) Axiom: “The demandof power over the acts of other men is really boundless. It is boundless in two ways; boundless in the number of persons to whom we would extend it, and boundless in its degree over the actions of each”. (Mill, J. 1820 p.10) Axiom and three concepts of government: At least three types of government are possible: Government by one person (called monarchy); government by a few (called oligarchy or aristocracy) and government by the majority (called democracy) Interim conclusion: Governments by the one or the many will attempt to extract all the benefit they can from the many that they rule, in order to satisfy themselves. The levers at their disposal will be the manipulation of the human desire for pleasure and fear of pain. They will use these levers without restraint and so, if nothing checks the rulers, the ruled will be terrorised by them and robbed of everything except the bare means of subsistence. “It is proved therefore by the closest deduction from the acknowledged laws of human naturethat the ruling one or the ruling few, would, if checks did not operate in the way of prevention, reduce the great mass of the people subject to their power, at least to the condition of negroes in the West Indies”. [This was written before the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, which took place in 1833]. (Mill, J. 1820 p.13)

Interim conclusion put another way: there is no individual or combination of individuals, except the community itself, who would not have an interest in bad government if intrusted with its powers New axiom: the community itself is incapable of exercising those powers directly, but it can intrust them to individuals. Final conclusion: Representative democracy is a necessary check “In the grand discovery of modern times, the system of representation, the solution of all the difficulties, both speculative and practical, will perhaps be found.The conclusion is obvious: the community itself must check those individuals; else they will follow their interest and produce bad government”. (Mill, J. 1820 pp 16-17) ¶57 Women and children The argument as I have outlined it from James Mill appears self-contained. One can disagree with its premises and its conclusions, but as an argument it does not seem to need anything adding. However, James Mill did add a few points to make it more acceptable. In particular, he added that children and women would not need a vote. “One thing is pretty clear, that all those individuals whose interests are indisputably included in those of other individuals may be struck off from political rights without inconvenience. In this light may be viewed all children up to a certain age, whose interests are involved in those of their parents. In this light also women may be regarded, the interests of almost all of whom is involved either in that of their fathers, or in that of their husbands”. (Mill, J. 1820 p.21) Macaulay's empirical case against James Mill ¶58 Macaulay argued that James Mill should not have detached his reason from empirical reality. James Mill had said that empirical reality is ambiguous about the effect of absolute government on the well being of the people. Under Roman emperors like Nero and Caligula, for example, it had been the “scourge of human nature”, but “on the other side, the people of Denmark, tired out with the oppression of an aristocracy, resolved that their king should be absolute, and under their absolute monarch, are as well governed as any people in Europe”. From this uncertainty of empirical observation Mill concluded that we need to get behind the surface appearance by using deductive reason. “As the surface of history affords, therefore, no certain principle of decision, we must go beyond the surface and penetrate to the springs within”. (Mill, J. 1820 p.9) ¶59 Macaulay used the terms a priori, meaning prior to empirical data, to characterise James Mill's argument. Macaulay thought that all arguments should be a posteriori, or following on from empirical data. In the way Macaulay uses these terms, a priori corresponds to deductive reasoning and a posteriori to induction. ¶60 Macaulay was astounded that James Mill should have used the uncertainty of empirical observation “as a reason for pursuing the a priori method”. The fact that experience of absolute monarchy showed it to be sometimes good and sometimes bad was, in Macaulay's opinion, irresistible proof “that the a priori method is altogether unfit for investigations of this kind, and that the only way to arrive at the truth is by induction”. If our observations lead us to contradictory conclusions, Macaulay argued, it just shows that there is something wrong with some “hypothesis” we are using.

“When we say that one fact is inconsistent with another fact, we mean only that it is inconsistent with the theory which we have founded on that other fact. But, if the fact be certain, the unavoidable conclusion is that our theory is false; and in order to correct it, we must reason back from an enlarged collection of facts to principles”. (Macaulay 1829 p 364) ¶61 Notice that Macaulay could have argued that when experience contradicted James Mill's theory, he should have altered his theory. Instead, he argues, that James Mill should have used a greater range of experiences, rather than a priori reasonings, as the base for his theories. If he had done this, Macaulay argued, he would have found that, in recent times in Europe, even the most undemocratic regimes tended to act in the people's interest. “During the last two centuries, some hundreds of absolute princes have reigned in Europe. Is it true, that their cruelty has kept in existence the most intense degree of error; that their rapacity has left no more than the bare means of subsistence to any of their subjects, their ministers and soldiers excepted? Is this true of all of them? Of one half of them? Of one tenth part of them? Of a single one?” (Macaulay 1829 pp 369-370) ¶62 Recent empirical history, Macaulay argued, showed absolute monarchs to be considerably better rulers than James Mill's theory suggested. Reasons for this could also be gathered by empirical observation, including observations on one's neighbours. “No man of common sense can live among his fellow-creatures for a day without seeing innumerable facts which contradict” James Mill's arguments (Macaulay 1829 p.370). James Mill had ignored the (benign) influence of civilisation or culture. His image of human nature was that of the Yahoos in Gulliver's Travels. These looked like human beings, but behaved in an entirely bestial manner. “Human nature is not what Mr Mill conceives it to be, civilized men, pursuing their own happiness in a social state are not Yahoos fighting for carrion; because there is pleasure in being loved and esteemed, as well as in being feared and servilely obeyed” (Macaulay 1829 p.386). ¶63 James Mill, according to Macaulay, could not have ignored the influence of civilisation if he had been an empirical historian. If he had meticulously compared societies at different periods of history and in different parts of the world, he would have observed the civilising influence working on human character. As it was, Macaulay said, James Mill relied on this influence for the part of his argument respecting women, whilst ignoring it for the rest. ¶64 James Mill had said that the interest of men would be the same as the interests of their wives and daughters, who would not, therefore, need a vote. Macaulay agreed that “the interest of a respectable Englishman may be said, without any impropriety, to be identical with that of his wife”. But it was only so in a few civilised countries like England and the United States. Empirical observation would show that it was not the case elsewhere. “Isthe interest of a Turk the same with that of the girls who compose his harem? Is the interest of a Chinese the same with that of the woman whom he harnesses to his plough? Is the interest of an Italian the same as that of the daughter he devotes to god?” (Macaulay 1829 p.386). “If there be a word of truth in history, women have always been, and still are, over the greater part of the globe, humble companions, playthings, captives, menials, beasts of burden. Except in a few

happy and highly civilised communities, they are strictly in a state of personal slavery”. (Macaulay 1829 p.385) “If there be in this country an identity of interest between the two sexes, it cannot possibly arise from any thing but the pleasure of being loved, and communicating happiness. For, that it does not spring from the mere instinct of sex, the treatment which women experience over the greater part of the world abundantly proves. And if it be said that our laws of marriage have produced it, this only removes the argument a step further; for those laws have been made by males. Now if the kind feelings of one half of the species" [men] "be a sufficient security for the happiness of the other why may not the kind feelings of a monarch or an aristocracy be sufficient at least to prevent them from grinding the people to the very utmost of their power?” Macaulay asked. “If Mr Mill will examine why it is that women are better treated in England than in Persia, he may perhaps find out, in the course of his inquiries, why it is that the Danes are better governed than the subjects of Caligula”. (Macaulay 1829 pp 386387) Macaulay's Descriptive Empiricism ¶65 Macaulay did not just use empirical evidence to show that James Mill's theories were inadequate. Macaulay denied that a science of politics could be made on the basis of a theory of human nature. Human beings vary so much from society to society and time to time that a science of politics could only be established by carefully studying the facts of each period and each society. The need to rely on careful study of the facts, and to be cautious in theorising, was not, according to Macaulay, a feature of the social sciences alone. He thought it was the established method of all successful sciences. ¶66 Macaulay was an enthusiastic reader of Bacon. He read and quoted him in Latin and English and wrote a famous article on him. Nevertheless, John Stuart Mill believed that Macaulay had misunderstood Bacon. If you look at the little I have quoted from Bacon, I think you will be able to see why. Bacon recognises the importance of theory in a way that Macaulay does not. I quoted, in connection with axioms and conceptions, Bacon's contention that science would develop methods that would look beneath the surface, rather than just describing the appearances. Bacon was specific that it was the axioms and conceptions of theories that he thought could be derived from experience. If he had lived in the nineteenth century he might have argued that James Mill's axioms about the selfishness of human nature were inadequately grounded in observation, but not that the whole method was wrong— which is what Macaulay argues in the following passages. ¶67 Macaulay's description of scientific method Macaulay says that “the only way to arrive at the truth is by induction”. We cannot “deduce a theory of government from the nature of man”. We can only arrive at just conclusions in the “noble science of politics” by “that method which, in every experimental science to which it has been applied, has signally increased the power and knowledge of our species”. That is “by the method of induction;— by observing the present state of the world,— by assiduously studying the history of past ages,— by sifting the evidence of facts,— by carefully combining and contrasting those which are authentic—by generalising with judgment and diffidence,—by perpetually bringing the theory which we have

constructed to the test of new facts,—by correcting, or altogether abandoning it, according as those new facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally unsound”. ¶68 This is the method that I am calling descriptive empiricism. It is not entirely descriptive, Macaulay says that we do construct a theory, but we are very cautious in doing so to work from the historical evidence, and to correct or abandon it if it no longer fits. You can imagine a student following this method in an essay on the French Revolution. Let us say that the title is “Examine the role of women in the French revolution”. The student might carefully document the story of the French revolution mentioning every occasion when it appeared to involve women. At the end there might be a tentative conclusion “It appears to me, from the evidence that women played an important part in the French revolution”. We can also imagine the tutor's comments. “This is very well documented, but far too descriptive”. The tutor was looking for an argument or theory—and that is what the Mill's wanted to create. ¶69 Macaulay's actual practice Before moving on to look at John Stuart Mill's counter-argument, I should note that, whatever his theory of science, Macaulay did not just write descriptive histories, nor was he tentative in his conclusions. Macaulay's books sold in greater numbers than John Stuart Mill's because he turned history into a thumping good story. (Nobody has ever accused John Stuart Mill or his father of writing good stories). The method Macaulay used for this was to imagine himself writing history with the same attitude as a narrative poet or novelist. True he wallowed in data, but he was reluctant to let the data get the better of the story. John Stuart Mill's Deductive Sociology ¶70 We can compare Macaulay's description of scientific method directly with John Stuart Mill's conclusions about the methods that social science should follow. Mill wrote “The Social Science whichhas been termed Sociologyis a deductive science; not, indeed, after the model of geometry, but after that of the more complex physical sciences. It infers the law of each effect from the laws of causation on which that effect depends; not, however, from the law merely of one cause, as in the geometrical method; but by considering all the causes which conjointly influence the effect, and compounding the laws with one another. Its method, in short, is the Concrete Deductive Method; that of which astronomy furnishes the most perfectexample.” (Mill, J.S. 1843 6.9.1) ¶71 So, John Stuart Mill argues that Sociology is a deductive science, whereas Macaulay believed all science should be inductive. Mill argued that deductive sciences follow a common general form in that they have three stages: 1) identifying causes in simple terms, 2) reasoning from those causes to more complex conclusions, 3) seeing how those conclusions correspond with empirical reality. In the example from James Mill that I gave the original cause identified was Axiom: The only motive of human beings is the pursuit of one's own pleasure and the avoidance of one's own pain. From this James Mill reasoned to an Interim conclusion: Governments by the one or the many will attempt to extract all the benefit they can from the many that they rule, in order to satisfy themselves. ¶72 From an examination of this form you can see that there are two points at which one might try to relate it to empirical reality: the alleged original cause and the interim

conclusion. We can only do this, however, because someone has constructed the theory in the first place. Or, to put it another way, the clarity with which the deductive theory has been laid out by James Mill allows us to test not only his reasoning, but also the relationship between his theory and empirical reality. John Stuart Mill argued that, ideally, both the axioms and conclusions of a deductive science should be subject to empirical testing, but that, in practice, scientists need to use hypotheses, or untested theories, as axioms. He thought, however, that the use of hypotheses as axioms should be a temporary measure. We should try to find ways of testing both ends of the argument against empirical reality. ¶73 Notice that Macaulay tested James Mill's deductive theory in exactly the way that John Stuart Mill says we should attempt to test it. Against the axiom Macaulay argued that human beings have more complex motives than James Mill allows, and against the interim conclusion Macaulay argued that it was shown to be false by the empirical evidence of history. John Stuart Mill agreed with Macaulay on both these points. John Stuart Mill argued, however, that the fault was with the type of theory used. ¶74 John Stuart Mill says that the model for sociology should not be geometry, but astronomy. He says that James Mill's mistake was to follow the geometrical model, like Hobbes; rather than the concrete deductive method, illustrated by Newton's physics and astronomy. The geometrical and physical or astronomical models are both deductive. They start with an idea of causes, which they take as their axioms, and from those they deduce by a chain of reasoning, the effects. The difference is that physics and astronomy study systems in which a large number of causes operate and interact, whereas geometry operates with a very small number of causes or axioms. In fact, John Stuart Mill says that a geometrical argument starts with just one cause. In the case of his father's theory the axiom is: The only motive of human beings is the pursuit of one's own pleasure and the avoidance of one's own pain. No individual is motivated by the pursuit of another's pleasure or avoidance of another's pain. ¶75 Macaulay had argued that this was an over simplification of human nature, and John Stuart Mill agrees with him. Macaulay argued that scientists should ditch deductive arguments and just induce their theories cautiously from history, John Stuart Mill disagrees with this and says that scientists should use deductive methods that can cope with a multitude of causes operating within a system, rather that just one. ¶76 Custom and tradition and a science of character “It is not true”, Mill said, “that the actions even of average rulers are wholly, or anything approaching to wholly, determined by their personal interest”. In particular, theories need to provide for the influence on their actions of “the habitual sentiments and feelings, the general modes of thinking and acting, which prevail throughout the community” and those of their class. And, he said, “the maxims and traditions which have descended to them from other rulers, their predecessors”. There was a need for a social science more complex than the utilitarianism of his father, and broader in its image of human motivation than political economy. It is easiest to demonstrate what Mill was thinking of if we consider economic motivation, rather then political. The issue is similar. Utilitarianism and political economy, as developed by James Mill, ascribed self seeking motives to humans with respect to politics and economics.

¶77 John Stuart Mill outlined a contrary proposition that German economists were becoming particularly aware of, and which was later to be developed into a full-blown sociology by the German economist, Max Weber. The axioms of utilitarian science, at their vaguest, state that human beings follow their interests. However, what constitutes human interest seems to vary from society to society. English economics, therefore, turned out to be limited in its application to other countries because it presumed an English character. The English economist assumed that a shopkeeper would give his or her highest priority to the profits of the business. But, in another culture, the shopkeeper might place a higher value on leisure, and close shop when it had earned enough for the shopkeeper's immediate needs. Or the value placed on social respect might be higher than that placed on making profits. If business had a lower status in society than land-owning, the shopkeeper might work very hard until the shop had earned enough to buy land, and then give up shopkeeping and become a landowner. Variations like these could wreak havoc with the predictions of economists. John Stuart Mill thought economics needed to be complemented by a science of social, class, or national character. He also thought that the science would need an historic dimension, because social character changed over time. ¶78 What was needed, he argued, was not just objective empirical description of the differences between societies, or of the changes in character over time, but theories that showed how these differences and changes could be related to causes. In this process one might start with the hypothetical causes (direct deduction), or reason backwards (indirect deduction) from the effects: The Direct Deductive Method would start, as James Mill had, from the hypothetical causes, but they would be more complicated ones. Mill thought this would be very difficult, but not impossible. Max Weber was later to develop a deductive theory on this basis which had models (ideal types) of people who could respond to a range of interests apart from egoism. They might, for example, respond to traditions, or to other worldly ends dictated by religion. Or they might be caught up by the fervour generated by a powerful leader. If you look at Weber's simplest book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, you will see the important part that the creation of theoretical models plays, and how Weber tries to relate this to the empirical data. The Indirect Deductive Method would start, as Macaulay wanted to, from empirical descriptions of national differences or historic changes. But would link these to hypothetical causes that would explain the differences or changes. We need objective empirical descriptions of changes and differences, Mill argued, but of themselves they are unsatisfactory as science. “But if the differences which we think we observe between French and English, or between men and women, can be connected with more general laws; if they be such as might be expected to be produced by the difference of government, former customs, and physical peculiarities in the two nations, and by the diversities of education, occupations, personal independence, and social privileges, and whatever original differences there may be in bodily strength and nervous sensibility between the two sexes; then, indeed, the coincidence of the two kinds of evidence justifies us in believing that we have reasoned rightly and observed rightly. Our observation though not sufficient as proof, is ample as verification. And having ascertained not only the empirical laws, but the causes of the

peculiarities, we need be under no difficulty in judging how far they may be expected to be permanent, or by what circumstances they would be modified or destroyed”. ¶79 In 1848 Mill published a book on economics, the title of which indicates his interest in broadening the base of the social sciences. It was called Principles of Political Economy - With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. In 1869 he published The Subjection of Women, a book on the role of women in society that attempted to show their changing role in changing social structures, and to predict from that a more equal future for men and women.

AUGUSTE COMTE ¶80 John Stuart Mill's ideas about a science of society developed as he was reading the works of two French writers: Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte. Comte began his work as a student of Saint-Simon, and it was Comte who created the word sociology for the science of society. Mill thought that Comte had shown how to develop the study of history into a science. Sociology, according to Comte, would have two parts, statics and dynamics. Statics is the study of the structure of society, dynamics is the study of its movement. Dynamics is history turned into a science. ¶81 In this final part of the essay I want to illustrate the importance of imagination by setting out John Stuart Mill's ideas on writing history, and how history can be turned into a science. Mill said that history could be written in different ways, but that some of the ways needed the other ways first. Here are the ways in the order that they are necessary. If you look at these four ways you will see that the role of straightforward empirical observation gets less, and the role of imagination, theorising and deduction increases, as you move from stage to stage. The earliest stages are the most like Thomas Macaulay's histories, the last stage is the way that Comte and Mill considered scientific. So, according to Mill, science involves an increased role for the imagination and for theory. ¶82 Mill's four stages of history writing Copying or translating ancient histories. This is careful transcription “without ever bringing the writer's own mind in contact with the subject”. (Mill, J.S. 1844 p.91) It is something that was very common before the invention of printing, when copying was necessary to maintain the society's knowledge of its past. Mill says that this is too accepting or uncritical to make good history. It is nevertheless necessary to have material to work on to make history, so we can say that history starts here, with the stories that we inherit. We can see why it is not scientific by considering an observation of the historian Niebuhr who pointed out that scribes would copy one source after another without attempting to weigh the evidence for the different accounts (Acton, J. 1895 p.34). Imagining history as the present. One can try to understand the people in history with the knowledge that one has of today and how people operate nowadays. Macaulay did this to a great extent by trying to identify the political characters in his history of England as either Tories, who wanted to defend the past, or Whigs, who were educated people in favour of progress. Mill says that this is an advance on simply

copying or translating the old stories, because it tries to make the past alive. The historian who does this “does give a sort of reality to historical personages: he ascribes to them passions and personages, which, though not those of their age or position, are still human; and enables us to form a tolerably distinct, though, in general, an exceedingly false notion of their qualities and circumstances. This is the first step; and, that step made, the reader, once in motion, is not likely to stop there”. (Mill, J.S. 1844 p.91) Imagining history as it was. Niebuhr, the German historian just mentioned, is Mill's example of an historian who successfully imagines the past as it was. Mill emphasises what an effort of imagination this requires. The historian here “attempts to regard former ages not with the eye of a modern, but as far as possible with that of a contemporary; to realize a true and living picture of the past time, clothed in its circumstances and peculiarities. This is not an easy task: the knowledge of any amount of dry generalities, or even of the practical life and business of his own time, go a very little way to qualify a writer for it. He needs some of the characteristics of the poet. He has to "body forth the form of things unknown". He must have the faculty to see, in the ends and fragments which are preserved of some element of the past the consistent whole to which they once belonged; to discern, in the individual fact which some monument hands down, or to which some chronicler testifies, the general, and for that reason unrecorded, facts which it presupposes”. (Mill, J.S. 1844 pp 91-92) Mill does not envisage historians letting their imagination loose without control. “He must have the conscience and self-command to assert no more than can be vouched for, or reduced by legitimate inference from what is vouched for. With the genius for producing a great historical romance, he must have the virtue to add nothing to what can be proved to be true: What wonder if so rare a combination is not often realized?” (Mill, J.S. 1844 p.92) Finding the laws that govern history The “highest stage of historical investigation”, according to Mill, was one where the aim is “to construct a science of history”. “In this view, the whole of the events which have befallen the human race, and the states through which it has passed, are regarded as a series of phenomena, produced by causes, and susceptible of explanation. All history is conceived as a progressive chain of cause and effects”. (Mill, J.S. 1844 pp 92-93) This was the kind of history that Mill thought Auguste Comte was engaged in. Comte was the man who was trying to create a science of society which he called sociology. ¶83 Comte's stages of historical development August Comte was a positivist. He invented this word as well as the word sociology. Some people use the word positivist to mean the same as empiricist, but this was not what Comte meant by it. Positivism, according to Comte, means trying to understand or describe the world as a sequence of cause and effect between objects that one can observe (Mill, J.S. 1865 pp 265-266). A positivist seeks to understand the world as it is, scientifically, rather than criticising it (Marcuse, H. 1955 Part 2, chapter 2, pp 323-359). Comte was quite emphatic that theories are necessary to organise and perceive the world, so we should be reluctant to call him an empiricist.

¶84 Comte divided the history of ideas into three stages: theological, philosophical (critical) and scientific (positive). He thought that humanity necessarily moves through each by a “law of human progress” which is that “each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive” (Comte, A. 1853 p.124). Here are his descriptions of each: Theological thinking “is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding” “In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects,—in short, Absolute knowledge,—supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings.” “The Theological system arrived at the highest perfection of which it is capable when it substituted the providential action of a single Being for the varied operations of the numerous divinities which had been before imagined.” (Comte, A. 1853 p.125). Metaphysical thinking is “merely a state of transition”. “In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable entities (that is personified abstractions) inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena. What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a mere reference of each to its proper entity”. “in the last stage of the Metaphysical system, men substitute one great entity (Nature) as the cause of all phenomena, instead of the multitude of entities at first supposed” (Comte, A. 1853 p.125). Positivist thinking is the third and the “fixed and definite state” of human thought. In this stage “the mind has given over the vain search after Absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws,—that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science.” “The ultimate perfection of the Positive system would be (if such perfection could be hoped for) to represent all phenomena as particular aspects of a single general fact;—such as Gravitation, for instance”. (Comte, A. 1853 p.125). ¶85 How do we know this? If the history of human thought moves, of necessity, in these three stages, how do we know that? John Stuart Mill suggests two ways. One is the empirical way, which he said is important, but very inadequate. This, he says, will establish an empirical law. The other way is by resolving the empirical law into more general, “ultimate”, laws. (Mill, J.S. 1843 3.16.1) ¶86 The empirical law could be tentatively established if we took many examples of thought in a certain science, arranged them in chronological order and found that theological theories came first, metaphysical theories next and positivist theories next. But this would only be tentative, and it would not tell us why the types of thought come in that order. It would be tentative because we would have no reason to believe that further examples of thought that we added to our collection would fall in the same order. If, on the other hand, we knew a reason for the order in terms of a more

general law, we would understand the historic succession and have reason to rely on it. We would understand why thought comes in that order. In this case, the more general laws that Mill suggests are laws of mind. He suggest that Comte's succession of historic stages can be explained in terms of the necessary development of human thought; that we can establish it as a necessary process of thought in the individual mind as well as in culture. Comte's generalisation, Mill says, “appears to me to have that high degree of scientific evidence which is derived from the concurrence of the indications of history with the probabilities derived from the constitution of the human mind” (Mill, J.S. 1843 6.10.8). In other words, if psychological laws support historical laws, we can have more confidence in the historical laws. ¶87 The following extracts from Comte's work illustrate what Mill means. First the empirical or “actual” evidence that he asserts for his laws: “Evidences of the law. Actual.—There is no science which, having attained the positive stage, does not bear marks of having passed through the others. [Also] our most advanced sciences still bear very evident marks of the two earlier periods through which they have passed. [Also] The phases of the mind of a man correspond to the epochs of the mind of the race. each of us  was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician in his youth, and a natural philosopher in his manhood”. (Comte, A. 1853 p.126). ¶88 Now the theoretical. These are reasons which correspond to John Stuart Mill's suggestion that, scientifically, we seek to resolve empirical laws into more fundamental ultimate laws. In this case Comte argues that imagination and theory have to be prior to observation in the development of human thought. “Theoretical.— Beside the observation of facts, we have theoretical reasons in support of this law. All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it must have been otherwise then. If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts cannot be observed without the guidance of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them. Thus, between the necessity of observing facts in order to form a theory, and having a theory in order to observe facts, the human mind would have been entangled in a vicious circle, but for the natural opening afforded by theological conceptions”. (Comte, A. 1853 pp 126-127). ¶89 So, Comte argues, it is a law of the human mind, individually and collectively, that we develop from ideas about the total meaning of existence, conceived in terms that we can understand as infants (supernatural beings), then move on to abstract notions of the same (nature) before, finally, resigning ourselves to conceiving things scientifically as the cause and effect of known objects in the observed world. In other words, in the last phase of our development, we drop our attempts to claim knowledge of ultimate reality, and content ourselves with immediate reality. This general law of development is a theoretical explanation of the empirical laws of history and mind that Comte claims to have discovered. ¶90 John Stuart Mill argues that by resolving observed sequences (empirical laws) into underlying causes, we move further towards the understanding the “inner and more remote parts of nature” that Bacon spoke of as the object of science. (See above

under Axioms and conceptions). I am not asking you to accept that Comte's laws of successive stages are true, empirically or theoretically. But, if they are, would it not be true that we have a more profound understanding when we grasp the alleged underlying law, than when we just had a report that this is the order in which thought has always developed? ¶91 Comte, in fact, goes on to resolve his general law of the development of the human mind into an even more general law about how we obtain knowledge. He comments on the paradox that, according to his theory, human thought starts with “the most inaccessible questions,—those of the nature of beings, and the origin and purpose of phenomena”. Why does it not start with the issues that are within our (collective) grasp? Why do humans start by speculating about supernatural beings, and only after thousands of years get on with making steam engines or (since Comte) sending men and women into space? Why do we try to solve the riddle of the universe before we try to resolve the riddle of the atom? The answer, according to Comte, is that we need meaningful theories in order to stimulate us to undertake the drudgery of intellectual inquiry. “The theological philosophy administered exactly the stimulus necessary to incite the human mind to the irksome labour without which it could make no progress. it is to the chimeras of astrology and alchemy that we owe the long series of observations and experiments on which our positive science is based”. (Comte, A. 1853 p.127). ¶92 We have ended with the conclusion that science must start in the imagination. Which is where I began, and where I wanted us to end. If you would have preferred a essay that began and ended with the necessity of starting with observation, you could either write it yourself, or read the book that John Locke has already written called An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. I discuss this book in essay three.

Citation suggestion Referencing My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry: Roberts, Andrew 1997 Social Science History for Budding Theorists Middlesex University: London. Available at http://studymore.org.uk/ssh.htm With references in the text to "(Roberts, A. 1997 ch.1, par. -)"

Remember to print the bibliography to the book as well as the chapters that you want.

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists By Andrew Roberts ESSAY TWO: HOBBES, FILMER AND LOCKE 17th Century Models for a Science of Society ¶1 A common idea about what a science is, is that it is a body of knowledge that has shown to be true by testing it against experience. This is the empiricist view of science. Other views of science stress the quality of the ideas it uses. This is the theoretical side of science, and it is this side that I am exploring with you in these essays. ¶2 Theology, philosophy and science The ideas that social sciences use developed historically and it helps us to understand what the social sciences are if we study where they come from. August Comte, the French theorist who invented the word Sociology in 1834, divided the history of ideas into three stages: theological, philosophical (critical) and scientific (positive). It is fairly straightforward to distinguish theological from philosophical theories, but much more difficult to say what makes a theory scientific. Hobbes, Filmer and Locke, the three 17th century theorists I discuss here, illustrate theological theories and philosophical theories, but they would also have claimed that aspects of their ideas were scientific. ¶3 Theological and state of nature theories Robert Filmer developed a theory that is mainly remembered for its theological aspects, although it has some important scientific features. We will compare and contrast his theory with the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Their theories are usually classified as being philosophical. They are a special kind of theory that is called "state of nature theory". State of nature theories were developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to provide a view of social reality that is earth centred instead of heaven centred. • Theological theories say that there is a body of divine law from which you deduce natural law. • State of Nature theorists work out what society and politics are about by imagining human beings stripped of social characteristics. They try to show how the needs of those individuals explain their need for society and politics. ¶4 State of nature in Eden We think of Adam and Eve as being in a "state of nature" when they were naked in the garden of Eden. The explanations of what happened there given in the sacred writings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are theological theories. They begin with the will of God (divine law) and explain what happens in this material, animal, world by reference to God's will. But we could also make state of nature theories to explain how the human race emerged. We could imagine what human beings were like before we became social beings, and explain from their animal properties how societies came into being. This is what the state of nature theorists did. ¶5 Just as there are a variety of theological theories, depending on what the theorist thinks about the nature of God and divine law, so there are a variety of State of Nature theorists, depending on what the theorist thought about the nature of human beings

and the laws of nature. Hobbes' state of nature differs from Locke's because Hobbes and Locke have different conceptions of the basic characteristics of human beings, and of the natural laws that govern them in a state of nature. THOMAS HOBBES ¶6 Thomas Hobbes wrote a book called Leviathan or The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil. We can take the word "commonwealth" as meaning "society", so his book is about the matter, form and power of society. Leviathan is a monster from the book of Job in the sacred writings of the Jews. I usually think of it as a crocodile. “Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about. His scales are his pridethey cannot be sundered”. God reasons with Job about Job's weakness and vulnerability in the world. He asks Job if he can put a hook into Leviathan's nose to lead him about like a domestic animal. “Will he make a covenant with thee”, God asks Job, “will thou take him for a servant for ever? He maketh the deep to boil like a potUpon earth there is not his like, who is made without fearHe is a king over all the children of pride” (Job chapter 41). Civil power is political power, ecclesiastical power is the power of the established church. So Hobbes argues that the matter, form and power of church and state (combined) are as the power of a devouring monster that we cannot make contracts with, but which we nevertheless allow to rule us. ¶7 Deductions from simple axioms Hobbes thought of himself as a scientist. He wanted to make a scientific model of politics like the model of the Universe created by the Italian astronomer Galileo. Galileo treated the planets as if they were like earthly bodies. He thought about their movement as being governed by the same laws that govern the physical objects we can handle. Galileo's theories started from simple axioms, or basic statements, about the laws governing matter. One of these laws is what we now call the law of inertia, that a body continues its motion in a straight line until something intervenes to stop it. Hobbes looked for similar axioms, or basic premises, on which to found a science of society. The objects of Hobbes' universe are human individuals. He pictured people as streams of impressions and selfish desires, forever in motion. We seek the temporary satisfaction of one desire, and then rush on to satisfy the next. At one moment we link to other individuals for the temporary satisfaction of desire, at another we collide because the other human has become an obstacle to our satisfaction. (Macpherson 1968; Hobbes 1651 Introduction and Chapter 2, first paragraphs of each). ¶8 Here is Hobbes describing how simple the basic driving force of the human universe is: “besides sense, and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion; though by the help of speech, and method, the same faculties may be improved to such a height as to distinguish men from all other living creatures” (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 3, last paragraph but one). Sense and thought are the multitude of impressions running through your mind from your five senses and from your desires. The train, stream, chain or succession of these is the motion that moves Hobbes' universe.

a train or chain of thoughts

¶9 Right reason like geometry Hobbes says theory should be based on "right reason". He compared political theory to geometry. In political theory, he argued, if we give correct definitions to things we can argue from those definitions to universal conclusions. Correct definitions are like axioms in geometry. “truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accordingly. And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning”. (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 4 under margin note Necessity of Definitions)

¶10 The reason that Hobbes calls an axiom a definition is that he is an empiricist. He believes that all knowledge comes from experience. The axioms of knowledge are, therefore, the different items of experience that we have. Confusion enters into the issue because we do not agree the same names for the same experiences. If we could agree our definitions precisely, and link them in the correct order, we would find that we had a commonly agreed scientific knowledge instead of lots of conflicting opinions. ¶11 Starts with egoistic psychology What Hobbes tries to define correctly is human psychology. He argues from that to universal conclusions about political behaviour. Stripped to our essential characteristics, Hobbes argues, human beings are completely selfish. Their actions have to be explained in terms of the satisfaction that they get from them. To explain altruistic feelings, like pity, we must show how pity somehow benefits the person who pities. Hobbes says "Grief, for the calamity of another, is pity, and arises from the imagination that the like calamity may befall himself" (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 6, Margin: Pity) ¶12 Hobbes' psychology In the first three chapters of Leviathan Hobbes argues that in nature animals, including people, have four faculties: sense, imagination, memory, and mental discourse. As he is an empiricist, we should not be surprised to find that everything starts with sense. There is nothing in our minds, Hobbes says, that has not, at some point, been started off by the effect of an external object on our senses (Hobbes 1651 chapter 1: page 1). Senses conjure images into our minds. These images are our ideas. They are not just there when we are receiving the sensations, but persist afterwards. They have what Hobbes calls a `motion' in our minds. This movement of images through our minds is what Hobbes calls imagination.

“Imagination is nothing but decaying sense; and is found in men and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking” (Hobbes 1651, chapter 2: paragraph 2). Images fade because they are obscured by stronger ones. The faded images are called memory and "much memoryis called experience" (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 2, margin: Memory). So images and memory are the same thing—the one fresh and virulent, the other faded. ¶13 Trains of thought We can link these images together in what Hobbes calls a train of thought or imagination. This is mental discourse, or non-verbal thinking, which humans can do before they have the power of speech (Hobbes 1651, chapter 3). Some trains (or chains) of thought just wander about linking one idea to another without an object or end. They are unguided, without design.

3

But others are guided by passion or desire. They have an end.

4 The end is a desired object that occurs at the end of the chain. (So it is an end in two senses). The links in the chain are the images of things we have previously seen leading to that end. In a state of nature, of course, we would not have taps, but when the artist drew a pond, the meaning was not as clear. ¶14 Reason and desire Hobbes joins together reasoning and desire. Thinking is thinking about how to get something, or what to do with it if we had it. In a state of nature people desperately try to find (think of and get) means to obtain their own ends. The thirsty person puts together images of the things that, according to memory or experience will link him or her to water. ¶15 War of all against all Hobbes reasons from his ego-centred psychology that, in a state of nature, other people are either used to obtain our own desires (“to have friends is power” Hobbes 1651 Chapter 10 third paragraph); or they get in the way of our desires, and we fight them. “If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end  endeavour to destroy or subdue one another.” (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 13 third paragraph). ¶16 The result of this is that there is a war of all against all, and life is nasty, brutish and short: “Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of

all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. (Hobbes 1651, Chapter 13 under margin note The incommodities of such a war) ¶17 Promises not reliable Hobbes presents us with a picture of a state of nature in which everyone can see that enormous benefits would flow from a civilised existence, but people cannot establish such an existence because it is always in everyone's interest for the other person to keep a bargain, but not to keep the bargain oneself! Without a power to punish someone who does not keep a promise, contracts have no strength, “For he that performeth first has no assurance the other will perform after” (Hobbes 1651, Chapter 14, Margin note: Covenants of mutual trust, when invalid). ¶18 From Hobbesian psychology to political sociology We now look at how Hobbes imagines humans getting out of a state of nature into a state of society or, as he calls it, commonwealth. Because promises are not reliable in a state of nature, this cannot be by a straightforward agreement between people to form a society. Hobbes argues that, instead, it is by a tacit recognition that anyone who imposes order, by force or otherwise, is sovereign whilst they maintain that order. Because the state of nature is so appalling, it is in everyone's interest to accept the rule of anyone who can impose order. This is so whatever the terms of the rule. The ruler's powers will be "absolute", or complete and unlimited. Hobbes says that whatever the Sovereign does he cannot be accused of injustice or punished by his subjects, nor can they change their Sovereign. (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 18). In this way, Hobbes argues from an egoistic psychology to an absolutist politics. From the idea that we are all selfish, to the idea that political order is of such enormous value to us that we will, rationally, allow our rulers whatever powers they need to maintain that order. And, whatever they do, we will not rebel against them. Of course, being selfish animals, we will run away if they try to kill or maim us. We will not, however, stop them killing or maiming other people. As long as they preserve our safety, we will accept and support them in whatever they do. ¶19 Getting out of a state of nature into a state of society Having seen where Hobbes is going, let us look at how he gets there. In nature, according to Hobbes, everyone has roughly equal power. The weakest can kill the strongest by "secret machinations". Everyone is equally vulnerable. However strong you are it does not stop someone creeping up behind you and stabbing you in the back (Hobbes 1651, Chapter 13, first page). So people have a common interest to escape their vulnerability. Hobbes says that there are "laws of nature" discovered by "reason". The first of these is that, because the state of war is so awful, people should seek peace. But how do people get from the state of nature and war to civil society and peace? Especially seeing that the second law of nature is that we should defend ourselves by all the means we can (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 14 Margin: The second Law of Nature). ¶20 The human faculty of speech The four faculties that humans share with other animals, according to Hobbes, include the ability to link images together into a train of thought connected to an objective or end. Hobbes adds that human beings (as distinct from animals) have a fifth faculty: the power of translating mental discourse into verbal discourse. Speech (the power of naming things to think about them and to communicate) is, Hobbes says: "the most noble and profitable invention of all otherwithout which there had been among men, neither commonwealth, nor

society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears and wolves" (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 4, first page and Margin: The use of speech) ¶21 Private Reason Converting our trains of thoughts into speech happens in two stages. The first only involves the individual. Individuals give marks or notes to the objects about which they are thinking. This helps them to think more clearly. To recall things from memory and to work out the possible causes of things. Individuals (in nature) have, therefore, the power of what Hobbes calls private reason. ¶22 Public Reason The next stage is when people agree a common signification for their marks. This gives them the power to communicate their ideas to one another. Private reason becomes public reason (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 4, Margin: The use of speech). But although when private reason becomes public, people accept a common vocabulary, Hobbes does not mean by this that they, necessarily, agree what words mean. Hobbes argues that it is disagreement over the meaning of words that lies at the root of political and scientific disagreements (See Hobbes 1651, Chapter 4, Margin: Inconstant names). ¶23 Contract Speech allows us to "make known to others our wills and purposes that we may have the mutual help of one another" (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 4, Margin: The use of speech). However, we do not give one another this mutual help for self-less reasons. We aim to get something out of it. There is an exchange and, therefore, a contract. But contracts are promises, and promises, as we said earlier, are easily broken if only dependent on our words. They have no strength "from their own nature, for nothing is more easily broken than a man's word" but only from "fear of some evil consequence upon the rupture" (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 14, Margin: Injustice) If contracts are based on trust in a condition of nature (which is war of everyone against everyone) they fall apart as soon as either partner suspects the other one will not keep his or her side of the bargain. To work, contracts require that "there be a common power set over them both, with right and force sufficient to compel performance" (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 14, Margin: Covenants of mutual trust, when invalid) ¶24 The power of force Hobbes says that contracts extorted by force are valid (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 14, Margin: Covenants extorted by fear are valid) Which means there are two ways (equally valid) of setting up a Commonwealth: by force or by agreement (Chapter 17 last paragraph). ¶25 Natural and artificial societies Those animals, other than humans, who live in societies (like bees and ants) agree naturally. Human beings disagree naturally "our natural passionscarry us to partiality, pride, revenge and the like". So human society has to be artificial (made by us) rather than natural. To force themselves to live at peace with one another, human beings have to erect a "common power". That is, one person, or one assembly of people, who is given the power of all of them—and to whom they all submit (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 17, Margin: Why certain creatures without reason, or speech, do nevertheless live in society, without any coercive power and Margin: The generation of a commonwealth). It is as if they all made a covenant with one another to submit to the sovereign power as long as everyone else does as well. If they do so by agreement, they cannot then change their minds and attempt to change the form of government—whatever it does. Unless the government ceases to

protect them, which was the reason they entered into the contract in the first place. (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 18 and Chapter 21, Margin: Liberty of subjects: how to be measured) PICTURE Picture summarises Hobbes ¶26 The big picture at the front of Leviathan summarises Hobbes' argument. At the top a giant king towers over countryside and city waving a sword in one hand and a bishop's crook in the other. His enormous body is made up of the multitude of people we can imagine living in the country he rises from. At the bottom, small pictures on either side of the title represent two types of power: force and religion. ¶27 The sovereign's great body being made of the multitude of people symbolises the theoretical problem that Hobbes confronts us with. How can a multitude of people, all with selfish and often conflicting interests, be welded together into the cooperative whole that allows civilisation to develop? This civilisation is represented by the town and cultivated country over which the sovereign towers. The solution to the problem is represented by the sword and the bishop's crook which the sovereign holds over the country. The sovereign controls the army and the church in order to force the people to live at peace with one another. On their part, the people accept this violence against themselves gladly, because it allows them to live at peace with one another, to develop commerce and industry, to educate their children and to develop the arts, literature and religion. ¶28 To emphasise the dual control, over force and ideas (religion), that is symbolised by the sword and the bishops crook, the artist puts a series of smaller images down the side under each. Each picture matches its partner on the other. Castle matches church, crown matches mitre, canon matches a symbol of lightning coming from the clouds. This lightning symbol could be the people's perception of God, or it could be a general symbol for ideas. At the bottom we see that clashing armies are matched by a meeting that could be a synod of the church, or a meeting of parliament. All these things, Hobbes argues, the king must have absolute power over, in order to preserve the order which makes civilisation possible. ¶29 By now, if you have followed what is being said, you may feel almost as frightened of Hobbes state of civilisation as of his state of war of all against all! Does the sovereign have to control the way that people think? The answer appears to be yes and no. Yes the sovereign must be able to control what people read and say and do (in outward rituals, for example). But no, the sovereign cannot control what they think. That takes place in the privacy of their minds.

HISTORY ¶30 Hobbes' Leviathan was published just after the English Civil War. Before moving on to discuss Filmer and Locke, it will help if we look at how our three theorists fitted in with this war and its aftermath. In 1642 civil war broke out between the English king, Charles 1st, and his parliament over the power of each. In 1649 the

king was executed and, for a while, Parliament was victorious. By the end of 1653, the rule of parliament had broken down, and the military leader, Cromwell, established a personal rule. Hobbes' Leviathan was published in 1651. This supported the need for absolute power. But, for Hobbes' theory, Cromwell's absolute power would be as good as a king's. The royalist writer Robert Filmer was also an absolutist. His arguments, however, supported the absolute power of the king. He said that the world was established, by God, so that legitimate rulers were already in place, and it was our duty to obey them. Just as it is in the family, so it is in political society. A child born into a family has no say over who its parents are. The child is duty bound to obey them. According to Filmer, the authority of kings is like the authority of the father, and can be traced back through history to the original father, Adam. ¶31 Cromwell died in 1658. In 1660 the parliament invited the son of Charles 1st, Charles 2nd, to be king. Filmer had died in 1653, so he did not see the restoration of monarchy. In 1680, however, his book Patriarcha was published by people who wanted to show that parliament had no right to object to a king, even if he belonged to the "wrong" religion. (The son of Charles 2nd, James 2nd, was a Roman Catholic). Patriarcha became one of the most widely read books in England. John Locke's Two Treatises was written as an argument against it. It supported limitations on the power of kings and the rule of laws established by parliament. It was not published until 1689, however, because, in the early 1680s, an argument like that was enough to get one's head cut off. Which is what happened in 1683 to one of Locke's friends, Algernon Sidney, who wrote a similar book. Locke was sensible. He went abroad and took his book with him. In 1688 William and Mary (protestants) were invited to become king and queen by the English parliament, and James, the Catholic king, fled to France. William and Mary were not to be absolute rulers, however. The agreement was that they would be limited by the laws passed by parliament. Locke came back to England with William and Mary, and his Two Treatises was published in 1689 to support their rule. ¶32 If you would like to read more about the relations of the ideas of our authors to the political intrigues of their time, look at Peter Laslett's introduction to The Two Treatises (Laslett 1963) and the booklet on Hobbes by Richard Tuck. (Tuck 1989)

SIR ROBERT FILMER ¶33 Sir Robert Filmer was born in 1588. He was a country squire who was knighted by Charles 1, but under the Commonwealth he lost some of his property as a result of his loyalty to the king. In 1643 he was imprisoned in Leeds Castle, Kent and after his release he spent the last years of his life in retirement, studying and writing. He wrote pamphlets in defence of the authority of the state. These were probably first circulated in manuscript, before being published, usually anonymously, (in 1648, 1652 and 1653). His best known work, Patriarcha, was published in 1680, after his death. It was probably written about 1637-1638, before his pamphlets, and Laslett refers to it as his original writing, from which the later pamphlets finally derive (Laslett 1963 p.71) ¶34 Natural (scientific) and theological sides Patriarcha was subtitled The Natural Power of Kings. The subtitle warns us that there are two sides to Filmer's arguments,

theological and natural. In the seventeenth century the theological aspects of Filmer's argument were very powerful, but we should not let it blind us to the scientific side of his theories. To start with the main title. Filmer's theories are known as "patriarchal", which means based on the rule (arche = rule) of the father (pater = father). This, as we shall see, Filmer based on an analysis of the Bible, which in those days was the main history book available to people. Because people treated the Bible as history, Filmer's theological arguments also have their natural side. History was one point where the "scientific" element came into Filmer's argument. He argued that there was no historic evidence that a state of nature had ever existed. The state of nature theorists built their arguments on an historic fantasy. Filmer argued that it was more true to nature to consider authority as just given to us. We are born into families which have a hierarchical structure and our relation to the state is similar. Just as it is inconceivable that a child should choose its father, so there is no historic evidence that any people originally chose their rulers. This is the part of Filmer's argument that remains strong today. It is the part that has been developed by theorists as diverse as David Hume, Emile Durkheim and Roger Scruton. ¶35 Hume David Hume is an eighteenth century theorist who accepted that the state of nature is mythical and thought there is little practical point speculating about the forgotten past of the human race. Instead he turned his attention to creating a psychological theory that explained why people obey authority, rather than trying to justify it philosophically. His criticisms of theories based on a social contract made in a state of nature theory had an important influence on Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, who we will meet in essay four. ¶36 Durkheim Emile Durkheim is one of the founders of modern sociology. He developed sociology because he disagreed with social scientists, like Bentham and Herbert Spencer, who, although not using state of nature theory, still followed the individualistic aspect of Hobbes' theories. Durkheim believed that society is more than a multitude of individuals held together by a sovereign and by contract. He sought to show that societies are realities in their own right. We will discuss him in the last essay. ¶37 Scruton Roger Scruton is a present day Conservative theorist who divides political theories into family models and contract models. He says the family model is most suitable to conservative theory and the contract model to liberal theory. Contract models, for example, State of Nature theories, focus on individuals and imagine society as a contract between them. Family models, like Filmer, see the bond between society and the citizen as analogous to that between parents and children, where there is no contract, but the child accepts the authority of its parents because they exercise love and power towards it. This deference to benevolent power is extended from the family to society. (See Scruton 1980) ¶38 Absolute—not constitutional monarchy Filmer argues that nature and the Bible show us that social contract theories of political authority are nothing but figments of the imagination. He argues that all government is absolute, that there is no natural freedom and that no one is born free. Contrast this with Locke, whose second treatise begins by telling us that to understand political power right, we must study the original state that humans were naturally in, which was a state of perfect freedom.

Absolute is the converse of constitutional. It means that a rule is not limited, by laws for example, or by the will of those who are ruled. ¶39 Kings above law A law, for Filmer, is not something that limits or controls a king. It is something that a king adopts for convenience. "Kings are above the laws" (Filmer 1680 p.93). “The reason why laws have been also made by kings was this: When kings were either busied with wars, or distracted with public cares, so that every private man could not have access to their persons, to learn their will and pleasure, then were laws of necessity invented, that so every particular subject might find his prince's pleasure deciphered unto him in the table of his laws” (Filmer 1680 p.92). ¶40 According to Filmer, "kingly power is by the law of God". No human law can limit it. (Filmer 1680 p.40). Filmer argued for the divine right of kings on the basis that God had made Adam general lord of all things, and that this patriarchal model is intended for all time. He says that "God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that should issue from them, but also over the whole earth to subdue itso that as long as Adam lived, no man could claim or enjoy anything but by donation, assignation, or permission from himAll kings either are, or are to be reputed, the next heirs" (Filmer quoted Locke 1689 1st Treatise, paragraph 78) ¶41 Family model Filmer builds all authority on the family. His Biblical basis for this is the commandment: "Honour thy father and thy mother". All authority being based on the family means that his theory applies to the relationships of parents to children, men to women, kings to subjects, lecturers to students, etc. But the comparison between the family and the state is particularly strong, and to modern ears quite shocking. For example, he says that: a father's power "is supreme power, and like that of absolute monarchs over their slaves, absolute power of life and death" (Filmer quoted Locke 1689, 1st Treatise, paragraph one.) JOHN LOCKE ¶42 Filmer and Hobbes are both absolutists, believing the sovereign's power is and should be unlimited. But Filmer develops patriarchal theory, whilst Hobbes is a state of nature theorist. Both can be regarded as conservatives. Our third theorist, John Locke is a state of nature theorist who is thought of as one of the main founders of liberal theory. ¶43 For constitutional monarchy Locke puts the case against absolutism. He puts the case for constitutional monarchy. Constitutional monarchy is a monarchy that is bound by laws. Let us take an example from the history that gave rise to Locke's theory. If the rule of the monarch is absolute and the succession of monarchy is from father to eldest son, parliament can have no right to pass a law that prevents the eldest son from becoming king unless he belongs to the national religion. If the rule is constitutional, however, parliament has that right.

¶44 Comparing Hobbes and Locke Locke presented his arguments as an attack on Filmer's patriarchal theory. Here, however, I am going to contrast Locke with Hobbes. That is, I am going to compare the two state of nature theories.

¶45 In his theory Locke wants to show that civilisation has some independence from the sovereign, and that rights exist independent from the sovereign. We need to be clear here that what he is speaking of are not rights established by a sovereign or ruling power, but fundamental rights that belong to us as human beings. To give an example from everyday life, instead of politics. Imagine that someone in power (a lecturer for example) was to touch you in a way that you felt was an invasion of your body space. Would you have a right to feel aggrieved even if there was no college rule or national law that said that touching in that way was wrong? Locke thought that we have a natural "property" right in our bodies. When our body space is infringed we often feel the same. But can we justify that feeling? To do so is to move from feeling to theory. ¶46 Can we say no? To return to politics. Locke asks whether we (the ruled) have any fundamental right to say "no" to our ruler/s. This question can be broken down into two: 1) Have you the right to resist your ruler's will? 2) Have we the right to change our rulers? On these same points, Hobbes said, on the first point, that you only have a right to resist your ruler if the ruler is seeking to kill or maim you. You have no right to resist because the ruler is killing or maiming other people. On the second point, Hobbes said that only one circumstance gives us the right to change our rulers. That is if the rule has broken down, if it has, in effect, ceased to be. (Hobbes 1651 1) Chapter 18; 2) Chapter 21 paragraphs following margin note Liberty of subjects: how to be measured) Locke, on the other hand, says that 1) The people are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or properties 2) That the people have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislativeprovide for their own safety and security. (Locke 1689 2nd Treatise, paragraphs 222 and 228) ¶47 State of nature not a war: Locke wants to show, theoretically, that under some circumstances the ruled can say no to their ruler. To do this, he argues that human character in a state of nature allows us to be civilized with one another. The "War of All against All" that Hobbes spoke of is a risk, but it is not inevitable. ¶48 Hobbes believes that without a sovereign power we will fall straightaway into a state of nature in which life will be nasty, brutish and short. It is therefore logical for us always to obey the king who keeps us out of this appalling state (unless he tries to take away our lives). ¶49 Locke believes that civilized relations can be maintained between people even when there is no sovereign power to enforce them. His state of nature is not a state of war, although it is more likely to become one than society organized under a sovereign power. Because his state of nature is not the terrifying condition described by Hobbes, Locke envisages people as able to resist a ruler who does not act in accordance with their general wishes as expressed by laws passed in their legislative assembly. In other words: If the state of nature is the appalling condition that Hobbes describes, you will do anything to avoid it, short of being killed or maimed. If it is the

tolerable, but risky, condition that Locke describes, you will do anything within reason to avoid it. There could come a point, however, at which you are willing to risk the insecurity of living, for a time, without settled rulers—in order to get rid of a ruler who is acting in defiance of law. ¶50 Reason is law of nature The difference between Locke and Hobbes is indicated in one phrase of this famous quote from the beginning of Locke's second treatise: “To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man”. (Locke 1689, 2nd Treatise, chapter two.) The difference is in the strength that Locke ascribes to what he calls "the law of nature". Locke believes that we are naturally governed by a law that enables us to behave in a civilised way towards one another. That law, according to Locke, is reason. Hobbes does not believe this. Hobbes believes that natural reason is just something inside the individual's head. It does not have the strength to establish civilised relations between people. That requires a sovereign. According to Hobbes we need a sovereign even to talk to one another, because without a sovereign to lay down the law about what words we use to indicate different things, we will not even agree about what words mean what! ¶51 Different ideas about what reason is, lead to different political perspectives. Locke argues that reason is the law of nature that teaches us not to harm one another: "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions." Locke speaks of "natural reason" and says that the "equality of men by nature" is "so evident by itself" that it can be made the foundation of an obligation to mutual love on which all our interpersonal duties are built. (Locke 1689, 2nd Treatise, paragraphs 5 and 6) ¶52 In what sense equal? Think carefully about that statement that human equality by nature is so self-evident that it can be the foundation of feelings of mutual love on which all morality can be built. Does it mean that we all look the same physically? That, I would suggest, is self-evidently false. I think it refers to the discovery that we are the same kind of being as one another. You would not consider a waxwork model of yourself in Madame Tussauds to be the same kind of being as you, however realistic it was, but you would another human being, even if physically as different from you as possible. My interpretation of this passage from Locke is that at the same time that we learn that other people are the same kind of being as us, we also recognise, by a natural process of reason, that we ought not to hurt them. ¶53 Symbolic interaction You may be able to make sense of Locke if you treat him as having an interactionist psychology. That is a theory of psychology based on interaction between individuals using symbols. Symbolic Interactionists say that we learn by playing, not just by seeing. In the lecture that gave rise to Symbolic Interactionism, George Herbert Mead discussed the difference between the human consciousness of "self" and the physical organism, and argued that the consciousness of self develops from the conversation of gestures in animals (threatening symbolic action rather than fight for example) through the play of human children in which they

take on the role of other people, who can perceive them, and so learn to think of themselves, symbolically, and begin to construct a concept of self and a personal history. (See Mead 1934) ¶54 According to this view, you learn by childhood play to imagine the other person as someone like yourself. Something in that play also teaches you that you should not harm the other child and (generally) that the reason we should not harm one another is that we are like one another and our mutual civilisation depends on our treating one another as people not as things. ¶55 We all recognise that young children are prevented from making each other's lives a misery by fear of being punished by a parent. That fits Hobbes' theory. But does anything else operate? The symbolic interactionists argue that, through play, the human child learns to imagine him or herself as the other person. When tempted to hurt a sibling, therefore, the child is aware that the sibling has feelings like him or her. Each child identifies with the other and this "mutual love" (as Locke would have described it) acts as a force within the children against tumbling into a "war of all against all". But, as we all know, it is an unstable condition, and the child's self interest tending to be stronger than his or her awareness of the other's feelings, the nursery floor very easily tumbles into a war of all against all. The parent's authority is sometimes necessary to restore peace, but, according to Locke, it is not the only force acting in that direction. The naturally acquired reason of human beings is on the side of civilisation.

Citation suggestion Referencing My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry: Roberts, Andrew 1997 Social Science History for Budding Theorists Middlesex University: London. Available at http://studymore.org.uk/ssh.htm With references in the text to "(Roberts, A. 1997 ch.2, par. -)"

Remember to print the bibliography to the book as well as the chapters that you want.

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists By Andrew Roberts

ESSAY THREE: WHAT IS SCIENCE? The Ideas of Locke, Hume and Wollstonecraft.

¶1 The ideas of science, especially social science, were developed from philosophy. But what is science? And have we any reason to have confidence in it? These are contentious issues and, to introduce you to some of the arguments, I am going to outline the theories of knowledge (epistemologies) of three people with different, but related ideas. John Locke published an Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690, David Hume published A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739 and Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. The first chapter of Wollstonecraft's book examines the human condition, and includes her ideas on knowledge. ¶2 Let us imagine each of these theorists giving us advice about how we should be scientific in our pursuit of knowledge. What would that advice be? • Locke would tell us that we must reason carefully about sense data so as to build up sure knowledge that is not distorted by fantasy or passion. • Hume would agree with Locke, but would tell us sadly that science is very limited and that reason is the slave of our passions. • Wollstonecraft would not agree. She would tell us that although reason should control our passion, we should let passion unfold our reason. The two must work together, passion or fantasy as the driving force, reason as the controller. And she would tell us that we should have the courage to make mistakes Now, having heard their advice, we must let them explain it!

LOCKE ¶3 Locke and Hume both believed that the only firm base for knowledge is observation. Locke said “I shall inquire into the original of those ideas which a manhas in his mind” (Locke 1690 Introduction, point 3 Method). “Let us then suppose the mind to bewhite paper, void of all characters, without any ideas, how comes it to be furnished?Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from experience. In that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself” (Locke 1690 Book 2, chapter 1, point 2, All ideas come from sensation or reflection). ¶4 According to Locke the two fountains of knowledge are: 1) Observations about external sensible objects, which he calls sensation, and 2) Observations about the internal operations of our mind, which he calls reflection. (Locke 1690 Book 2, chapter one)

¶5 Observations can be simple, or complex. Simple observations are always true. Complex observations are not always true. Here is an example that Locke gives of simple ideas: “all our simple ideas are adequate”, he says, “being nothing but the effects of certain powers in things” For example, “if sugar produce in us the ideas which we call whiteness and sweetness, we are sure there is a power in sugar to produce those ideas in our minds, or else they could not have been produced by it”. (Locke 1690 Book 2, chapter 31, section 2, Simple ideas all adequate). This then is the bedrock of science. The firm basis on which we can build certainty in a world of uncertainty is by tracing all our complicated ideas back to the simple experiences they originated from, which we are confident are true. ¶6 Complex ideas are convenient, but do not always correspond with reality in the way that the sweetness and whiteness of the sugar did. Complex observations are made up of lots of simple ones. We use these bundles of simple ideas because they save us time. Your idea of an apple, for example, is a bundle of simple ideas. You bundle together its colours, shape, feel, taste etc, and think of the bundle of those impressions as an apple. This saves you a lot of time, because you just think "apple" instead of having to think of all the impressions that compose the apple. And you can use the same idea for as many apples as you like. (Locke 1690 Book 3, chapter 3, section 20, Recapitulation) ¶7 The problem for science is that you can have complex ideas about things that do exist, and about things that do not exist. How do we tell the one from the other? For example, you can imagine an apple that tastes like an orange, but you probably do not believe that such an apple exists. How do you distinguish between complex ideas that are true (like an apple that tastes like an apple), and complex ideas that are false (like the apple that tastes like an orange)? ¶8 Locke says that "Truth lies in so joining or separating these representatives [ideas or words] as the things they stand for do in themselves agree" (Locke 1690 Book 2, chapter 32, section 19) In other words, truth is when the way that you have joined together simple ideas in your head, matches the way that the things they represent are joined together outside your head. Falsehood lies in asserting that things relate in the outside world in a way they do not. ¶9 Let us try this through with a complex idea that we probably think is false. Think of pink elephants dancing on the top of a tower block. You can do that, Locke says, because all the (relatively) simple elements that you compose the image of, actually exist. Pink exists, elephants exist, dancing exists and tower blocks exist. You have had some experience of each, which provides the material in your mind from which you build the fantasy of pink elephants dancing on a tower block. The way that these elements are joined together in your fantasy, however, does not correspond to any real joining together of those elements outside your mind. ¶10 According to Locke, the greatest cause of error is wrong connections (Locke 1690 Book 2 chapter 33, section 9 Wrong connection of ideas a great cause of errors). So if you connect pink to elephants dancing and imagine them on the top of the tower block, you have made several connections that do not exist in the real world. You might actually see them, if you were drunk. But if you say that they really

exist, you have made an error. To be scientific we have to reason very carefully about the things we say are true. We have to analyze (break down into their component parts) our ideas and make sure that those parts are connected outside our heads in the way that we have connected them inside our heads. This is how Locke puts it: "Herein, therefore, is found the reality of our knowledge concerning substances; that all our complex ideas of them must be such, and such only, as are made up of such simple ones as have been discovered to co-exist in nature" (Locke 1690 Book 4 chapter 4 section 12 So far as our complex ideas agree with those archetypes without us, so far our knowledge concerning substances is real) ¶11 Let's have another example. Imagine that you go for a walk in a dark wood at night. There are very clear sounds and indistinct shapes that begin to frighten you. Terror overcomes you and you run from the wood convinced that you are being pursued by spirits of evil that infest the wood. From then on you do not enter the wood after dark. The image of the evil spirits is very real to you. But is it true? That depends on whether those clear sounds and indistinct shapes really hang together in the real wood as evil spirits, or whether, in the real wood, they are (for example) the clear sounds of night animals and the indistinct shapes of trees. From this example you can see how Locke thinks that superstitions arise, and how you might go about separating superstition from science. If someone alleges that sprites and goblins really exist, and tells you that they saw them in a dark wood, then you have to analyze the sensations they had and try to see if they hold together in reality (outside their head) in the way they clearly do inside their head. We have to be very critical of our beliefs if we are to be scientific. (Locke 1690 Book 2 chapter 33, section 10 An instance. “The ideas of goblins and sprites”) ¶12 What we have been calling "connections" in the mind between different simple ideas, Locke calls the Association of Ideas (Locke 1690 Book 2 chapter 33). This is an important concept in the science of mind (psychology) that developed from Locke's ideas, and which continues today in the science known as behaviourism. Here is one example he gave. Some people like reading books. They count it a pleasure to be able to read. Other people only have to think of a book to feel pain. So some people associate (connect) the idea of book to pleasure, other people connect it to pain. But these connections are not inherent in the book in the way that sweetness is in the sugar. How is it, then, that the thought of a book gives some people a pain? Locke says that to understand this we have to look back at how we were treated at school. Some people have been punished for not understanding books. They have associated this idea of punishment to the idea of a book. Now they may have forgotten the original cause of that association of ideas, but books may make them feel uncomfortable as certainly as sugar tastes sweet! (Locke 1690 Book 2, chapter 33, section 15) ¶13 Let us imagine that you are the person who associates pain with reading. (Well done for reading this much!). The pain you feel is a passion or a feeling. It is also a fantasy. Not in the sense that the pain is not real, but in the sense that pain is not linked to reading books in reality, in the way that it is linked, for example, to putting your hand in a fire. Locke recognises that sorting the “scientific” truth out, that books are not inherently painful, can be very difficult. Very reasonable people, he says, can be set in their ways; tied to unreasonable associations of ideas; by their education, by the customs of their society, and by other people drumming false ideas into their

heads for party advantage. The main cause of the errors in the world, he says, is that: “the constant din of education, custom or party drives false associations into our minds and blinds us to plain reason”. (Locke 1690 Book 2 chapter 33 section 18) ¶14 If Locke has now fully explained to you his advice that the way to be scientific is to reason carefully about sense data so as to build up sure knowledge that is not distorted by fantasy or passion, we will pass on to Hume's advice. HUME ¶15 Hume, you may remember, agreed with Locke that science is built on sorting out the relationships between our ideas to make sure that they corresponded to the relationship between objects in the real world. But, he told us sadly, when we try to do this we do not get far. Science is very limited and reason, on which we try to build it, is a slave to our passions. Habit and custom are what hold our ideas together, and matching our ideas to the real world is a lot harder than we first thought and, in most areas, probably impossible. Hume was a sceptic, one inclined to doubt the possibility of real knowledge. ¶16 None of this should be taken to mean that Hume was anti-science. Far from it. He subtitled his book An attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. By moral subjects he meant things to do with human conduct as distinct from inanimate nature. Isaac Newton had established a science of physical objects in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which was published in Latin in 1686 and in English in 1729. In this he had shown the laws of what we call physics, in such a way that people could check his findings by carrying out their own experiments. Hume wanted to do the same thing for the mind. Working from Locke's theory of the association of ideas, Hume wanted to create a science of mind that you can check out for yourself in the comfort of your own mind. So here we go. Check out for yourself what Hume is saying! ¶17 To carry out Hume's experiments, let us take an object that we feel confident exists in the external world. I have chosen an apple. You can do this mentally or, as I have, you can get an apple. Hume first asks us to analyze our apple: to break down the sensations that we receive from it into their simplest component parts. I can see lots of different colours, reds, oranges, greens, browns, and white where the light catches it. When I was holding it, it felt cold and smooth. It has a shape, and it has weight which I feel in my hand when I pick it up. This apple also has a beautiful smell. The smell is making me feel hunger. If I give in to the hunger and take a bite of the apple, a host of other sensations of taste and sound come from it. ¶18 So this is Hume's first point. An idea like an apple is a complex of lots of simpler ideas. You can think of those ideas (red, green, white, cold, sweet, etc) separately. It is these separate, simple, ideas that Locke said we could have confidence in. We bundle the separate ideas together, for convenience, into the idea of an apple. But this is a construction of our mind. If I put the apple on the chair behind me I can still smell something. I can also feel something cold in the small of my back, but I cannot see any of the colours I saw before. Nevertheless I hold together, in my image of that apple, all the ideas of colour, shape, smell and touch. And I believe that they are held together in reality. I put my hand behind me in the sure confidence that it will find the

solid, sweet smelling, cold, colourful sphere that I have called an apple. I have just done that. The apple, as you would expect, is back. ¶19 Next, Hume asks us to explain how we justify holding the separate simple sensations together, and believing that they constitute one object, an apple. How is it that simple ideas are compounded or associated into complex ones. Nature, he says, gives us a hint by: "pointing out to everyone those simple ideas, which are most proper to be united into a complex one" (Hume 1739 Book 1 part 1 section 4). The first of these hints is resemblance. I have seen lots of apples before, they all looked different in some respects, but they were sufficiently like one another for me to think that bundles of sensations like that can be considered as apples. The second hint is contiguity (togetherness) in time and place. At the moment, with the apple in front of me, the separate colours are all together, at the same time, in one circular area. They stay together when I move the apple. I cannot say, for sure, that the smell is in the same place, but I can say that it is in the same time. Before I fetched the apple from my kitchen, I was not aware of the delicious apple smell. If I take the apple back to the kitchen, I can predict that the smell in this room will fade away. Maybe my hunger will fade as well? Or maybe I will have to eat the apple for that to happen? Which brings us to the third hint that nature gives: cause and effect. Experience teaches us that picking up apples has similar effects on us whenever we do it. We have previously smelt apples, and felt hungry, so we recognise the link between the sensation of smell and that of hunger. Experience has also taught us that removing the apple does not always remove the hunger, to do that we may have to eat the apple. ¶20 So, to summarise, Hume says that the natural processes by which we associate simple ideas, the processes by which the mind is “conveyed from one idea to another”, are three, “resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause and effect” (Hume 1739 Book 1 part 1 section 4) ¶21 The idea of cause and effect is essential to science. Science looks for laws that link one thing to another reliably. So how reliable is nature's hint that things are connected by cause and effect? Hume says, not at all reliable. He attempts to convince us that by cause and effect we mean nothing other than constant conjunction. Things constantly happening together. If A is seen as always being followed by B, we say that A causes B. But, although we believe that there must be a necessary connection between them, we cannot support this belief other than by reference back to their conjunction in our experience. If asked to prove that eating an apple will relieve hunger, I can refer back to my previous experience of that happening and I can repeat the experiment. All that happens in each case, however, is that the experience of eating the apple is followed by the experience of not feeling as hungry as I did before. ¶22 Hume points out that: “there is nothing in any object considered in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it, and that even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience” (Hume 1739 Book 1 part 3 chapter 12). This means, for example, that even though eating an apple has relieved hunger many times before, you have no reason to be sure that it will again. The next time it may be different. Think of the person who has seen a thousand swans, and every one has been white. That person would feel very confident in saying that all swans are white. But all he or she can

really say is that all the swans seen, so far, are white. When Europeans reached Australia they found that some swans are black. What is the difference, in terms of experience, between saying all swans are white, which we now believe to be false, and saying that night will not last for ever, but will be succeeded by day? We think of that as certain because it has always happened in the past. But, on the analogy of the swans, we cannot be sure it is going to happen next time! ¶23 The point of Hume arguing thus, is not to make you doubt that morning will follow night, or that eating food will relieve hunger. Hume is anxious that you remain sane. If you begin to get into a bad state whilst thinking about these things, he advises you to do what he does, go and have a laugh and a good meal with some friends. You will soon forget about philosophy! (Hume 1739 Book 1 part 4 section 7). What he wants to show you is that the argument made by Locke that we could discover certain knowledge, is not as secure as we might have thought it was. ¶24 Most of what we say we "know", Hume argues, is belief supported by strength of feeling. This is what he says: “It is not solely in poetry and music we must follow out taste and sentiment, but likewise in philosophy. When I am convinced of any principle, it is only an idea which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence” (Hume 1739 Book 1 part 3 section 8). According to Hume “all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom; and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the cognitive part of our natures” (Hume 1739 Book 1 part 4 section 1). ¶25 Building on what we actually experience, even our bodies are in doubt. Look at your hand. Is what you see part of your body? Hume says: “properly speaking, it is not our body we perceive, when we regard our limbs and members, but certain impressions which enter by the senses; so that the ascribing real and corporeal existence to these impressions, or to their objects, is an act of the mind”. It is your mind that holds together all the different impressions that you think belong to you. But how could you prove that they belong together? ¶26 So Hume agrees with Locke that, to be scientific, we must reason carefully about sense data so as to build up sure knowledge that is not distorted by fantasy or passion. But he discovers through his mental experiments that our reasons for linking experiences together are built more on habit, on what we are used to linking together and feel most comfortable with, rather than rigorous reasoning. (Which is what he means by saying that reason is the slave of our passions). And he thinks that this is not altogether a bad thing. Its all very well questioning what we believe during a seminar, or for academic purposes, but, Hume reminds us, we have to get on with living as well, and the beliefs that our culture provides us with, however irrational, do allow us to do that.

WOLLSTONECRAFT ¶27 You may have noticed that Hume is both radical and conservative. When he is arguing his epistemology he is radical in the sense that he destroys our confidence in all that we take for granted. He leaves us wondering if there is anything we can reliably believe. Radical doubt, like that, is according to Hume, important for the advancement of science. He is conservative, however, as soon as the argument is getting us confused. Come on, he says, lets forget about philosophy and go for a good meal and a laugh. Its much better to stick with our society's prejudices than to let academic doubts drive us mad. ¶28 In 1789 the French Parliament decided to do away with prejudice, and to build society on the basis of reason. France was going to be a scientific society where the relations between people would be built on reason and experience rather than custom and prejudice. It was infectious. The French Revolution spilt out of the parliament onto the streets of Paris. When the women of Paris found they could not afford the price of bread, they marched to the King's palace and demanded a society in which they could afford to eat. “We will go and get the head baker” they said. It spilt into the fields of France, the poor farmers took over the fields from the rich, demanding enough land to grow the food they needed to feed themselves. It spilt over national frontiers, in Germany the philosopher Hegel wrote that for the first time in the history of the world reason was taking over reality! (Hegel, F./History). But it still couldn't be stopped. It ran across the seas to the French West Indies. The slaves heard it and rose in rebellion to demand that they too should have a society built on reason and the human rights, not on slavery and force (James 1938/1980). And it spilt into the home. In England, Mary Wollstonecraft said that we should build the relations between men and women on reason. ¶29 Now here is the problem. According to Locke a society built on reason is not only possible, but desirable and natural. What we have to be careful of, especially in a revolutionary situation, is that our passions do not distort our reason. If they do, we run the risk that we will end up fighting one another rather than establishing a rational society. Locke says that we must reason carefully about sense data so as to build up sure knowledge that is not distorted by fantasy or passion. This applies to our understanding of our relations as human beings as well as our understanding of the physical world. Hume, however, has convinced people that the careful reasoning about the world that Locke advises will not get us very far. We are more likely to drive ourselves mad trying to reconstruct the world, because the mental associations we make are insecure. We are weak reasoners, and so it is most sensible to stick with the associations of ideas that our society provides us with. ¶30 In relation to the French Revolution, Hume's caution was echoed by Edmund Burke. Burke defended prescription and prejudice against individual reason. A prescription is something that is prescribed for you. You do not have to understand the medicine that your doctor prescribes, you just take it on trust. In the same way our society prescribes to us ideas about how things hang together. Prejudices are prejudgements. They are given to us before we reason. They are beliefs that we just have because our culture has them. Burke argued that these ideas come from a collective bank of reason that society has built up over the centuries. People who accept those prejudices are wiser, according to Burke, than the intellectuals who try to reconstruct

society on the limited reason that they have as individuals or as small groups. The British Constitution, he argued, evolved gradually and cautiously, with respect being paid to the hidden wisdom that it contained. The French revolutionaries, on the other hand, were trying to reconstruct society with no respect for its past and on the basis of a set of principles (the Declaration of the Rights of Man) that could be written down on one side of a sheet of paper. ¶31 Burke was criticising the group of English thinkers that Mary Wollstonecraft belonged to. They had welcomed the French Revolution and wanted to extend its principles on this side of the channel. Wollstonecraft was one of the first to appear in print with an argument against him. This argument turned Locke's ideas about knowledge upside down. Passion and fantasy, she argued are an important part of reason. Yes, they can lead us into trouble, but that is part of being reasonable. When you reason something out you run the risk of making mistakes, and if you are not willing to make mistakes you will never learn. ¶32 Let her explain this to us herself. The first chapter of her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (reproduced in my extracts section) is a defence of the human power to reason scientifically about human relations, against Burke's criticisms of individual reason as exercised by people like her who questioned the conventions. She asks and answers three questions: 1) “In what does man's pre-eminence over the brute creation consist? The answer is as clear as that a half is less than the whole, in reason.” 2) “What acquirement exalts one being above another? Virtue.” 3) “For what purpose were the passions implanted? That man by struggling with them might attain a degree of knowledge denied to the brutes, whispers experience”. (Wollstonecraft 1792 first page) ¶33 Notice that Wollstonecraft is talking about “virtue” and “knowledge”. What she says is intended to apply to obtaining knowledge about what the world is (science) and about the right way to behave (morals). ¶34 In the last question and answer she links passion and knowledge in a positive way. Unlike Locke, who thought we should carefully disentangle our passions from our observations, Wollstonecraft says that we were given passions in order that “by struggling with them” we can gain a kind of knowledge that other animals do not have. “Experience” whispers to us that this is the case. This is something we learn, not something we just have. It is the wisdom of creation, she says later, “that the passions should unfold our reason”. (Wollstonecraft 1792 third page) ¶35 To understand what I think she means, think of an example given by Rousseau in a book that Wollstonecraft was very fond of. Rousseau says that we should learn the natural way, by making mistakes. A child should be allowed to make mistakes if it is to learn. If you never wanted your daughter to be hurt, you might never let her run about. That way she would never fall and hurt her knees. She would also never learn to run and keep her balance. Nature, Rousseau says, intends that we learn by making mistakes, by falling over. The excitement (passion) of running in the garden may end in tears when your little girl falls and cuts her knees. But she learns through this experience something about running and balance that she could never learn if she was prevented from running. “That wise Being who created us”, Wollstonecraft says, “willed, by allowing it to be so, that the passions should unfold our reason, because he

could see that present evil would produce future good” (Wollstonecraft 1792 third page). ¶36 According to Wollstonecraft, the bad things in the world, which she calls “evil”, have a purpose. By making mistakes we learn. She agrees with Burke that this is not just an individual unfolding of reason. It also happens collectively, through human history. “That from the exercise of reason, knowledge and virtue naturally flow, is equally undeniable, if mankind is viewed collectively” she says (Wollstonecraft 1792 first page). History is a process in which human beings progress, via miserable mistakes, to the unfolding of reason in the way that creation intended. According to Wollstonecraft, the problem with people like Burke is not that they have understood that individual reason is just part of collective reason, but that they want to stop the process. The French Revolutionaries had used their reason to deduce: “the more equality there is established among men, the more happiness and virtue will reign in society. But this and any similar maxim deduced from simple reason, raises an outcry - the Church or the State is in danger, if faith in the wisdom of antiquity is not implicit; and they who, roused by the sight of human calamity, dare to attack human authority, are reviled as despisers of God and enemies of man.” (Wollstonecraft 1792 sixth page) ¶37 Wollstonecraft contrasts two types of thinking. Thinking what you are told to think, and thinking for yourself. “Mind” does not develop if you are afraid to think for yourself. The clergymen of the Church of England had much greater educational opportunities than most other people in Wollstonecraft's time. But she does not think much of the result. The “servile” manner of the poor clergymen, and the “courtly mien of a bishop” “render the discharge of their separate functions equally useless”. The problem lies in their education. “Blind submission” is imposed on them at college to “forms of belief”. They are told what to think and they learn to “obsequiously respect the opinion” of people in power. That, Wollstonecraft says, is not the way for reason to develop. Societies that insist on people believing what they are told, produce people who are “foolish or vicious”. (Wollstonecraft 1792 eighth page). ¶38 Now that we have explored three different ideas about what science is, it only remains for you to risk making a few mistakes for yourself. What kind of social scientist will you be? Will you be like Wollstonecraft, passionately pushing forward human progress, but relying more on inspiration than careful investigation and explanation? Will you be like Locke, carefully examining the evidence, and trying not to be disturbed by your passions? Or will you be like Hume, sceptical of how reliable the whole process is, not allowing it to stop you having fun with your friends, but, during your study periods, applying yourself diligently to the critical examination of what you have been taught?

Citation suggestion Referencing My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry: Roberts, Andrew 1997 Social Science History for Budding Theorists Middlesex University: London. Available at http://studymore.org.uk/ssh.htm With references in the text to "(Roberts, A. 1997 ch.3, par. -)"

Remember to print the bibliography to the book as well as the chapters that you want.

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists By Andrew Roberts ESSAY FOUR: CAN THEORY REDESIGN SOCIETY? Rousseau, the French Revolution, Women and Slaves.

¶1 The French Revolution of 1789 sets itself apart from every revolution that had gone before by being a revolution centred on theories. At its centre was a Declaration of the Rights of Man, drawn up by the French Parliament, that focused the minds of the people on what the theorists thought were the basic principles of good government. The declaration of ideas enabled the revolution to spread out of the parliament into the minds of the people, and explains why historians have never been able to agree on when the revolution ended or what its boundaries were. Where, asked Carlyle, did the French revolution take place? Was it in the French parliament or in the streets and fields of France?. “In general, may we not say that the French revolution lies in the heart and head of everyFrench man?” (Carlyle, T. 1837/1839 Book 6, chapter 1, p.172). His figures show that he included every French woman, but he could have given them a separate mention, women were in the forefront of the revolution in France. He could have added that it spread from France to the slave plantations of the West Indies. He might even have said that it fired the minds of women and men generally, for the revolution there has been so persistent that it is still going on. ¶2 This essay first looks at the way that ideas generated by the theorists John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau were applied in the French revolution in 1789. It then looks at how these same ideas applied to two large sections of society that were caught up in the revolution: women and slaves. It has five parts: Explaining a little about the French revolution The revolution and general political theory The revolution and theories of slavery The revolution and theories of gender The development of the revolution with respect to slavery and gender

EXPLAINING A LITTLE ABOUT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ¶3 French Absolutism The States General of France was the equivalent of parliament in England. In England the parliament had waged war on the king and, in 1649, executed him. In France the King did not call parliament together—the States General did not meet once between 1614 and 1789. When reading about this period of French history you will come across references to the parliaments of regions, like the parliament of Paris. These are not parliament in the English sense. They are courts of law that were often in conflict with the king. ¶4 The idea of a monarch ruling without a consultative body of the people (Parliament or States General) to approve laws and thus limit the monarch's power, was one aspect of what the philosopher theorists meant by “absolutism”. France was an absolutist monarchy, whilst England and Scotland were constitutional monarchies. The power of their kings and queens was limited by law-making assemblies of the

people. They were not, however, democracies. Most of the members of the English parliament were there by heredity right, and those who were elected were only elected by a small number of the people. ¶5 In the seventeenth century France was proud of being absolutist. The English, on the other hand, called absolutism the French disease. (The “French disease” was also the English name for the venereal disease, syphilis. In France they called syphilis the “English disease”). ¶6 The Sun King, Louis 14. England had theorists of absolutism, like Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes, and theorists of constitutional monarchy, like John Locke. In January 1649, when Charles 1st of England was beheaded, Hobbes was in France for his safety. The king of France was a boy—too young to rule. On September 7th 1651 Hobbes watched from his window a ceremonial procession that marked the point where the king became old enough to govern (Evelyn, J. 1818 volume 1, p.268). This king, Louis 14, was to make France very powerful by concentrating power in his own hands. From 1661, when he threw his chief minister into prison, until his death in 1715, the king ruled personally. "L'etat c'est moi" (I am the state), he said. Louis 14 gave absolutism new meanings. He established a system that meant the French aristocracy were preoccupied with the social activities of his court, and deprived of any real power. From the time of Louis 14, French absolutism meant that power was concentrated in the king. In England much power lay with the local government, dominated by the local aristocracy. In France it was concentrated in Versailles, the town outside Paris where the king had a magnificent palace. The French king ruled through a centralised bureaucracy, an organisation of officials loyal to him. He did not share power with a nobility. ¶7 Louis 16 goes bust. The system of absolutism that Louis 14 established was expensive. The state apparatus had to absorb the nobility in expensive social activities. The money to pay for the finery and the power of the French state all came from taxes on the ordinary people, the nobility and clergy paid no taxes. In the late eighteenth century, this system went bust—and precipitated a revolution. The immediate origin of the French revolution was the recalling of the States General for the first time in 175 years. The reason for that was financial. France entered the war of independence on America's side in 1778. The king, Louis 16, called the French Parliament (States General) together because the war had cost too much. He hoped that it would enable him to raise new taxes. The Parliament met in May 1789. It had three parts: the first estate (clergy), second estate (nobles) and third estate (others). The three estates sat apart, but the third estate argued that there should be only one assembly. Their arguments were set out in a pamphlet by Abbé Sieyès which argued that the Third Estate was the whole nation. The third estate renamed itself the National Assembly. On June 20th they resolved to go on meeting (even if the king dissolved them) "until the constitution of the realm is established" On June 27th they won: the king ordered the first and second estates to join the third. His power was now limited by a parliament. France had become a constitutional monarchy. ¶8 The Declaration of the Rights of Man was published by the National Assembly, or parliament, of France in August 1789. It is a set of abstract philosophical principles addressed, not just to the citizens of France, but to "man" in general (See English translation in the extracts). To the German philosopher Hegel it was evidence that

philosophy had entered into history. “The consciousness of the spiritual is now the essential basis of the political fabric and philosophy has thereby become dominant”. He agreed with those writers who said that “the French revolution resulted from philosophy”. Philosophy, he said, could now be described as "world wisdom". It is not just truth—but truth exhibited in the affairs of the world (Hegel, F./History). ¶9 The Enlightenment Another German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, saw the revolution as the evidence that the human race has grown up and is now able to think for itself. It was evidence of “enlightenment”. In an article called What is Enlightenment? in 1784 Kant wrote: “Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another” (Kant, I. 1784). He went on to say that Enlightenment is not just understanding, but the will to understand by one's own efforts rather than by the guidance of another. We can think of it as being a process of creating our own theories about the world, rather than simply accepting the stories we are told. What could lead you to do that? Hegel suggested that we are stimulated to make our own theories when the stories we are told contradict one another, or contradict our experiences. This a useful point to bear in mind when you come across apparent contradictions in a writer. The contradictions may be the most valuable part of their theory, because they stimulate you to think for yourself. Rousseau may have been the most influential story teller, or theory maker, of the eighteenth century. On first reading, however, he appears riddled with contradictions. Maybe one of the reasons for his influence is that his apparent contradictions shocked his readers into thinking for themselves. ¶10 The Enlightenment has become a term used to indicate the period in the history of ideas when Rousseau was writing. But it has been used flexibly to refer to different periods in different countries. The English Enlightenment includes Hobbes and Locke and is thought to have happened in the 17th century, during and after the English Civil War. The Scottish Enlightenment took place in the 18th century and included Hume and Adam Smith. The French Enlightenment, which we are thinking about now, included Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot. Thinkers like these provided the intellectual climate for the French Revolution in 1789. The German Enlightenment includes Kant and Hegel, and is partly a reflection on the French Revolution. (Runes 1960 and Sumerscale 1965 under Enlightenment) ¶11 The Philosopher's Parliament The National Assembly became the philosophers's parliament. It was like an enthusiastic college seminar where everyone was discussing ideas and wanted to draw a blueprint for a new society based on those ideas. If we read the first lines of the Declaration of the Rights of Man we see that the Assembly wanted to make the world accord with reason: "The representatives of the French people, sitting in the National Assembly considering that ignorance (etc) ofthe rights of man are the sole causes of public misfortune and the corruption of governmentsset out in a solemn declaration the naturaland sacred rights of man, this declaration, constantly before all members of the civic body, will constantly remind them of their rights and duties, in order that acts of legislative and executive power can be frequently compared with the purpose of every political institution. 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded on communal utility."

¶12 Slavery If “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” what can we say about slavery? This issue arose very early in the philosopher's parliament. In July 1789 a delegation from French San Domingo (Haiti) claimed 18 seats in the Parliament, based on the population of San Domingo. The National Assembly's most powerful orator, the Marquis of Mirabeau, attacked the claim because blacks (slave and free) were counted in the population, but had no say in the election of representatives: “Have not the best minds denied the very utility of colonies? And even admitting their utility, is that any reason for a right to representation? These people wish a representation in proportion to the number of inhabitants. But have the negroes or the free people of colour taken part in the elections? The free coloured are landowners and taxpayers, — nevertheless they have had no vote. And as for the slaves, either they are, or they are not, men. If they be men, let the colonists free them and make them voters and eligible as deputies; if they be not men, — have we, in apportioning deputies according to the population of France, taken into consideration the number of our horses and mules?” (Stoddard, T.L. 1914 pp 78-79; James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.60) ¶13 San Domingo was only allowed six deputies. This episode established colonial representation, but at the same time made the issue of slavery an issue for the revolution: “thenceforth the history of liberty in France and of slave emancipation in San Domingo is one and indivisible”. (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.60)

THE REVOLUTION AND GENERAL POLITICAL THEORY ¶14 Constitutional Government Perhaps you think of the French Revolution as the guillotine cutting of the head of the king to make way for a Republic. But this did not happen until four years after the revolution started. At first the revolutionaries attempted to replace the absolutist monarchy of France with a constitutional monarchy. A constitutional monarchy is one where the monarch's powers are governed by a constitution or laws. ¶15 A constitutional monarchy corresponds more to Locke's ideas of government than to those of Hobbes. The important points are that the monarch's actions are governed by laws and that the laws embody the general principles by which the nation chooses to govern itself. ¶16 Rousseau Jean Jacques Rousseau was born, in 1712, in the protestant republic of Geneva, Switzerland. Later he moved to France and to Paris. In Paris he met Voltaire and Diderot and was commissioned to write articles (at first on music) for Diderot's Encyclopédie. The seventeen volumes of this encyclopedia were the foundation stones of the enlightenment in France. The first appeared annually from 1751 to 1757, then they were banned. The final volumes appeared altogether in 1765. Rousseau and Diderot were close friends until Rousseau left Paris in 1756. After this, they fell out. ¶17 In 1750 a prize winning essay, called A Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences, made Rousseau famous because he argued that civilisation had not improved the human condition. His replies to the many refutations that were published, developed

his ideas further, as did his A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Rousseau 1755(I)) and an article for the l'Encyclopédie on Political Economy (Rousseau 1755(I)). ¶18 In 1756 Rousseau left Paris and, over the next few years, worked on Julie, a novel published in 1761; Emile, a treatise on education, and The Social Contract. These were published in 1762. His controversial views on religion led him to flee France and in 1766 and 1767 he lived in England under the protection of David Hume and began to write his autobiographical Confessions (published 1782). The last part of his life was spent in France, in poverty, with periods of insanity. He died in 1778, eleven years before the French Revolution. ¶19 Rousseau and the General Will Like Locke and Hobbes, whose works he read, Rousseau is a state of nature theorist. This means he starts his argument with individuals wandering about in a state of nature and then brings them together to show how society is created through their "social contract". One of the differences between Rousseau's theory and Locke's theory is that Rousseau believes that reason comes into being with society. Like most other state of nature theorists, Rousseau shows how society is created through a "social contract". However, he sees human beings as totally transformed by the passage from nature to society. “The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked”. “The voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses andmanis forcedto consult his reason before listening to his inclinations” (Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 195-196). Reason, morality, imagination, memory and language are a consequence of society. This miraculous transformation comes about through the formation of the general will, and it distinguishes Rousseau's theory from most earlier state of nature theories. ¶20 The general will is the will of all when we are not thinking about our own selfish interests but about the general interest. Rousseau calls selfish interests “particular” interests. ¶21 Rousseau's General Will, and Locke on voting The general will is not the victory of the majority over a minority. It is not the result of a vote. It is something that involves the will of every member who is part of it. Rousseau argues that such a general will is fundamental to every society and to every relation between human beings that treats the other person as a person rather than an object. We can approach what he means by looking at what happens when people take a vote. Look at what Locke says about the will of society in the following quotation and note the points I have put in italics: “when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority”. (Locke's 2nd Treatise paragraph 96) ¶22 For Locke the society's will is the will of the majority expressed through the legislature as law. We can imagine Rousseau accepting this in one sense, but pointing out (as he does) that: “The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity on one occasion at least”.(Rousseau 1762(SC) p.190) Locke has acknowledged this in the first phrase in italics above: by the consent

of every individual. It is this unanimous agreement that we need to look at according to Rousseau. It is this that makes the minority feel that they are bound by the majority decision and willing to follow it. There is a sense in which we feel the general will as our own even if we voted (or would have voted) for something different. We identify with the society that is making the decision. So Rousseau perceives us as having within us two wills: our own individual will and a general will that is our concern for the interest of society. ¶23 Reason and the General Will One interpretation of Rousseau is that the general will is what separates us from other animals. It is not just the perception of what is in the general interest, it is also the form of reasoning that separates humans from animals. I will point to the parts of Rousseau's writings on which this interpretation is based. I will start at the end, with a passage from The Social Contract, already quoted in part, in which Rousseau summarises the miraculous change that takes place when human beings pass from the state of nature to the state of society: “The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man”. (Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 195-196). ¶24 In an earlier draft (Rousseau 1759) of The Social Contract Rousseau had quoted, with approval (but without acknowledgement), the two following passages from an article by his friend Diderot that had appeared in the same volume of the l'Encyclopédie as the article in which Rousseau first used the idea of the General Will. “the human race alone has the right to decide, for its only passion is for the greatest possible well-being of all men. It is to the general will that the individual must address himself to know how far he must be a man, a citizen, a subject, a father and a child, and when it is fitting for him to live and when to die”. (Rousseau 1759 p.174) “the general will is, in each individual, a pure act of the understanding which reasons, when the passions are silent, about what a man can ask of his fellows and what his fellows have a right to ask of him”. (Rousseau 1759 p.174) ¶25 In an essay published the same year as l'Encyclopédie articles, Rousseau analyzed reasoning in animals and humans. He argued that, in nature, animals and people respond to things as particulars, not as generalities and that the faculty to think in general terms is only acquired through society. Thinking in general terms, and

thinking in terms of the general interest of all are thus associated. The words are remarkably similar, although the concepts are different. Humans have two wills: their particular (selfish) will and their general will. Animals think in terms of particulars, humans think in general concepts. “When a monkey goes from one nut to another, are we to conceive that he entertains any general idea of that kind of fruit, and compares its archetype with the two individual nuts? Assuredly he does not; but the sight of one of these nuts recalls to his memory the sensations which he received from the other, and his eyes, being modified after a certain manner, give information to the palate of the modification it is about to receive.” (Rousseau 1755(I) p.67) ¶26 It was the same for humans in the state of nature: “Every object at first received a particular name without regard to genus or species, which these primitive originators were not in a position to distinguish; every individual presented itself to their minds in isolation, as they are in the picture of nature. If one oak was called A, another was called B; for the primitive idea of two things is that they are not the same, and it often takes a long time for what they had in common to be seen; so that, the narrower the limits of their knowledge of things, the more copious their dictionary must have been” (Rousseau 1755(I) pp 67-68) ¶27 Thinking in general terms is only possible, Rousseau argues, when one uses words rather than images. “Every general idea is purely intellectual; if the imagination meddles with it ever so little, the idea immediately becomes particular. If you endeavour to trace in your mind the image of a tree in general, you never attain to your end. In spite of all you can do, you will have to see it as great or little, bare or leafy, light or dark, and were you capable of seeing nothing in it but what is common to all trees, it would no longer be like a tree at all.” (Rousseau 1755(I) p.68) ¶28 Rousseau considers it must have taken an enormous length of time for human beings to move from naming individual objects to classifying them as general concepts; from calling each particular tree by a name, to having a word and a concept for all trees (See Rousseau 1755(I) p.68-70). This process was accelerated by people being pushed together by circumstances, thus encouraging the development of language. In two passages Rousseau writes first of how such early societies encouraged the development of language (and consequently general concepts) and then of how they brought into being a concern for public esteem (and consequently, we might infer, the general will). “We can here see a little better how the use of speech became established, and insensibly improved in each family, and we may form a conjecture also concerning the manner in which various causes may have extended and accelerated the progress of language, by making it more and more necessary.It is readily seen that among men thus collected and compelled to live together, a common idiom must have arisen much more easily than among those who still wandered through the forests of the continent.” (Rousseau 1755(I) p.89) “They accustomed themselves to assemble before their huts round a large tree; singing and dancing, the true offspring of love and leisure, became the

amusement, or rather the occupation, of men and women thus assembled together with nothing else to do. Each one began to consider the rest, and to wish to be considered in turn; and thus a value came to be attached to public esteem.” (Rousseau 1755(I) p.90) ¶29 Provocative though these passages are, it is not clear, to me at least, how Rousseau related the acquirement of the human capacity to reason in general terms with the general will that governs human morality. Both, however, come into being when we become social, and it appears that Rousseau thought of them as related. ¶30 Different ways of viewing the birth of the general will We can view the passage from nature to society as something that took place in the evolution of human beings, or as an imaginary coming together of individual human beings: or as an intellectual construct created to illustrate the importance of society; or as the process which each of us goes through: being born (in a state of nature) and becoming, through education, a social being. ¶31 However we think of it, in society, man "deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature", but gains others: “his faculties arestimulated and developed, his ideasextended, his feelingsennobled, and his whole souluplifted instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal [he becomes] an intelligent being and a man” Society enriches us. Or it would do if "abuses of this new condition" did not often degrade us below the condition we left (Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 195-196). I will look briefly now to the source of this corruption that Rousseau saw eating away at the root of society, and to his remedy for it ¶32 Particular wills versus the general will Rousseau argued that society had been corrupted, because social interests have been fashioned to particular rather than general interests. There was a moral need to bring society back to conformity with the general interest. The general will became the national will or people's will. Rousseau argued that: • basically, or potentially, society enriches rather than corrupts, • but something has gone wrong: social interests have been fashioned to particular rather that general interests. So society is now corrupting. • There is, therefore, a moral need to bring society back to conformity with the general interest. • we can solve the problems of civilisation by bringing the laws into accordance with the collective will: The will of all when we are not thinking about our own selfish (particular) interests but about the general interest. ¶33 Rousseau says that “the most general will is always the most just also, andthe voice of the people is in fact the voice of God” (Rousseau 1755(PE) p.133). “The first and most important rule of legitimate or popular government, that is to say, of government whose object is the good of the people, isto follow in everything the general will. But to follow this will it is necessary to know it, and above all to distinguish it from the particular will”. (Rousseau 1755(PE) p.135) ¶34 Problem of the one undivided will: pluralism Locke and Rousseau were both concerned about freedom. However, they resolved the problems they had with the

concept in different ways. Locke preserved freedom in society by limiting the power of the State. Locke's ideas placed the emphasis on mechanisms for tolerating and coping with diversity. In 20th century terms, the society he envisaged was “pluralistic”, it allowed for a diversity of interests in the one society. ¶35 Rousseau preserved freedom by arguing that the laws of the country should be brought into agreement with the general will. If the laws carried out the general will of the people, they would not interfere with the people's freedom because they will be what the people want. By definition, however, the general will is one and undivided. So there is a conflict between Locke's version of liberty as the absence of constraint by the State and Rousseau's version of the individual finding personal fulfilment by participating in the management of a free society. ¶36 This conflict became a central issue for the revolution under the Jacobins. The Locke version of freedom, with room for people pursuing different objectives within a tolerant society came to be the view associated with betraying the revolution. It was the view that “Federalists” held. A view that stood in the way of the formulation of a national general will that would form a France, “one and undivided”. A France that through its unity would have the strength to win its wars against foreign enemies and enemies within. There were many people who went to the guillotine because they adhered to Locke's version of freedom. ¶37 Rousseau versus Hobbes Rousseau considered himself as someone developing arguments for a war against absolutism. His intellectual allies included Locke. His guns were trained on Filmer and Hobbes. Filmer he dismissed quite quickly. Hobbes he fought tooth and nail in a guerilla warfare that runs through much of his work. Two of the many points on which he disagreed with Locke were • the natural characteristics of humans: Rousseau thought compassion was as natural a human characteristic as egoism. In nature, Rousseau claims, human beings have two instincts: self interest (egoism) and compassion: “one of them deeply interesting us in our own welfare and preservation, and the other exciting a natural repugnance at seeing any other sensible being, and particularly any of our own species, suffer pain or death”. (Rousseau 1755(I) Preface, p.47). • the foundations of legitimate government: Rousseau thought that consent was the only foundation of legitimate government, and that force creates no legitimacy. The argument about the illegitimacy of force led Rousseau to make a central issue out of slavery.

THE REVOLUTION AND THEORIES OF SLAVERY ¶38 Rousseau on freedom and slavery Rousseau discusses slavery in the first chapters of The Social Contract. An important objective of The Social Contract was to show that Hobbes was wrong in believing that the basis of society could be force. Rousseau argued that human society is based on voluntary agreement between its members. Rousseau does not discuss slavery for its own sake. He discusses slavery because the concepts “slavery”, “contract” and “freedom”, are important to political theories based on the idea that we bargain our way out of a state of nature into society

by means of a social contract. The argument of Hobbes (and, before him, a Dutch theorist called Hugo Grotius) swung on the case of slavery. Grotius and Hobbes argued that if a people were conquered by force they could bargain themselves into slavery in exchange for their lives. ¶39 Hobbes says that contracts exhorted by force are valid (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 14, Margin: Covenants extorted by fear are valid). Which means there are two ways (equally valid) of setting up a Commonwealth: by force or by agreement (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 17 last paragraph). In passing, Hobbes applies this to slavery: “Dominion acquired by conquest, or victory in war, is that which some writers call despotical And this dominion is then acquired to the victor when the vanquished, to avoid the present stroke of death, covenanteth, either in express words or by other sufficient signs of the will, that so long as his life and the liberty of his body is allowed him, the victor shall have the use thereof at his pleasure. And after such covenant made, the vanquished is a servant, and not before: for by the word servantis not meant a captive, which is kept in prison, or bonds, such men, commonly called slaves, have no obligation at allbut one that, being taken, hath corporal liberty allowed him; and upon promise not to run away, nor to do violence to his master, is trusted by him”. (Hobbes 1651 Chapter 20, Margin: Despotical Dominion how attained). ¶40 A contract by force is when a person or society is conquered and, instead of being killed, imprisoned or put in chains, is allowed physical freedom on condition that the conqueror can use the vanquished for his or her own ends. This is the kind of `bargain for one's life' that Hobbes and Grotius used to show that people should obey those who conquered them by force. The same argument was used by others to justify the slavery of people from Africa in the West Indies. So, in arguing (against Grotius and Hobbes) that legitimate political order can only be based on agreement, Rousseau found himself arguing against slavery. ¶41 From The Social Contract we will pick out the ideas on slavery that Rousseau disagrees with from those that he agrees with. ¶42 Rousseau disagrees with Aristotle: Aristotle said that human beings are not equal naturally, but some are born to slavery, and others to rule: “For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave” (Aristotle/Politics. See extracts). Against this Rousseau argues that Aristotle had taken the “effect for the cause”. It is not that some people are by nature slaves, but that being born a slave makes one feel and act like a slave. “Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them”. (Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 2. See extracts). ¶43 Slavery, Rousseau says is “against nature”. “Common liberty results from the nature of man. His first law is to provide for his own preservation, his first cares are those which he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches years of discretion, he is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving himself, and consequently becomes his own master.” (Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 2. See extracts). “To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty

from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.” (Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 4. See extracts) ¶44 Rousseau disagrees with Grotius: “Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow”, Rousseau says, “and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men”. That is to say, the legitimate basis of a society is the agreement of its members. Grotius, however, “denies that all human power is established in favour of the governed, and quotes slavery as an example” (Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 2. See extracts). He and Hobbes argue that the “so-called right of slavery” can arise through war. “The victor having, as they hold, the right of killing the vanquished, the latter can buy back his life at the price of his liberty” (Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 4. See extracts). Against these arguments, Rousseau argues that “Force is a physical power”, and cannot have a “moral effect”. “Force does not create right, and.. we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers” (Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 3. See extracts).

THE REVOLUTION AND THEORIES OF GENDER ¶45 Rousseau's theory of the general will appears to imply 1) that we become human beings through the development of a will that is common to all of us 2) that this general will is the basis of political society. From these two premises one might have concluded that everyone who is a human being plays an equal part in political society (at least once they are adults). However, Rousseau makes a distinction between men and women. He has a theory of gender that gives men and women different roles in society and excludes women from active political life. Let us try to see if we can understand this apparent contradiction. ¶46 Rousseau and women According to Rousseau women are closer to nature than men. They are caught up in their biology. Because of their attachment to the family they are both the source of patriotic inspiration and unable to make the generalisations necessary for (good) political reason. ¶47 In Emile, Rousseau divides human development into three stages: childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Children, he argues, are concerned with relations to things rather than people, but adolescence stirs sexuality, awakening man's need for a mate. Man: “is no longer an isolated creatureAll his relations with his species, all the affections of his heart, come into being along with this. His first passion soon arouses the rest”. (Rousseau 1762(E) p.175). Sexuality makes humans social. Before puberty children relate best to things, that is to nature outside them; but at puberty nature within them leads them to couple: and this sexual union arouses the passions that are the basis of society and politics. Sexual desire leads to families, family affection makes the state possible: “Will the bonds of convention hold firm without some foundation in nature? Can devotion to the state exist apart from love of those near and dear to us? Can patriotism thrive except in the soil of that miniature fatherland, the home? Is it not the good son, the good husband, the good father, who makes the good citizen?” (Rousseau 1762(E) p.326). ¶48 But whilst biology makes politics possible, a partial freedom from biology is necessary if politics is to be successful. Only men have this relative freedom,

according to Rousseau, because: “The consequences of sex are wholly unlike for man and woman. The male is only a male now and again, the female is always a femaleeverything reminds her of her sex; the performance of her functions requires a special constitution. She needs care during pregnancy and freedom from work when her child is born; she must have a quiet, easy life while she nurses her children; their education calls for patience and gentleness, for a zeal and love which nothing can dismay; she forms a bond between father and child, she alone can win the father's love for the children and convince him that they are indeed his own. What loving care is required to preserve a united family!” (Rousseau 1762(E) p.324). ¶49 Reason and authority Rousseau has a view of the world in which the rational participants are men. But politics requires passion as well as reason and the political role of women is that they arouse this passion in men. The divided roles result in different reasons. According to Rousseau, men and women reason differently. “The search for abstract and speculative truths, for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide generalisation, is beyond a woman's grasp; their studies should be practical. It is their business to apply the principles discovered by men, it is their place to make the observations which lead men to discover those principles”. (Rousseau 1762(E) p.349). ¶50 It is as well that we understand how significant this is. In education Rousseau was an opponent of dogma. He taught that boys should be shown the reason for what is taught. “If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts” (Rousseau 1762(E) p.131). Girls and women, however, are to be taught by authority. It is desirable that a woman should be the plaything of another person's thoughts—either those of her husband or her father. The part of Émile that was the most controversial, a part called The Creed of a Savoyard Priest (Rousseau 1762(E) pp 228-278), was a demonstration of how Émile might discover true religious principles by listening to the voice of reason within him. For men, Rousseau was suggesting, religious authority is redundant. But for women we find the opposite is true. Her religion should be “ruled by authority. The daughter should follow her mother's religion, the wife her husband's. Were that religion false, the docility which leads mother and daughter to submit to nature's laws would blot out the sin of error in the sight of God. Unable to judge for themselves they should accept the judgement of father and husband as that of the church” (Rousseau 1762(E) p.340). ¶51 Let us look more closely at why Rousseau thinks that men should be taught to think things out for themselves whilst women should be taught to obey the authority of men. We will start by looking at what Rousseau means by “reason”. Human reason, Rousseau says, is the art of comparing ideas one with another. There are two levels of reasoning: “the reasoning of the child” just forms “simple ideas through the associated experience of several sensations”. It is “the reasoning of the intellect” that concerns us. This “consists in the formation of complex ideas through the association of several simple ideas” (Rousseau 1762(E) p.122). Reason is not a passive reception of sense data. It is based on an active comparison of ideas by the human mind. Rousseau says that we will not find “that intelligent force which compares and judges” in a being that can just sense data (Rousseau 1762(E) p.233). Reason is an active process which requires strength of mind. Rousseau seems to think that women are weak in body and in mind, and that this weakness serves a purpose. “A woman's reason is practical, and therefore she soon arrives at given conclusion, but she fails to

discover it for herself.If women could discover principles and if men had as good heads for detail, they would be mutually independent, they would live in perpetual strife and there would be an end to all society. But in their mutual harmony each contributes to the common purpose” (Rousseau 1762(E) p.340) ¶52 Whereas a woman has not got the strength of mind to work out basic principles, she does have a special kind of reason. She has the mental skills to seduce a man, without granting him so much favour that he stops doing what she wants him to do. “Woman, weak as she is and limited in her range of observations, perceives and judges the forces at her disposal to supplement her weakness and those forces are the passions of man.She has many levers which may set the human heart in motion. She must find a way to make us desire what she cannot achieve unaided” (Rousseau 1762(E) p.350). ¶53 Women develop their mental skills through guarding their virginity. “A woman's judgement develops sooner than a man's; being on the defensive from her childhood up, and intrusted with a treasure so hard to keep, she is earlier acquainted with good and evil” Rousseau 1762(E) p.360. And when she is a wife, a woman obtains more hold over her husband by withholding sex than by indulging in it. The abilities she should develop, to control her man, are virtue, wisdom and charm. A woman, “who can only attract her lovers by coquetry and retain them by her favours, wins a servile obedience in common things; inimportant matters she has no influence. But the woman who is both virtuous and wise, and charming, she who,combines love and esteem, can send them at her bidding to the end of the world, to war, to glory, and to death” Rousseau 1762(E) p.356 ¶54 Women, it seems, have the mental skills needed to entrap someone. Only men have the skills required to carry through a coherent line of reasoning. We can create an image of the difference by imagining a domestic drama in which a man is contradicting himself. Will his wife entrap or repel him by pointing out the contradiction? If she thinks of the issue in this way she will not care about the integrity of her reasoning, only about what secures the man's good will. Perhaps she will decide that it is best to agree with him when he says that black is white, and praise him for his insight when he concludes that black is not white. If constantly involved in this kind of dialogue she will develop complicated inter-personal skills, but her powers of coherent reasoning will atrophy. This, according to Rousseau, is the way that nature intended it. Women need the mental skills to please men. Men need the mental skills to rule the world. The twist that Rousseau puts into his argument is that he says that if woman succeed in pleasing men, they will be able to twist them round their little finger, and so it will be women who really rule the world. ¶55 Women and the devil—now and then: Rousseau is now the devil himself for most feminists. In his own time, however, he was an inspiration for many women. This was because he appeared to restore them to their natural role. Here is how Madame de Staël expressed her praise: “Rousseau has endeavoured to prevent women from interfering in public affairs. If he wished to deprive them of some rights foreign to their sex, how has he for ever restored to them all those to which it has a claim!In aiding them to descend from a usurped throne, he has firmly seated them upon that to which they were destined by nature; and thoughfull of

indignationwhen they endeavour to resemble men, when they come before him with all the charms, weaknesses, virtues, and errors of their sex, his respect for their persons amounts almost to adoration”. This quotation is given by Mary Wollstonecraft (Wollstonecraft 1792 p.113), a woman who disagreed with it profoundly. It is to her arguments for and against Rousseau that we will now turn. ¶56 Wollstonecraft on education Mary Wollstonecraft was born in London in 1759. She soon became a major support to her family, earning her money first as a companion and then setting up school in Newington Green near Hackney. In 1787 she read Emile, with enthusiasm for its general principles, but not for its ideas on education for girls. Rousseau's emphasis on developing the natural potential of children spoke to Wollstonecraft of her own potential. She was conscious that it was her own energy and zest for learning that had educated her, and she felt better educated than many who had spent richer childhoods with a family tutor. But she could not accept what she saw as Rousseau's total condemnation of culture. As things are, she says, education tends to deform. But it is the essence of humanity that education ought to transform. She argued that what distinguishes human beings from other animals is reason, and that reason is the power to channel the passions into the paths of virtue. What is wrong with education is that it teaches people the wrong morality. It is necessary to teach a higher morality, not to abandon culture altogether. ¶57 Wollstonecraft was writing her own books on education. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters was published in 1787 and Original Stories for Real Life in 1788. From 1788 to 1793 she worked as a translator for the bookseller and publisher, Joseph Johnson. Here she was at the centre of England's radical intelligentsia. Tom Paine, William Blake, Henry Fuseli, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, William Godwin, Richard Price, Joseph Priestly, Thomas Holcroft and many more were all linked in some way to Johnson's bookshop in St Paul's Churchyard. Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, published in 1790, was an attack on the kind of thinking that characterised these radicals. Wollstonecraft was a quick writer. Within months she had written and published a reply, her A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790/91). A year later, irritated by French proposals for an unequal education of boys and girls, she followed this with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Shortly after she left for France, where she wrote an Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794). Her other works include two novels, Mary and the Wrongs of Women. She died tragically in 1797 from medical problems connected with the birth of her second child. ¶58 Mistakes are necessary William Blake did the illustrations for two of Wollstonecraft's books. In 1796 Blake illustrated the second edition of Original Stories and one of her translations. Blake and Wollstonecraft had many similar ideas. Both thought that creation (God) had brought into being a world in which evil has a positive purpose. They argued that for human beings to develop it is necessary that they make mistakes. Blake said this poetically in a work called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell where he wrote that "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom". It was a central thought for Wollstonecraft who wrote “When that wise Being who created us and placed us here, saw the fair idea, he willed, by allowing it to be so, that the passions should unfold our reason, because He could see that present evil would produce future good” (Wollstonecraft 1792/Dent p.17. See extracts). Wollstonecraft's theory is a theological theory in the sense that she constantly relies

on God's wisdom and providence as the evidence for the truth of what she is saying. She understands our physical existence as a preparation or education for a spiritual existence after death. But her theory is also based on an effort to understand the material development of the human world as evolution, so it can be read with equal benefit by religious and non religious people. Neither is likely to find it comfortable. ¶59 Wollstonecraft on French absolutism Wollstonecraft writes about the position of women in society, and Rousseau's view of it, as one aspect of her total view of hierarchy and power and their effect on the development of human culture. She believes that power corrupts culture whether it is exercised by man over man, or man over woman. In other words, she agrees with Rousseau's general philosophy, but applies it to gender relations as well. Her argument is aimed right at the centre of the absolutist politics that Louis 14th developed in France: “Louis 14, in particular, spread factitious [artificial] manners, and caught, in a specious way [attractive on the surface], the whole nation in his toils; for establishing an artful chain of despotism, he made it the interest of the people at large individually to respect his station, and support his power. And women, whom he flattered by a puerile [childish] attention to the whole sex, obtained in his reign that prince-like distinction so fatal to reason and virtue. A king is always a king, and a woman always a woman. His authority and her sex ever stand between them and rational converse” (Wollstonecraft 1792/Dent p.62). Wollstonecraft is referring to the court manners and customs developed by the absolutist monarch Louis 14 as a distraction from the reality of his despotic rule. This culture of polite society, she argues, undermines reason, and is contrary to nature (artful as distinct from artless). She adopts this analysis of high society manners from Rousseau, but she applies it to the power relations between men and women that Rousseau argues are natural. In politics and in gender relations, she says, artificial manners undermine reason and virtue. Flirtatious behaviour is appropriate to the interaction between lovers. In that context it is natural for us to use our skills to excite one another. The use of such skills for conquests in other areas is unnatural: “With a lover, I grant, she should be so, and her sensibility will naturally lead her to endeavour to excite emotion, not to gratify her vanity, but her heart. This I do not allow to be coquetry; it is the artless impulse of nature. I only exclaim against the sexual desire of conquest when the heart is out of the question”. (Wollstonecraft 1792/Dent p.62) ¶60 Strong and weak reason Rousseau had argued that men can develop strong reasoning powers, but women develop the mental skills needed to capture and hold men to their will. This dichotomy between types of reason is the point at which Wollstonecraft begins her analysis. She does not, however, ascribe one type of thought to men and the other to women. Rousseau was wrong to “give a sex to mind” (Wollstonecraft 1792/Dent p.48), but not wrong to think that mind has different strengths: “The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves” (Wollstonecraft 1792/Dent pp 15-16. See extracts). Whereas the common man, whose mind has been governed by authority, is so “steeped” in it that his own “faint spirit” is too weak to be distinguished (Wollstonecraft 1792, chapter 1, See extracts). ¶61 Wollstonecraft argued that wherever human beings are in a power relationship the patterns of reason that Rousseau identified as female will develop. Does “an air of fashion” reveal that the person “has not a strong individual character”? Wollstonecraft

says it does. But she is speaking of soldiers, not women. Does observing the “ceremonials” of a subservient role incline one to laziness and stupidity when off duty? Wollstonecraft says that this is a characteristic of sailors who “acquire a fondness for humour and mischievous tricks”. Soldiers when off duty are noted for their “polite simper” in the company of women, sailors can be distinguished by their “horse laugh”. But whatever breed of fashionable bird one observes “mind is equally out of the question”. The army and the navy turn men into what today's comedians call brainless bimbos. (Wollstonecraft 1792, chapter 1, See extracts). ¶62 She also argues that the perversions of reason will be exhibited by the ruler and the ruled. That is by kings and their subjects. Discharging the duties of a king requires “knowledge and strength of mind” beyond the ability of human beings to acquire. But instead of nourishing reason in monarchs, society “stifles” his feelings with “flattery”, and distracts him from thinking by surrounding him with pleasure. If the ruler happens to be strong minded, he has problems enough; if he is weak minded he will be as rational as a drunk leaving a pub, for “all power inebriates weak men”. Whilst those who are ruled by irrational authority acquire “artificial manners” and even “a man of sense” may only have “a cast of countenance that wears off as you trace his individuality”. (Wollstonecraft 1792, chapter 1, See extracts). ¶63 Gender and slavery Wollstonecraft's view of reason and power (generally) and gender and reason (as a specific example) matches Rousseau's position with respect to slavery. “Aristotlesaid that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are born to slavery, and others for dominion”. Against this Rousseau argues that “Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them” (Rousseau 1762(SC) chapter 2). ¶64 Psychoanalysis The issue about whether one can give a sex to mind divides modern theorists. Some follow Wollstonecraft's conviction that reason is common to men and women. These theorists tend to believe that any mental characteristics that are more frequently found in one sex rather than another are the result of socialisation. Others believe that men and women have different reasons. This seems, for example, to be the consequence of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. In this it is not necessarily biology or socialisation that decides whether a person's thinking will be male or female, but the way one goes through a necessary childhood drama in relation to one's parents. From this we acquire a female or a male personality along with their different ways of thinking. The childhood drama becomes part of our unconscious mind and can only be discovered by psychoanalysis, by dream analysis or by the analysis of verbal mistakes that give us a clue to what we are thinking unconsciously. Nowadays this division of thought is not between feminists and anti-feminists. There are feminists who develop the psychoanalytic tradition as well as those who develop Wollstonecraft's.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE REVOLUTION WITH RESPECT TO SLAVERY AND GENDER ¶65 Revolution in the streets The French revolution as we have discussed it so far was an affair of parliamentary debate and the construction of an academic paper on human rights and politics. It did not long remain that way. On July 14th 1789 an event

took place that has remained the symbol of the revolution and has made July 14th the national holiday of modern France. The Paris masses stormed the Bastille, a prison in which they believed arms were being stored to suppress the revolution. A few days later, on July 17th, the popular uprising spread to the fields of France. In the countryside people began burning the records on which their lords based their claims for "feudal" dues. C.L.R. James, a West Indian marxist historian, does not date the start of the French Revolution from its parliamentary stage, he says that the revolution started when the Paris masses stormed the Bastille (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.61). Another historian, Hilaire Belloc, divides the revolution into stages. His first stage begins with the States General, the second on July 17th with the peasants and the third stage on October 6th with the women of Paris. (Belloc, H. 1911) ¶66 Women on the streets Parliament was male, but when the revolution took to the streets it often did so through women. On October 5th 1789 women marched from Paris to the King's palace at Versailles to complain about the lack of bread. On the 6th October they marched back to Paris - bringing the King and Queen with them. From then on the monarchy was trapped by the people. Why were women so forward in street protest? Olwen Hufton and other historians have suggested that it was because they were women and because women were the centre of their families. When times got tough the man might stay away from home or leave altogether. A mother would almost certainly stay with the children and do everything in her power to care for them. ¶67 What seems to have happened in the French Revolution is that traditional forms of protest about food prices merged into new, political protests. The traditional forms of protest were women's protests, and so women were in the forefront of the new protests. Traditionally there was the idea of a fair price for food and if the prices went out of reach of ordinary families a blind eye was turned to riots in which women seized stocks and sold them at the fair price. If the people who did this were mothers with children depending on the food, they were rarely prosecuted. ¶68 The painful note of hunger ran through the revolution as a sombre undertone to the high notes of politics. When bread was the issue, the mothers of France led the protests. But affordable bread was demand that political theory could not cope with. The revolutionary politicians of the National Assembly saw free market economics as the progressive economics of the future. Demands for price fixing sounded to them like an appeal for a return to the bad old days . The arguments that arose from the streets of Paris presented to the ears of the National Assembly a strange cacophony of reactionary and radical. The music of the streets seemed to beckon back into the past at the same time as it summoned the future. ¶69 Political women As well as the large numbers of women whose bread riots developed into revolution, there were a small number of women who applied the principles of the revolution to women. We have already discussed the English writer, Mary Wollstonecraft. In France, the woman whose writings seem closest to Wollstonecraft's in this respect, was Olympe de Gouges. Where Wollstonecraft moved from a Vindication of the Rights of Man to a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Olympe de Gouges moved from the Declaration of the Rights of Man to a Declaration of the Rights of Woman.

¶70 Olympe de Gouges Olympe de Gouges was a young widow who taught herself to write. She began to write in 1780 and published her memoirs in 1784. She published her first political pamphlet in November 1788 and numerous political writings followed. Her vivid imagination overcame the disadvantages of her bad spelling and poor punctuation and her meaning forced its way through her unorthodox prose. An enthusiastic writer of plays, she was also a champion of freedom for slaves. In December 1789 her play on The Slavery of Black People was performed in a Paris theatre (the Maison de Molière), but the audience hissed it and it had to be taken off after three performances (Levy, D. 1979; Kelly, L. 1987 p.36, Proctor, C.E. 1990 Chapter 3, p.45; Rendall, J. 1985 p.45; Tomalin, C. 1974 p.195). She believed passionately that the philosophy of natural freedom, that inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man, should apply equally to every human being. Her writings combine the image of family embracing the whole of humanity with that of a social contract establishing the law of reason for the whole of humanity. It was natural, therefore, for her pamphlet on the rights of women to embrace the family, the nation as a family, and human beings of all colours as one family. In relation to slavery, she wrote “A divine hand seems to spread liberty abroad throughout the realms of man; only the law has the right to curb this liberty if it degenerates into license, but it must be equal for all”. The National Assembly must, she argued, count slaves as men who (according to its own Declaration of the Rights of Man) were free by nature, and should be set free by law. “Liberty” she said “must hold the National Assembly to its decree”. (Gouges, O. 1791 See extracts) ¶71 Like Rousseau, Olympe de Gouges was very aware of the link that people have to biological nature through sex, child bearing and child-rearing. Unlike Rousseau, however, she wanted the law to make both parents responsible for their children. She wanted a “Social Contract Between Man and Woman”. This legally binding contract would say “We intend and wish to make our wealth communal, mutually recognising that our property belongs directly to our children, from whatever bed they come” (Gouges, O. 1791 See extracts). In other words, children conceived as a result of sex that either partner engaged in with any person would have rights within the family, and a claim on its common wealth. Olympe de Gauges was officially the daughter of a butcher. She believed, however, that she was biologically the illegitimate daughter of a minor noble and man of letters. This consciousness of mixed parentage made her particularly sensitive to the problems of people of mixed parentage in the West Indies. Most of these were the descendants of a white male slave owner and a black woman slave. They were called mulattos, from the Spanish for a young mule, and it was their problems that received the greatest publicity in Paris during the early years of the revolution. ¶72 The place of the mountains In 1789 a large part of the wealth of France came from the sugar plantations of French St Domingo in the West Indies. This is the part of the island that is now Haiti. The other part of the island was then Spanish St Domingo, and is now the Dominican Republic. For simplicity's sake I will refer to French San Domingo as Haiti from now on. Haiti is the original Indian name for the island. It means the place of the mountains, and it was adopted as the name for the exFrench colony when it declared independence in January 1804. Haiti was the first black-led country to establish itself by breaking away from European colonial rule.

¶73 The children of black and white sex At the time of the French Revolution, society in Haiti was a pyramid of fear. The top of the pyramid was rich white people, beneath them were poor white people and rich and poor people of mixed race, beneath them were the black slaves. It was a delicate structure in that the controls keeping people of mixed race in their place could not be undermined without undermining the authority which kept the black slaves in their place. And if the black slaves did not stay in their place the people of France would have no sugar, merchants of France would lose profits, and the government of France would lose taxes. ¶74 Nine out of ten people in Haiti in 1789 were slaves. Most of the slaves were black, some were of mixed race. Of the remaining tenth, the free people, roughly half were white and half were of mixed race, but there were some free people who were black. Those white people who were rich tended to have more tenuous links to Haiti than any other group. The planters who owned the sugar cane plantations often returned to France on visits or to retire, whilst government officials held their posts for a limited time. (Logan, R.W. 1963 pp 17, 19, 21). The people of mixed race, the mulattos, were largely the offspring of sexual relations between a white man and a black woman. The degree of their blackness varied considerably, and Haiti society had terms for a large number of variations. The smallest drop of African blood made one a mulatto, and set one apart from white society. Some mulattoes were very rich and owned many slaves. Mulattoes were said to own a third of the land and the slaves in Haiti at the time of the revolution. But however rich a mulatto was, he or she was treated as a lower class of being to a white person. The numerous rules of conduct that rubbed in this inferiority sustained the hierarchy of fear that maintained the slavery of the majority black population. When black slaves belonging to mulatto owners served at table, they would see that white visitors did not eat at the same table as their mulatto hosts, however rich. If the presence of a small amount of African blood could demean their masters so, how much lower in the hierarchy of creation were they whose skins were really black? ¶75 Mulattos claim rights The first struggle over skin colour that impressed itself on the minds of the people of France was not a struggle between black slaves and their owners, but the struggle of the free mulattos to be treated as the equals of whites. Black slaves were out of sight in the West Indies, the free people of colour sent representatives to Paris, in fact, some already lived there. On October 22nd 1789, two weeks after the Paris women brought the king from Versailles, free people of mixed race from Haiti came to the French Assembly to ask it to recognise their rights as men. The leader of the delegation was Julien Raimond, a distinguished Parisian lawyer of mixed race. Another member was Vincent Ogé, who led an insurrection on the island after the claims of the people of mixed race were eventually rejected. The month after the mulatto delegation was heard, a widespread persecution of people of mixed race began in Haiti. (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.60, pp 64 following and 73 following) ¶76 In May 1791, during debates on a proposed Constitution for the French colonies, the Assembly heard evidence from people of mixed race about the evils of race prejudice in Haiti. Although there was growing support in France for the claims for equality of mixed race people, there was also much opposition to this from those who argued that, however unjust, the discrimination against mixed race people was necessary to retain social stability in the colonies. As one deputy put it later “This

regime is absurd, but it is established and one cannot handle it roughly without unloosing the greatest disorder” (Barnave 23.9.1791 quoted James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.80). On May 15th the Assembly accepted a compromise. It resolved that every mulatto whose parents were both free should have a vote. There were about 400 of these. In explanatory notes the assembly condemned slavery in principle but said that the Declaration of the Rights of Man could not be extended to slaves without producing the greatest evils. (Davis, D.B. 1975 p.144, James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.78) ¶77 In Haiti, the white population considered that France had betrayed them by supporting the equality of free people of colour, and there was talk of seeking an alliance with England. Before long, however, a far greater challenge faced the white population of Haiti. ¶78 Flight to Varennes and Massacre of Champ de Mars: On June 21st 1791 King Louis 16 attempted to escape from France. He was stopped at Varennes and brought back to Paris. France divided into republicans and monarchists. The monarchists, perhaps, believing the official line that the king had been abducted, against his will, by the enemies of the revolution (Rude, G. 1988 p.75). The streets of Paris were not convinced. The king's flight led to popular protests calling for a new head to the executive. On July 16th a meeting in Paris calling, in effect, for the king's abdication, was dispersed by the National Guard. About 60 petitioners were killed and 200 arrested. In the French Assembly the immediate result of this was to strengthen the hand of those members who supported the king, and these tended to be members who supported the status quo in the colonies. (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.79, Rude, G. 1959 Chapter 6) ¶79 Revolution of the slaves On August 22nd 1791 there was an uprising of the slaves in Haiti. For three weeks a negro uprising, burning the sugar cane, killing all whites except priests and surgeons, and raping the white women (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 pp 87-88). Toussaint L'Ouverture, a slave who had managed all the livestock on his master's estate, joined the negro insurgents one month after the revolt had begun. He helped to give the insurrection political and military direction. (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980; (Stoddard, T.L. 1914; Tyson, G.F. 1973) ¶80 Mulattoes lose rights On 24th September the decree of 15.5.1791, which gave a vote to some people of colour, was rescinded by the Constituent Assembly. The opponents of votes for mulattoes agreed that it was unjust to deprive free people of colour of a vote, but argued that the balance of power in the colonies was so delicate that any disturbance of it would lead to a breakdown of order. They were too late. When the news of the rescindment reach Haiti it fuelled the fire. In one province the mulattoes aroused their slaves to insurrection against the whites. In another the whites armed their slaves against the mulattoes (Davis, D.B. 1975 p.144). ¶81 Votes for men and a declaration of rights for women In September 1791 the new Constitution was adopted. This gave a vote to men with a minimum of income or property. Under it about 60% of French men had the vote. Whilst the constitution was being debated, Olympe de Gouges was writing her Declaration of the Rights of Woman. She was printing it when the King was persuaded to accept the new Constitution, and she added a paragraph to express her delight at this [See extracts].

Olympe de Gouges remained a constitutional monarchist for the rest of her life. In fact she was executed two years later because of her monarchism. ¶82 These are some short extracts from Declaration of the Rights of Woman: “The mothers, daughters, sisters, representatives of the nation, ask to constitute a National Assembly. Considering that ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of women are the sole causes of public miseries, and of corruption of governments 1 Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions can be based only on common utility. 2 The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man and woman 3 The source of all sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation, which is nothing but the joining together of Man and Woman 17 Ownership of property is for both sexes, mutually and separately; it is for each a sacred and inviolable right Postscript : Women, wake up! The alarm bell of reason is making itself heard throughout the universe; recognize your rightsO women! women, when will you stop being blind? What advantages have you received from the revolution?” (Gouges, O. 1791 See extracts) ¶83 Brissot The new Legislative Assembly, elected under the Constitution of 1791, first met in October 1791. One of the new members, Brissot, was very influential in calling for an armed crusade against the kings of Europe. Brissot was also a member of the Friends of the Negro, and a strong supporter of equal rights for the free people of colour in the colonies. ¶84 Toussaint L'Ouverture resolves to fight for all. In November 1791 Commissioners from France arrived in Haiti to try to restore order. At first the slave leaders, including Toussaint L'Ouverture, tried to bargain their freedom for the reenslavement of their followers. In December the white colonial government refused the bargain and Toussaint L'Ouverture resolved to fight for complete liberty for all, to be achieved by their own strength. (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 pp 103-107) ¶85 The Brissotins wage war and grant rights In March 1792 Brissot and his friends, often called the Girondins, were called on to form a new French ministry. Within days the Legislative Assembly, by a large majority, had passed a decree giving full political rights to all men of colour in the colonies, except slaves, and this became law on April 4th (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.115). On April 20th France declared war on Austria and this led to war with Prussia as well. ¶86 The king imprisoned and most men get a vote Once France was at war, the influence of street demonstrations on government became more powerful because of popular fear of traitors within the country. On August 10th 1792 the Paris masses stormed the Tuileries and imprisoned the royal family. As a result of this people power, the Legislative Assembly was replaced (the following September) by a Convention that was elected by (almost) universal male suffrage. Every adult man apart from workers living in furnished rooms and domestic servants had a vote. In early September 1792 the election of the Convention, by almost universal male suffrage, took place at the same time as the defeat of the French army at Verdun and at the same time that crowds massacred over 1,000 prisoners in Paris. The new Convention, on 22.9.1792, abolished the monarchy and established a republic.

The move towards a more popular democracy had consequences both for French feminists and for West Indian slaves. For slaves it was to mean their liberation, for feminists, division and defeat. ¶87 Haiti whites split Three commissioners from France arrived in Haiti in mid September to enforce the decree of April 4th granting free men of colour a vote. Early in October news of the imprisonment of the king reached Haiti and the French fell out over it. The commissioners were loyal to the republic, whilst the Colonial Assembly was loyal to the king. The Commissioners dissolved the Colonial Assembly and assumed full control over the colony. Haiti was becoming increasingly split by internal war and, secretly, the British government began to consider taking it over. ¶88 1793: King executed On January 21st 1793 Louis Capet, the ex-king, was executed. For the Republic there was now no turning back. ¶89 The Street Theatre of Fear and Hunger One of the ways that the revolution became more popular, or closer to the people, was through the multiplication of clubs for discussion and the participation (lawful or otherwise) of the ordinary people in the activities of parliament, local councils and the courts. In 1793 the activities of the revolutionary people in clubs, on the streets, in revolutionary courts and before the local and national parliaments became a leading feature of political development. Paris became the stage for a daily political street theatre in which anyone could participate. During 1793, Paris was faced by an acute shortage of food brought on by the war and inflation. People called Les Enragés emerged as leaders of the common people (the sans-culottes). Les Enragés, who included a feminist actress Claire Lacombe, wanted the government to bring in strict economic controls and to execute anyone profiteering from the food shortages. Claire Lacombe, Pauline Léon and other women formed an all women Republican Club which took aggressive action to promote the Enrage's aims. Their aggressive action was often directed against other women. The political action of women, arising out of the food crisis, was something the authorities feared. In February, because of this fear, the Jacobin Club refused the use of its meeting hall to women who wanted to discuss measures against food hoarding and scarcity. The Jacobins were worried that a massive women's protest could lead to "disorder in Paris". (Levy, D. 1979 p.144) ¶90 Revolutionary Government On March 3rd 1793 a Revolutionary Tribunal was set up to try people accused of counter-revolution, including “offenses against the unity and indivisibility of the Republic and plots tending to re-establish the Monarchy”. The war was going badly for France. During March the French army was defeated in Belgium and its leader, General Dumouriez, began a plan of his own to march on Paris and restore the Constitutional monarchy under the Constitution of 1789. His army would not march, and in early April General Dumouriez deserted to the Austrians. On April 6th a Committee of Public Safety was formed to oversee the government of France. The Convention elected it for a month at a time. ¶91 On 2 May a deputation of 10,000 people went to the Convention to demand price control; women from Versailles rioted in the Convention and refused to leave the building. Reluctantly the Convention voted the first law of the Maximum which controlled the price of bread and flour throughout the country (Rude, G. 1959 p.119). Popular societies had to be registered with the municipal authorises. On May 5th The

Society of Revolutionary Republican Women was registered with the Commune of Paris. ¶92 Brissotins purged Between May 31st 1793 and June 6th Brissot's party (known as the Girondins) in the Convention was pushed out of power by the party of Robespierre (known as the Jacobins). This was the result of a planned insurrection coordinated by the Sections, the National Guard, the Jacobin organization, the popular societies and the Enragés. The Society of Revolutionary Republican Women played prominent roles in these events. They stood guard at the doors of the Convention, refusing to admit Girondins and pursuing any who fled. (Levy, D. 1979 p.143) ¶93 One and undivided The new Constitution of 1793 was voted in on June 24th: although it remained a paper constitution, and was never put into practice. It provided for a popular democracy, with plebiscites for every law. The separation of powers, which had been a feature of the Locke's idea of political freedom, was replaced with the idea that the will of the people, expressed through the constitution, was one and indivisible. ¶94 From Charlotte Corday to the Terror During the spring of 1793, Jean Paul Marat become the hero of the poorer people of Paris (Rude, G.1959 p.119). His newspaper promoted their cause with vehemence. In February, when there were riots throughout Paris over the price of goods in grocer's shops, Marat's paper recommended the rioters to hang a number of grocers by the neck over their own doorsteps (Rude, G.1959 p.118). Such instant execution were spoken of as “speedy revolutionary justice”. In June, Marat had provided the rioters with the names of the Girondin deputies who were to be purged. On 13th July 1793 Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a young woman from Caen who had come to Paris to avenge the defeat of the Girondins. She was guillotined, and the body of Marat was given a state funeral. Marat's assassination was followed by the arrest of a large number of “moderates”, including that of Olympe de Gouges on 26th July. ¶95 Four weeks after Marat's funeral the Revolutionary Republican Women staged their own procession to honour his memory (Kelly, L.1987 p.102). By September 1793, several hundred members were meeting in their club. Levy says that the Society had now reached the apex of its strength. In the atmosphere of suspicion that ruled in Paris, the society promoted fear of others and, at the same time, was suspected of harbouring traitors. On September 16th a meeting of the Jacobin Club called on the Revolutionary Women to “rid themselves by a purifying vote of the suspect women who control the Society”, and an amendment was put that Citoyenne Lacombe should be taken immediately before the Committee of General Security (Levy, D. 1979 p.146). The passage by the Convention, on the following day, of the Law against suspected persons marks the legal start of what history knows as The Terror. Part of the definition of a suspect was “anyone who has shown himself as a partisan of tyranny or federation; anyone who cannot prove that he has performed his civic duties”. Any such suspect could be sent before the revolutionary tribunal (Lowes Dickinson, G. 1927 p.32). Between October 1st 1793 and June 6th 1794, 1,165 people were condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris and guillotined: An average of 32 a week. Marie-Antoinette, the ex-Queen, appeared before the court on October 14th, she was guillotined on the 16th.

¶96 Symbols of patriotism Conflict between women in Paris broke out on the morning of October 28th 1793. Several women were in the market and elsewhere wearing tight trousers and a red cap of liberty. It was said that they wanted to force other women to wear the same costume. The women in red caps provoked a larger counter-demonstration. “Nearly six thousand women gathered. Allin agreement that violence and threats would not make them dress in a costume they respected but which they believed was intended for men” (Amar report: Levy, D. 1979 pp 213-214). The Convention on September 21st had passed a decree that all women should wear a ribbon with the three colours of the revolution. Any who did not could be imprisoned for eight days and then, on a second offence, taken before the Revolutionary Tribunal as a “suspect”. The conflict, therefore, was over the symbols of loyalty that women were to wear. In addition to the tricolour, the Revolutionary Republican Women wore the red cap of liberty and trousers as symbols of their loyalty to the Revolution. The majority of women saw this as cross dressing. They were not going to appear in men's clothes! It is not clear from the reports to what extent the conflicts were provoked by antagonism from the majority to the cross-dressing of the minority, or by efforts by the Republican Women to persuade other women to wear red caps. However, some calm was restored and the “mobs” dispersed. That evening, however, “the same disturbance broke out with greater violence. A brawl started. Several self-proclaimed Revolutionary Women were roughed up. Some members of the crowd indulged themselves in acts of violence towards them which decency ought to have proscribed.” (Amar report: Levy, D. 1979 pp 213-214). ¶97 What is a woman? Interesting though these conflicts are, the significance of the events lies even more in the response of the authorities. There was a general discussion of the role of women in society and official decisions about what that role should be. The French Parliament decided what a women should be. ¶98 On October 29th the National Convention discussed the participation of women in politics and, in particular, the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women. The Jacobin deputy Fabre d'Eglantine insisted that “these clubs are not composed of mothers of families, daughters of families, sisters occupied with their younger brothers or sisters, but rather of adventuresses, knights-errant, emancipated women, female grenadiers” (Hunt L. 1992 p.119) ¶99 Defeat for feminism That night the Committee of General Security, chaired by Jean-Baptiste Amar, “spent the night receiving deputations, listening to various reports which were made to it, and taking measures to maintain public order”. Amar must have been very tired when he presented to the Convention, the next day (30th October), a report that not only said what had happened, but elaborated, at length, the role that women should play in society and made recommendations. Here is part of what it said: “The private functions to which women are destined by nature itself are related to the general order of society; this social order results from the difference between man and woman. Each sex is called to the kind of occupation which is proper for itMan is strong, robust, born with great energy, audacity and courageIn general, women are not capable of elevated thoughts and serious meditations, and if, among ancient peoples, their natural timidity and modesty did not allow them to appear outside their families, then

in the French Republic do you want them to be seen coming to the bar, to the tribune, and to political assemblies as men do?” The deputies did not. They outlawed women's clubs. (Hunt L. 1992 p.119) ¶100 Death of Olympe de Gouges On November 3rd 1793 Olympe de Gouges was guillotined. As she mounted the steps she called out to the generations to come: “children of the fatherland, you will avenge my death”. She had often written that the victory of her ideas would be the work of distant posterity, and she died with the same conviction on her lips. The crowds watching then, saw a monarchist who they thought had betrayed the republic. They waved their hats in the air and shouted “Vive la République”, as her head was sliced from her body. (Levy, D. 1979 p.259) 1794: Victory for the slaves ¶101 C.L.R. James argues that with each radicalisation of the revolution in France, opposition to slavery grew stronger. He quotes a letter from Paris to San Domingo on August 11th 1794 which said that "One spirit alone reigns here, it is horror of slavery and enthusiasm for liberty. It is a frenzy which wins all heads and grows every day". On February 3rd 1794 three deputies from Haiti, a negro (Bellay), a mulatto (Mills) and a white (Dufay), were admitted as members of the French Parliament (the Convention). Bellay delivered a speech against the Counter-Revolutionary nature of the white colonists, and ended by “imploring the Convention to vouchsafe to the colonies full enjoyment of the blessings of liberty and equality”. ¶102 On February 4th 1794 slavery was abolished in the French colonies. A deputy called Levasseur said `I demand that the Convention, yielding, not to a moment of enthusiasm, but to the principles of justice, and faithful to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, decree that from this moment slavery is abolished throughout the territory of the Republic. San Domingo is part of this territory;—nevertheless, there are still slaves.' Another deputy, Lacroix, said `When we drew up the Constitution of the French people we did not direct our gaze upon the unhappy negroes. Posterity will severely censure us for that fact. Let us now repair this fault. Let us proclaim the liberty of the negroesPresident, do not suffer the Convention to dishonour itself by a discussion.' The Assembly rose by acclamation and its President pronounced the abolition of slavery amid great applause. After some discussion of the wording of the intended decree, Lacroix got the following resolution carried: “The National Convention declares slavery abolished in all the colonies. In consequence it decrees that all men, without distinction of colour, domiciled in the said colonies, are French citizens and enjoy all the rights assured under the Constitution” (James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 p.141). ¶103 The extent to which the freedom of slaves had become part of the drama of the revolution in Paris is illustrated by its celebration, a few weeks later, in the Temple of Reason (Notre Dame). The attorney general of Paris, Anaxagoras Chaumette, embraced coloured citizens; someone raised a black child high in the air as the drums rolled and the soldiers marched. “With tears in their eyes the people lifted the arms of the coloured citizens and shouted Vive la République! Vive la France!” (Davis, D.B. 1975 p.148)

¶104 Early in May 1794 news of the abolition of slavery by France reached Toussaint in Haiti and on May 6th he and his army deserted the Spanish to join the French. In 1797 Toussaint L'Ouverture was made Commander in Chief of the Island by the French Convention. He drove out British and Spaniards and restored order and prosperity. Under Napoleon, however, his fortunes changed. In 1802 he was arrested and taken to France, where he died in prison in 1803. Napoleon's victory was temporary, however. When news reached Haiti that the French were restoring slavery and the discriminations against free people of colour, it precipitated a new rebellion. In the Autumn of 1803 the French were forced to evacuate Haiti by black led armies and on January 1st 1804 the first ever black republic established: called Haiti as it had been before European conquest. ¶105 The theoretical issues that appeared to have taken over the world in 1789 are living issues today, so this is a essay without an end, and I must leave you to continue writing it. The French revolution did not end with the victory of the Haitian slaves, any more than it ended with the defeat of feminism, or with the dictatorship of Napoleon 1st.

Citation suggestion Referencing My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry: Roberts, Andrew 1997 Social Science History for Budding Theorists Middlesex University: London. Available at http://studymore.org.uk/ssh.htm With references in the text to "(Roberts, A. 1997 ch.4, par. -)"

Remember to print the bibliography to the book as well as the chapters that you want.

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists By Andrew Roberts ESSAY FIVE: SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE 1834 POOR LAW The Theories that Smith, Bentham, Malthus and Owen made.

¶1 Social science alters peoples lives. Politicians argue about the ideas that social scientists make, and legislation and policies are shaped by those ideas. As a result the lives of ordinary people, who may never have heard of the social scientists, are altered in their most intimate details. The example I am going to look at here is social security or, as it was called in the 19th century, the poor law. Before we discuss the

social scientists, let us look at just two of the ordinary people whose lives they affected. ¶2 Annie and Albert: Albert and Annie Rose both died in August 1936. They died in St Pancras Hospital, where they had been taken because they were sick. Their funerals left from outside their flat in Herbert Street, Kentish Town, with black horses with nodding black feathers drawing the hearses. (The one thing most working class people saved up for was a respectable funeral). Annie and Albert had lived in this two room flat since they were married. They brought up eight children in those rooms and then looked after some of the grandchildren. When they died Annie was about 74 and Albert eighty. Since retiring they had been able to keep paying the rent because both received an old age pension. But such pensions were only introduced, after a long campaign, by the 1908 Old Age Pensions Act. This Act has been described, by Brian Watkin, as the first step in replacing the "hated poor law", of 1834, by the "welfare state" (Watkin 1975 p.71). If Annie and Albert had grown old before 1908, they would have spent their retirement years in a workhouse. In the workhouse Annie would have lived in dormitories with the other women, and Albert with the other men. They would have been allowed out for part of the day to meet one another. As it was, the workhouse had become St Pancras Hospital (the one they died in) and Annie and Albert only went into it when they were sick. ¶3 Annie may have been born in a workhouse in Ireland. Her mother, and possibly her father, left Ireland to find work in England, and when they became unemployed they had to go into the St Pancras Workhouse. In Inglis 1972 you will find this picture of a workhouse yard at about the time that Annie was in one. It looks rather like a prison yard. But a workhouse was not a prison. People were free to leave at any time but if they did they stopped receiving state benefit, they had to find their own food, lodgings and clothes. The picture is of the women's yard. Men and women were strictly separated. Some of the women have young children with them, but the women were only allowed to keep their children for the first few years (until they were about five), then the children were taken away and kept in another part of the workhouse. In the picture a young girl is holding her mother's hand and pointing upwards, and her mother is looking in the direction the child is pointing. If you follow the line of the child's pointing finger you can see that a man is peering through a gridiron high in a wall. He has climbed up on something in the men's yard and is peering into the women's yard. I like to think of him as Annie's father, trying to catch sight of his wife and daughter. Workhouses were meant to be hated— they were intended to deter people from claiming benefit—and the part that the poor hated most was the way that families were split up. ¶4 The 1834 poor law. The period we will be looking at is from 1815, when the wars with France ended, to 1834. The law we will watch being constructed is the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. This is often called the new poor law and the law it amended is called the old or the Elizabethan poor law. Old and new poor laws provided support for people who became unemployed, sick, too old to work or who had more children than they could support, but the 1834 poor law tried to deter people from claiming these benefits. The most radical way this was done was by building workhouses.

¶5 Total institutions. The concept of a total institution was used by Erving Goffman to describe organisations like workhouses, prisons, hospitals, boarding schools, the army and monasteries, where people spend all aspects of their lives. A factory is not normally a total institution because the factory workers have separate leisure and domestic lives. It might become a total institution if the worker's leisure and home life were organised by the factory managers (Goffman 1961). Jeremy Bentham was a theoretical pioneer of the total institution. He would have liked to have been a practical pioneer, but his schemes did not get the necessary support. “But for George 3rd”, he moaned in 1830, “all the prisoners in England[and]all the pauperswould, long ago, have been under my management.” (Bentham 1830 quoted Poynter 1969 p.108) ¶6 In 1791 Bentham published Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House: Containing the idea of a new principle of construction applicable to any sort of establishment, in which persons of any description are to be kept under inspection. The two principle developments he made of the idea were a scheme for a model prison at Millbank, and a scheme for a network of private workhouses. Neither scheme materialised, although the foundations of Millbank were laid according to Bentham's plan, and a prison was erected on the site by other people. The principle of the panopticon was the all seeing eye (which is more or less what the word means). The supervisor would be able to see everything that inmates were doing, and inmates would never know that they were not being watched. Constant surveillance would, Bentham thought, remove the need for punishment. The inmates would behave because they knew that they could not get away with anything! (Bahmueller 1981 p.155). In practice, the principle of the all seeing eye was applied mostly to lunatic asylums. Workhouses constructed under the 1834 Act were not built on the panopticon principle because they were primarily meant for deterrence, not reform. The people they were supposed to change were not the people inside, but the ones outside. The workhouse was meant to be a place that deterred people from claiming relief. ¶7 Putting principles to social policies. The 1834 Poor Law Act came about because nineteenth century government and its civil service administration tried to be more systematic in their social policy than government in the eighteenth century. In the eighteenth century central government left most of the running of the country to the local authorities and the courts. Courts and local authorities were not separate bodies as they are today, the meeting of the local magistrates was the local authority. The way the poor law was administered would vary from district to district and national laws, where they existed, tended to be Acts passed at the request of a local authority, to permit it to do something it wanted. ¶8 19th century government was concerned with the application of principles to social policy, and these principles were drawn from the social sciences of the time. The two principle sciences on which they drew were the laissez-faire policies of what we now call classical economics, then called political economy, and the utilitarian ideas of Jeremy Bentham and his followers. As you read about these sciences you will recognise that they are still influential in public policy today. ¶9 Hobbes, Locke and human motives. Two of the earliest founders of social science, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke provided the science with alternative models of human motivation. Hobbes argued that a human being is fundamentally

selfish. Locke argued that a human being has conflicting motives of love and selfishness. The Hobbes model was more influential in the science that was applied to the poor law in the 19th century. This was not because theorists rejected the principles of Locke. In fact most of them accepted that we have conflicting motives. With respect to the poor law, however, the most influential theorists put the emphasis on selfish motivation. The notable exception was Robert Owen—but his ideas were not accepted. ¶10 Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a moral theory that claims "good" is what avoids pain and maximizes pleasure. The variety of utilitarianism that dominated social science in 19th century Britain is often called Benthamism after Jeremy Bentham, whose panopticon scheme was a practical application of his general theory that principles should be applied to social policy. He said that the guide for good legislation should be the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" and believed that society can be restructured to maximize the universal or public interest and minimize "sinister" private interests. In the pursuit of happiness, individuals following their personal ends could defeat one another's purposes. The object of a scientific social policy should be to encourage acts that enhance the general happiness and deter those that do not. The object of good legislation, according to Bentham, is to maximise human happiness. ¶11 Bentham bans fictions. Hobbes and Locke were state of nature theorists. This means that their social science was based on imagining humans stripped of social characteristics (in a state of nature) and working out how society came about through a social contract or agreement between the individuals. Robert Filmer and David Hume thought that, as history has no record of an original social contract, it is unscientific to build theories on it. Jean Jacques Rousseau however, in The Social Contract (1762), thought even a fictitious concept was a useful tool for analysing society. Nowadays many social scientists accept the idea of useful fictions. Max Weber, for example, constructed ideal types: hypothetical constructions modeled on some aspect of reality (e.g. contract) which though not existing in the pure form, have explanatory value. But 19th century British theorists wanted a less abstract, more concrete social science. For most of them, this was provided by the utilitarianism founded by Jeremy Bentham. Bentham insisted that a fiction could not be useful to science. In his first book, A Fragment on Government (1776) he wrote “As to the Original ContractI was in hopesthat this chimera had been effectually demolished by Mr Humein the third volume of his Treatise on Human Nature”.“We no longer need the sandy foundation of a fiction there was once a time, perhaps, when they had their use.But the season of Fiction is now over.To prove fictionthere is need of fiction; but it is the characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth.” ¶12 Through reading Hume and others, Bentham said he had “learnt to see that utility was the test and measure of all virtueand that the obligation to minister to general happiness, was an obligation paramount to and inclusive of every other” (Bentham 1776 Chapter 1, sections 36-37 and footnotes). Real social science had to be based on the idea that we pursue ends which are useful to us because they maximise the happiness we experience and minimise the pain. For Bentham and his followers, social science is a way of looking behind the explanations (fictions) that human beings give for their actions, to discover the real reasons in terms of pain avoidance

and pleasure seeking. It is a practical science, because if science can analyze the real motives of human behaviour, laws can be designed that encourage citizens to behave in the way that maximises the sum of their pleasures, and minimises the pains. In Bentham's words, laws could be constructed to achieve “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. ¶13 Political economy and laissez-faire. The other body of ideas that 19th century Britons thought of as social science, was political economy. In practice, utilitarians tended to be political economists, and vice versa, but the theories are distinct. Political economy was not just economics. Its analysis of class structure, and how that related to government, made it a much broader social science. Almost all political economists in Britain, following Adam Smith, argued that the wealth of the nation would grow fastest (or decline slowest) if government left the regulation of the economy to the “hidden hand” of the market. This policy is known as laissez-faire, which is French for let alone, or let be. ¶14 Smith was optimistic about growth of the nation's wealth, and the wellbeing of the people. “No society” he said “can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable” (Smith, A. 1776, book 1, chapter 8, Of the Wages of Labour). By the early 19th century all this had changed. Political economists were so pessimistic about the future of the nation's wealth, and the possibility of the poor getting any richer, that Thomas Carlyle called political economy the “gloomy science”. ¶15 Smith founds society on the division of labour. Adam Smith's comments on the poor laws were restricted to criticisms of its law of settlement (Smith, A. 1776 book 1, Chapter 10 Of Wages and Profit, towards the end of the chapter). The basic principles of his Wealth of Nations, however, have a general relevance. Smith draws a distinction between the animal kingdom and the human in that human beings remain dependent on one another throughout life whilst “in almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent”. However, the interdependence of adult human beings is not by the same means as humans and animals use in childhood. It is by exchange, not begging. “A puppy fawns upon its dam.Man sometimes uses the same arts with his brethren, and endeavours by every servile and fawning attention to obtain their good will. He has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion.Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens” (Smith, A. 1776, book 1, chapter 2). He says this in the chapter on “the principle which gives occasion to the division of labour” in which exchange is presented as the foundation of the social organism, at least as far as its economic well-being is concerned. A prosperous society is built on exchange. Smith describes to us a world wide network of exchange, that we could never have constructed consciously, creating the complex division of labour that makes the wealth of nations possible. It could have been a very short step from imagining healthy societies growing out of the pursuit of selfish ends, to imagining benevolence, and consequently the poor laws, as

an unhealthy, malignant growth. Smith did not take that step, some of his followers did. ¶16 Smith believed that there are sets of balancing desires within us. Self love is balanced with sympathy (Smith, A. 1759). But self love is the most effective in the market place, whilst sympathy is most relevant to our family and friends. In general social policy, therefore, the followers of Adam Smith took an individualist line, basing effective social policy on self-love. His ideas were developed, and applied to the poor law, by Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, two very close friends, who thought the poor laws were malignant and wanted to cut them out of the body politic. ¶17 Bentham thought that his idea of government seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and Smith's idea of the hidden hand of the market securing the greatest wealth of the nation, had a lot in common (Inglis p.87 referring to Bentham 1793). Put like this, however, the difference is obvious: the hidden hand of the market is a natural (not made by humans) phenomena, government laws are artificial (made by humans). (See A.J.Taylor 1972, chapter 5 Benthamism, Laissez-faire and Interventionism, for a summary of the debates on this relationship). ¶18 The poor law and laissez-faire. We can highlight two types of issue linking laissez-faire to the poor law. One type of criticism concerns the operation of the law, and seeks to modify it. The other type questions the very principle of public help for people who have become destitute as a result of market forces. An example of the limited free-market criticism of the poor law is Smith's criticism of the law of settlement. The Elizabethan poor law required that someone claiming relief should do so in the parish where they were born. This was seen by Smith and his followers as a restraint on free trade. Economic theory treats labour as a commodity that can be bought and sold. It is argued that labour should be free to move to where the work is. So, today, if coal mines close down, miners should be free to move to an area of the country where there are other jobs—if they can find one. But if, when you become unemployed, you are forced to move back to the place where you were born, it is unlikely that will be the place where jobs are available. Smith, therefore, wanted the poor law modified so that unemployed people could claim benefit where they lived, rather than where they were born. ¶19 Population theory and the poor law abolitionist movement. The criticisms of Malthus and Ricardo were much more radical. They wanted the poor law abolished. Malthus thought that the Government should make an announcement that people alive at the time would continue to have a right to claim benefit - but anyone born after the announcement should grow up in a world where they would have no claim on state benefit. (Poynter 1969 pp 156-157. Referring to Malthus 1803). He and Ricardo argued that moving resources into welfare, moves them out of the real economy. It reduces the money available to pay people for working. It also, they said, gives an incentive for idleness, discourages people from saving for old age or illness, and encourages irresponsibly large families. ¶20 It was after the war with France had ended, in 1815, that the case for abolishing the poor law was made most strongly. The free market abolitionists, Ricardo and Malthus, argued that their version of science (political economy) should be applied to

policy on poor relief. Malthus, they claimed, had shown that the poor law was selfdefeating, so they wanted it abolished. Against them was Robert Owen, who argued that his version of science (socialism) should be applied. He wanted villages of cooperation to be financed out of the money being spent on poor relief: securing full employment instead of destitution. So, in different ways, the two rival social sciences both sought the abolition of the poor laws. ¶21 Malthus. The father of Thomas Malthus loved an argument and he often chose to argue with his son. It was out of one of these arguments that Thomas developed his theory of population. His Essay on the Principle of Population, published anonymously in 1798, attracted a great deal of attention. A second edition much enlarged and altered appeared in 1803. According to Malthus, we can never reach a condition of well-being, with plenty for all, because our numbers will always tend to increase more rapidly than our means of subsistence. The reason for this is the human sexual drive, and, in particular, its insatiability in the male. Malthus's law was that population increases much faster than subsistence unless checked by misery or vice. Misery included things like famine and war. In practice, Malthus argued, the most potent check was the higher infant mortality in families where provisions are short. Vice is not so clearly defined, but two practices he probably thought of as vices limiting population are prostitution and birth control. Prostitution channels the sexual drives of men away from their wives, birth control stops their wives having babies. Neither was considered morally acceptable at the time. Malthus gave his theory a mathematical form: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio” (Malthus 1798 chapter 1, fifth page). In his second edition Malthus added moral restraint to the possible checks on population. The main form that this could take was late marriages, without having sex outside marriage. The reason that Malthus only had two types of check in his first edition appears to be that he doubted the willingness of men to live without sex—if late marriages meant men frequenting prostitutes, then all checks could be counted as either misery or vice. ¶22 Although a gloomy essay, it was very popular, because it appeared at the height of anti French feeling in Britain (Halevy 1913, Part 3; Chapter 2, Section 16). People who could afford to buy books were pleased to find scientific reasons why the French ideas about reorganizing society to make it rational, would not work. With respect to the poor laws, its implications were clear. If people had to work hard for a living the pain of the work might deter them from the pleasures of sex: in an effort to restrict the number of mouths they had to feed from their work. But if the poor were given welfare by the state whenever they were hungry, nothing would deter them from breeding like rabbits and they would breed until the country's resources were exhausted and famine and disease began to curb their numbers. In the long run, it was no kindness to the poor to provide for their welfare other than by the free market for their labour. ¶23 To this argument against the poor laws, Malthus's friend Ricardo added another. He argued that there is an “iron law of wages” whereby money that is provided to the poor as welfare is withdrawn from the money that is available for the payment of wages. The poor law, therefore, simply moved money from the workers to the idle, and encouraged the workers to become idle.

¶24 Ricardo and the abolitionist case. The case for the abolition of the poor laws reached a climax in 1817. This was the year that David Ricardo published his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, a work which Inglis (1972 p.185) suggests rapidly became the text book, relegating Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations “to the comparative standing of an Old Testament”. Ricardo was outspoken on the need to abolish the poor laws: “Wages should be left to the fair and free competition of the market and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature. The clear and direct tendency of the poor laws is in direct opposition to these obvious principles” “Instead of making the poor rich, they are calculated to make the rich poor”. He even suggested that the poor law could “progressively increase till it has absorbed all the net revenue of the country” “No scheme for the amendment of the poor laws merits the least attention which has not their abolition for its ultimate object”. Ricardo did not provide the theory to support his assertions. He simply pointed out that it had already been provided by Malthus. The “pernicious tendency” of the law was “no longer a mystery, since it has been fully developed by the able hand of Mr Malthus; and every friend of the poor must ardently wish for their abolition” (Ricardo 1817, Chapter 5 On Wages page 61) ¶25 Owen's socialism. Robert Owen's ideas on the poor law were listened to attentively by the government, and rejected. So you may, if you want, skip this section without losing the thread of the argument. I am including Owen's ideas here because they show that there were alternative directions in which government policy could have developed, directions in which it did develop later. Owen wanted full employment policies promoted on cooperative principles. In the 20th century, aspects of his ideas became part of new liberalism, labour party socialism and one-nation conservatism. In the 19th century they were adopted by the labour movement and, via Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), inspired marxism. ¶26 In contrast to Smith, Owen argued that individualistic self-love corrupts public affairs. He looked for a way in which self-love could become love of all, and he thought he had found this through his argument that rational self interest is the general interest. The first version of Owen's plan for the relief of the poor was published in 1817 (Owen 12.3.1817). He was still developing the plan in 1820 (Owen 1820). As it progressed, the plan drew everybody in and became a plan for a new society. In the 1817 version, Owen envisaged the unemployed finding work in villages of cooperation. Cooperation, as opposed to individualism, had economic and moral advantages. He believed collective activities would be more efficient, but he also argued that the influence of individualism is towards ignorance and brutality and that of cooperation towards liveliness and intelligence. He contrasted the "brutal selfishness" of individualism with the "rational self-interest" of co-operation, which recognizes the individual's own interest in the welfare of the community. Owen claimed that “the character of man is.. always formed for him”, and argued that “the members of any community may by degrees be trained to live without idleness, without poverty, without crime, and without punishment; for each of these is the effect of error in the various systems prevalent throughout the world. They are all necessary consequences of ignorance. Train any population rationally, and they will be rational.” (Owen 1813 in Owen 1927 p.37)

¶27 Malthus had argued that poverty is inevitable because human population will always outstrip the production of food and other necessities. Owen said that this is not true. Malthus, he said, had ignored the influence of technology. In his own lifetime, he said, technology had increased production 40 or even a hundred times relative to population. Human needs remained the same. So why was there mass poverty? Owen said it was because a sufficient market did not exist for the goods produced. The reason for this, he said, was because the labourer is not paid the full value of what he or she produced. “The natural standard of value” he said “is human labour” Money introduces an artificial standard. The solution then was to return to the natural standard. If every labourer gets back what he or she puts into production there would be enough demand for the goods produced. In terms of his villages of cooperation, Owen said they must be provided with a market. The government would have to abandon the money standard of gold and silver, and replace it with a paper currency that represented the amount of labour in a product. Owen's economics is what we now call demand side (as opposed to supply side) economics. It is also an attempt at macro-economics, or economics of the whole system. In recent years many of these issues have re-emerged in the debate between monetarism and keynesianism. (Ian Gilmour MP in Britain Can Work (1983) gives an introduction to these recent debates from the one-nation conservative point of view. Gilmour was the leading theorist of the “wets” that Margaret Thatcher attacked as her enemies within her own party. You may find his book interesting as it is an analysis of modern politics in the light of the 19th century debate between political economists and socialists that I have been discussing in this article). ¶28 There was a debate between Ricardo and Owen about the principles on which social science should develop. The result of this was that Ricardo and Malthus's principles, modified by utilitarianism, became the guiding principles of the government, whereas Owen's principles were adopted by the newly emerging labour and trade union movement. ¶29 Utilitarianism modifies laissez-faire. The argument of Malthus and Ricardo, that the poor law should be abolished, was rigorously consistent with free market economics. But to abolish all help to the poor was politically unacceptable. In 1817 Ricardo saw the greatest difficulty in establishing a free market in labour as political. “Unfortunately” he wrote, the poor laws “have been so long established, and the habits of the poor have been so formed upon their operation, that to eradicate them with safety from our political system requires the most cautious and skilful management”. “He is the best friend of the poor, and to the cause of humanity”, who can point out how the poor law can be abolished “with the most security, and at the same time with the least violence” (Ricardo 1817, Chapter 5 On Wages page 61). Abolition was soon recognised as impossible but, during the next few years, an amalgam of utilitarianism and laissez-faire ideas was developed that modified laissezfaire principles by saying that government needed to be an active manipulator of pains and pleasures if the free market was to thrive. It was this broader science that was eventually applied to the reform of the poor laws. The poor law was retained, but modified in a way that took account of the laissez-faire criticisms, and Benthamism provided an alternative to abolition that was consistent with free market principles. ¶30 The laissez-faire theory of Malthus and Ricardo suggested that the correct balance of pain and pleasure is provided naturally, by the market. The Benthamite

alternative was that government could and should create an artificial balance of pain and pleasure. This would be the aim of scientifically designed laws that would seek to achieve the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Government intervention should complement the market. ¶31 A science that could develop in different directions. Utilitarianism is a science with a lot of different possibilities. It can be developed in many different directions according to which other theories it is linked to. For example, utilitarianism could be linked with free market economics or with socialist theory. Both Ricardo, advocating laissez-faire, and Owen, advocating socialism, were broadly Benthamite in their outlook. Owen's theories were centred on the pursuit of happiness by rational methods and his essay on government begins “The end of government is to make the governed and the governors happy. That government, then, is best, which in practice produces the greatest happiness to the greatest number; including those who govern, and those who obey” (Owen 1814/4th Essay. 1927 p.63). But the man best known for popularising Bentham's work developed it in Ricardo's direction, not Owen's. This was James Mill, who linked utilitarianism to three other bodies of theory: 1) Egoistic psychology, which is the kind of psychology that Hobbes developed. This argues that the foundation of any explanation of the human mind must be to trace its content back to the self-centred desires of the individual. In 1829 James Mill published one of the first English text books on psychology. 2) Democracy. He argued that if we are all pursuing our own self-interest it is not safe to trust government to a minority. Every male adult must have a vote to act as a control on the government. He wrote a very influential article in the Encyclopedia Britannica to argue this point (James Mill 1820 & 1825). 3) Laissez-faire economics. He linked together the theories of Bentham and those of Ricardo, Malthus and other followers of Adam Smith. (James Mill 18211822) ¶32 None of these links is a necessary link. William Thompson and Anna Wheeler were socialist utilitarians whose theories broke the links with egoistic psychology and laissez-faire economics. In the interests of economic and gender equality, they integrated the ideas of Owen and Bentham (W. Thompson 1824 & 1825). Later, Harriet Taylor and James Mill's son, John Stuart Mill modified laissez-faire and utilitarianism enough for some people to think of them as forerunners of Labour Party socialism. They too incorporated ideas from Owen and other socialists (Mill, J.S. 1848, and subsequent editions). In mid-Victorian Britain John Stuart Mill was probably the most influential social scientist. In the 1830s, however, it was James Mill's version of utilitarianism which most people would have recognised. ¶33 A Royal Commission on the poor laws. In 1832 a Royal Commission was ordered to inquire into the poor law. Their report in 1834 was made the basis, later the same year, of the Poor Law Amendment Act, which changed the whole system. The report is generally credited to Edwin Chadwick one of Bentham's disciples, who later became Secretary to a new administrative body, established by the Act, to coordinate the new poor law. This new body was also called a commission: the Poor Law Commission. ¶34 The Report of the Royal Commission in 1834 was based as much on principles as it was on empirical evidence. It was a self consciously scientific report, in the utilitarian mode, with theory openly organising the evidence it presented. We will

follow Fraser in dividing its principles into three: 1) less eligibility, 2) a workhouse test and 3) centralisation and uniformity (Fraser 1984 p.43). ¶35 Less eligibility. The Royal Commission's basic aim was to discipline able bodied paupers by refusing them relief unless they entered a workhouse where conditions were "less eligible" than those of the lowest paid independent labourer. Less eligible just means less desirable. Bentham had used this idea when writing on pauperism in the 1790s: “If the condition of persons maintained without property by the labour of others were rendered more eligible than that of persons maintained by their own labour then, in proportion as the existence of this state of things were ascertained, individuals destitute of property would be continually withdrawing themselves from the class of person maintained by their own labour, to the class of persons maintained by the labour of others: and the sort of idleness, which at present is more or less confined to persons of independent fortune, would thus extend itself sooner or later to every individualtill at last there would be nobody left to labour at all for anybody.” (Bentham's papers in 1790s quoted Poynter 1969 p.125; Inglis 1972 p.399 and Fraser 1984 p.45) This is saying that one needs a balance of pain and pleasure that will lead to people doing what is socially desirable. If there is more pleasure and less pain in being on social security than in working, Bentham says, people will stop working. The implication for social policy is that being on social security should be made less eligible (less desirable) than working. ¶36 The Royal Commission's Report called less eligibility the “most essential administrative principle of administering relief to the needy”. “A principle which we find universally admitted, even by those whose practice is at variance with it, is that his situation on the whole shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class.In proportion as the condition of any pauper class is elevated above the condition of independent labourers, the condition of the independent class is depressed; their industry is impaired, their employment becomes unsteady, and its remuneration in wages is diminished. Such persons, therefore, are under the strongest inducements to quit the less eligible class of labourers and enter the more eligible class of paupers.Every penny bestowed that tends to render the condition of the pauper more eligible than that of the independent labourer, is a bounty on indolence and vice. We have found that as the poor's rates are at present administered, they operate as bounties of this description, to the amount of several millions annually.” (1834 Report. Checkland 1974 p.335) ¶37 The workhouse test. The 1834 Report recommended that "except as to medical attendance, and[an] exception respecting apprenticeship, all relief whatever to able bodied persons or to their families, otherwise than in well regulated workhousesshall be declared unlawful" (1834 Report. Checkland 1974 p.375). The workhouse was to be the instrument to deter claimants unless they were really desperate. John R. McCulloch, a laissez-faire economist and a Benthamite, had written in 1828:

“The real use of a workhouse is to be an asylum for the able-bodied poorBut it should be such an asylum as will not be resorted to except by those who have no other resourceThe able bodied tenant of a workhouse should be made to feel that his situation is decidedly less comfortable than that of the industrious labourer who supports himself.” (McCulloch 1828 quoted Poynter 1969 p.305; Inglis 1972 p.399 and Fraser 1984 p.46) ¶38 This was also the spirit of the 1834 Report. But why use workhouses to make the condition of paupers less desirable than that of people who are supporting themselves? Why not just pay paupers less in poor relief than they could get in the lowest paid job? The answer is not as clear in the 1834 Report as it might be. But there are two points to bear in mind. 1) The lowest paid workers were paid so little that the Government might have been accused of gross cruelty if it had paid even less to paupers. 2) The workhouse could be a more fearful deterrent than a low benefit. The person on a benefit below the wage he or she could earn might still think themselves better off, because they did not have to work for the benefit. They might even get away with earning some money to top up the benefit. The workhouse test meant that the pain that offset the unearned benefit of the relief was sure and certain. ¶39 The use of workhouses uniformly to deter all the able bodied poor from claiming relief was new. Thomas Wakley, a radical MP, quoted the 18th century lawyer William Blackstone to show that the Elizabethan poor law (1601) had intended that most claimants would remain in their own homes. Blackstone said: “The two great objects of this statute seem to have been,— 1. To relieve the impotent poor, and them only. 2. To find employment for such as are able to work. And this principally by providing stocks of raw materials to be worked up at their separate homes, instead of accumulating all the poor in one common workhouse, a practice which puts the sober and diligent upon a level, in point of their earnings, with those who are dissolute and idle, depresses the laudable emulation of domestic industry and neatness, and destroys all endearing family connections, the only felicity of the indigent.” (Blackstone 1765/9 quoted Hansard 28.9.1841 col.975) Wakley attributed the 1834 Act to the utilitarians. Quoting Blackstone against a utilitarian Act was particularly apt, for Bentham's first published work (1776) was a criticism of Blackstone! ¶40 Centralisation and uniformity. The 1834 Report recommended “The appointment of a central board to control the administration of the poor lawsempowered and directed to frame and enforce regulations for the government of workhouses, and as to the nature and amount of relief to be given and the labour to be enacted in them, and that such regulations shall, as far as may be practicable, be uniform throughout the country”. This proposal was consistent with Bentham's positive view of the function of central government as promoter of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The Royal Commission argued that, without a central body to regulate the law, the poor would be able to exert direct pressure on the local authorities to undermine the stringency that was required. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act established a Poor Law Commission; not a Royal Commission of

Inquiry, but an administrative department. Bentham's one-time secretary, Edwin Chadwick, was appointed as the Commission Secretary and Halevy credits him with much of the responsibility for the centralisation and bureaucratization of English government in the following years. Chadwick, he says, was "a determined opponent of the aristocratic self-government which prevailed in England and a zealot for uniformity and administrative centralisation." (Halevy 1927 part one, chapter 2, section 3.1, p.100) Social security was not the only central government department that Chadwick helped to found. After his Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, in 1842, he went on (1848 to 1854) to pioneer a Board of Health. ¶41 Under the 1834 Act, parishes could combine into "unions" for the purposes of building workhouses. As they did, however, they became subject to the regulations of the Poor Law Commission. The Commission, which needed Parliament's approval for general regulations issued to all unions, but not for those issued to individual unions, neatly evaded the restrictions this was intended to put on its operations. Instead of issuing general regulations, it issued individual regulations varying only slightly from one another. Most parishes found they wanted to form unions to gain the administrative and financial advantages that size entailed. As they did, they came under the regulation of the central bureaucracy of the Commission. In this way, over the following years, a whole network of rationally designed local government units (the unions), coordinated by a central agency (the commission) came into being. The foundations were laid for a modern bureaucratic state. The eighteenth century model, where local government was the responsibility of the local magistrates, continued for a while in parallel with the new system. By the 1880s, however, the functions of the poor law unions had expanded, and demonstrated their efficiency, to such an extent that it became necessary to restructure English local government on the model that we know today. So, almost unintentionally, the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act brought in a new system of government, not just a new system of poor relief. How unintentional this was is something historians argue about, because the model of government that developed is remarkably like the model that Benthamite social science had constructed in theory. ¶42 Out of the poor law. It is a long journey from the poor law of 1834, pauperism, the workhouse and less eligibility, to the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, an income as of right, and dignity in old age. It is a journey we cannot take here. But we can look at the signposts. In 1841 Thomas Wakley MP was whistling into the wind when he described to parliament his vision of a social security system based on rights which supported elderly people in homes where their dignity was respected (Hansard 28.9.1841). Wakley drew on paternalist theories of the relation between classes. He hoped that parliament would replace the law that “originated with a set of Utilitarians” with laws that should “cause the working men of this country to teach their sons that the gentry were their friends and benefactors.If this were done there would be no fear of midnight conspiracy or crime, nor would any tremble through the night”. (Hansard 28.9.1841 col.978). Shortly after this, the utilitarian John Stuart Mill began a campaign against paternalism. He attacked the idea that the working class should be politically submissive in exchange for welfare benefits. In this context, he defended the 1834 poor law as an Act that encouraged the independence of the poor (Mill, J.S. 1845). Developing the same idea of independence, Harriet Taylor drafted a paper on the future of the working class (and, by analogy, women)

that became part of Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848). The idea was further developed in Mill's On Liberty in 1859, and in his Subjection of Women in 1869. The idea of freedom that Taylor and Mill developed was one of selfdetermination as an essential part of being human. It was better, they argued, to be a woman who could determine her own future, even in tough conditions, than to be a pampered pet whose husband made all the decisions. ¶43 By thinking about the workhouse, we can see that two distinct ideas of freedom were emerging. People who took refuge in a workhouse were not prisoners, they could leave at any time. In this sense, they were free. But, when they left, they had to supply their own food and shelter. If they were able bodied and work was available, this might be possible. To this extent the workhouse could be said to encourage selfdevelopment in the second sense of freedom. But no one who could not support themselves outside the workhouse would feel free, or have any possibility of self development. For people like Annie and Albert Rose, the freedom of the workhouse was as good as imprisonment. For them to have the possibility of self-development, they needed an income that would enable them to keep their flat and live outside the workhouse. The Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 can thus be seen as an indirect outcome of the new concept of freedom that Taylor and Mill developed. The Act was, in fact, preceded by much theoretical work on the concept of freedom. (See Pearson and Williams 1984, chapter five, New Liberalism). Work carried out by theorists like the philosopher T.H. Green at Oxford University; D.G. Ritchie in Principles of State Interference (1891); the economist J.A. Hobson and L.T. Hobhouse, the editor of the Sociological Review who was appointed Professor of Sociology at London University in 1907. Hobhouse's theories were evolutionary. He looked at the way society evolved and suggested that paternalism had become incompatible with individual freedom in the free-market context (as John Stuart Mill had argued), but that this necessitated a “definite right to the primal needs of a civic life on the basis of mutual obligations as between the individual and the community” (Hobhouse 1913 p.225 quoted Fletcher 1971 p.193). Hobhouse was theorising the welfare state. Social science, as it always has, continued to shape the lives of ordinary people in their most intimate details. Which is one of the reasons that my great-grandparents, Annie and Albert, had a pension.

Citation suggestion Referencing My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry: Roberts, Andrew 1997 Social Science History for Budding Theorists Middlesex University: London. Available at http://studymore.org.uk/ssh.htm With references in the text to "(Roberts, A. 1997 ch.5, par. -)"

Remember to print the bibliography to the book as well as the chapters that you want.

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists By Andrew Roberts ESSAY SIX: DURKHEIM AND WEBER'S CONTRASTING IMAGINATIONS. Who is the Sociologist?

¶1 This essay is about the imagination of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, two theorists that almost everyone now accepts as founders of the science of society (sociology)—despite the fact that they start from opposing principles. Both are usually praised for their adherence to facts, and I have no quarrel with this, but I think that science is just as dependent on imagination. Durkheim points out that whilst science needs facts, you do not even know what facts are relevant until you have created the science. We need, therefore, to use our imagination to create a science, before finding out (as we will) that the science we have created is imperfect (Durkheim 1893 Preface to the first edition p.37). ¶2 English epistemologists (theorists of knowledge), in the tradition of John Locke, have more often worried about imagination than welcomed it. Locke argued that science is about first of all disentangling our empirical observations from the web of false conclusions that our imagination has caught them in, and then rearranging them in the order that they exist in the real world. His emphasis was on the importance to science of careful observation. David Hume suggested that we treat this disentangling as a mental experiment. One of the most important points about an experiment is that it can fail to do what your theory expects it to. Experiments that always confirm that we are right could do wonders for the size of our egos—but would be useless to science because we would never learn from them. Hume found that his experiments left him with a big heap of doubts about the possibility of disentangling empirical observation from imagination. Imagination appeared to enter into the process at almost every move. To Hume, in his mental experiments, it seemed impossible to connect most of the empirical observations together by anything but imagination! The social scientist seemed to be trapped in his or her own mind, with very little to be sure about. Attempts to rescue us from this pit of sceptism were made by Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill and many others who insisted on the constructive role that imagination plays in science. They argued, as I do, that science needs imagination, for what use is a science that never imagines the world other than we already believe it to be? As with the always correct experiment, constantly thinking that the world is just as we always thought it was will just turn us into big headed bores who never discover anything new! ¶3 Many modern theorists also stress the importance to science of imagination. Julie Ford, for example, says that composing “fairy tales” about the world is an essential part of science. When we have imagined our fairy tales we have to find a way of selecting the ones that are most likely to be true, but you must first make your fairy tale. She says that “it is through imagination and only through imagination that we mortals may transcend the worlds of taken-for-granted-thoughts-already-thought”. We need to “soar away into the freedom of make-believe. For it is there that fairies dwell” (Ford 1975 p.75). In her glossary she tells us, that fairies are ideas, and a fairy tale is a

“connection of ideas in the form of an explanatory story, or theory.” Julie Ford's approach is similar to that of Karl Popper (1963). She thinks that science is about thinking up fairy tales and then testing them to see which are falsified. ¶4 There is a sense in which sociology was invented in France. The name, which means science of society, was created by August Comte, whose theories were developed by another Frenchman, Durkheim. They drew on the ideas of Montesquieu, Rousseau and Saint-Simon, theorists who also wrote in French. German theorists, like Weber and Karl Marx, have since been called sociologists, but it is not a name they would have chosen for themselves. The fairy tale that became sociology was first told in French. (See Giddens, A. 1987 Weber and Durkheim: Coincidence and Divergence in Mommsen 1987 pp 182-189) ¶5 To many English ears the theories of the French sociologists seem like the dreams of lunatics. They thought of society in a way that conflicts with our common sense perception of reality. Durkheim said that society is real: we tend to think that only the individual is real and that society is no more than what individuals do together. Durkheim thought that society is so real that suicidogenetic currents can run through it, like nervous impulses through a human body, inciting individuals to kill themselves just as nerves incite muscles to move. (I will say more abut this later). We tend to think of society as put together by individuals. Durkheim claimed that society puts individuals together. He compared society to a dance. A dance has a form that shapes the dancers. So society shapes us. Only because the dance exists are any of us able to modify the dance or create new dances. We tend to think of ourselves as constructing the dance. Durkheim thinks of us as born into the dance and constructed by it. It is only because the dance exists that we can modify it. Perhaps you think that there must have been a time when individuals got together to create the first dance? If so you are a state of nature or social contract theorist, and your fairy tale is a different one to Durkheim's, and is a lot closer to Weber's. Weber's theory is a lot closer to English common sense. ¶6 This essay is about Durkheim's theory of society as a real entity that constructs individuals, and Weber's theory that individuals are the real entities from whom we must construct the different kinds of society that exist. Both theories require you to use your imagination if you are going to understand them. EMILE DURKHEIM ¶7 The work of Emile Durkheim has one major theme: that society is real and that the reality of society is the subject matter of sociology. He explores different aspects of this theme in his different books, as I will try to show in this survey of his major works. I will start, however, with one of Durkheim's minor works, his essay on Rousseau. ¶8 Durkheim and Rousseau Quite late in his career Durkheim gave lectures on Rousseau that show how the science of sociology develops out of philosophy. Rousseau is a state of nature theorist. Durkheim is not. But Durkheim shows how Rousseau develops state of nature theory to a point where he can be regarded as a "forerunner" of sociology. Let us look at what it is about state of nature theory that Durkheim disapproves of, and what it is about Rousseau's version that he approves of.

¶9 State of nature theorists try to work out what society is about by imagining what human beings would be like stripped of their social characteristics (in a "state of nature"). They put forward a picture of individuals in this state and try to show how the needs of those individuals explain their need for society. Durkheim thinks this is to start from the wrong point. Human beings, according to Durkheim, are essentially social beings. If we start with individuals and try to work out how, with their characteristics, society can be explained, we are very close to arguing that society is the result of adding individuals together—that society is the sum of its individuals. Durkheim does not believe this is so. He believes that society is "sui-generis", which means it is an entity in its own right. ¶10 To some people, common sense says society is not real. Only the individual people are real—society is just a name for the individuals working together. This is social atomism: the belief that society is no more than the sum of its parts. Recent theorists (Popper 1945, Hayek 1952, Watkins 1957) have called it methodological individualism because its method of science is to theorise from the individual. The state of nature theory of Thomas Hobbes is atomistic and an example of methodological individualism. So is the sociology of Weber. John Locke, by contrast, imagines the state of nature as already a society of sorts. People in the state of nature already have a law to guide them. This law is reason, a recognition of mutual responsibilities and an ability to imagine ourself in the other person's position. ¶11 Rousseau attacks Hobbes' theory and, in some ways, his theory is a development of Locke's. Rousseau's theory starts from individuals who do not have the developed social faculties that exist in Locke's state of nature, but he ends up with a society that is more than the individuals added together. Another way of saying this is to say that society is more than the sum of its parts. This is social holism (whole-ism) as distinct from social atomism. Rousseau argues that when individuals come together to form society, something magic happens: a new will is formed which is completely different from anything that could exist in individuals outside society. This "general will" is not the sum of individual "particular wills". It is formed by people becoming social; becoming part of a collective. It is not just all our individual wills put together, but something distinct in its own right. The general will is formed by society and it is society (see Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 190-196). Durkheim says that this means Rousseau sees society as a reality. If society is real, it is possible to have a science of society (sociology). So Durkheim finds in Rousseau the philosophic origins of sociology. Quoting Rousseau, Durkheim says that society is: “a moral entity having specific qualities distinct from those of the individual human beings which compose it.” For Rousseau, Durkheim says, “society is nothing unless it be one, definite body, distinct from its parts”. He recognises that the social order is “an order of facts generically different from purely individual facts”. (Durkheim 1960 p.82) ¶12 The position reached by Rousseau, in the middle of the 18th century, is something like the position that 20th century American sociologists have described as the theory of emergent properties (See Parsons 1937 pp 367, 609, 734 etc). This theory starts with the individual, but differs from Rousseau in that it imagines the individual in society, not in a state of nature. The individual is, therefore, called a “social actor”. The theory then argues that when individuals interact “social systems” come into being that have properties that cannot be reduced to the characteristics of

the individuals. To try to do so is what such theorists call reductionism (See Parsons 1937 p.85). Durkheim (and perhaps Rousseau) went further than this. Durkheim did not start with individuals. He started with societies and deduced from them the social properties of individuals. For Durkheim society is really real (sorry!) and not something that emerges from the interaction of individuals. ¶13 Durkheim and Adam Smith: Division of Labour (1893) and Solidarity In The Division of Labour Durkheim tried to show that societies are real in the sense of having similar properties to material objects. The following passage, not completely clear in some respects, clearly conveys in the word “tissue” the idea of substance linking people together: “in the same way that an animal colony whose members embody a continuity of tissue form one individual, every aggregate of individuals who are in continuous contact form a society. The division of labour can then be produced only in the midst of a pre-existing society” (Durkheim 1893 pp 276-277). The last sentence tells us that, in Durkheim's theory, society is an organism before division of labour takes place. Individual people do not come together to form a society in which they are the different parts. Instead, pre-existing society develops parts with distinct functions. The society comes first, the separate parts next. Durkheim investigates what he calls the “solidarity” of societies. You can imagine solidarity as a kind of social glue that holds the society together, or as an invisible tissue linking the members. Its something like the "general will" in Rousseau's state of nature theory, but it exists from the beginning rather than coming into being when isolated individuals coalesce. ¶14 It helps us understand Durkheim and Weber, if we look at how their theories relate to the theories of Adam Smith. Both read Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776), and their agreements and disagreements with it throw light on their theories. Durkheim says that division of labour starts with the differentiation of organisms that biology studies. Simple organisms are low down the evolutionary tree. The higher up the tree one ascends, the more complex and differentiated the biological organism becomes. Durkheim's vision is of the same process continuing in the development of human societies. “The division of labour is not of recent origin, but it was only at the end of the eighteenth century that social cognizance was taken of the principle.Adam Smith was the first to attempt a theory of it.” Durkheim says that social science was ahead of the natural sciences in this respect, because it was only after Adam Smith analyzed the division of labour in society that biologists analyzed it in biological organisms. (Durkheim 1893, Introduction. The Problem). ¶15 According to Smith, individuals are held together by the economic advantages of the division of labour. We associate because, by each playing different parts in the production of economic goods, we produce more. He imagines individuals having a natural propensity to exchange things with one another. “This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived,is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human natureto truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals” (Smith, A. 1776, chapter 2: Of the principle which gives occasion to the division of labour)

¶16 Durkheim agrees with Smith that the division of labour comes about by a natural process (it is not a product of human design). He does not agree that the natural process is the hidden hand of the market guiding the selfish desires of individuals. Underneath the self-seeking of individual ends, Durkheim sees a pre-existing unity of purpose, a bonding of the individuals together into the social organism that pre-dates the differentiation. ¶17 Mechanical and Organic Solidarity Durkheim views society as having two types of solidarity: mechanical solidarity, which is the basic solidarity that makes society an organism rather than just a pile of parts, and organic solidarity, which is the social glue that comes from the division of labour. There is a paradox in organic solidarity because the division of labour in society is a separation of its parts, but at the same time, Durkheim argues it is a strengthening of the bond between them. It is with this paradox that The Division of Labour in Society started. “Why does the individual while becoming more autonomous, depend more upon society? How can he be at once more individual and more solidary? Certainly, these two movements, contradictory as they appear, develop in parallel fashion.” Durkheim's answer is that the nature of solidarity is being changed as society becomes more divided (Durkheim 1893 Preface to the first edition, pp 37-38). Individuality and the division of labour is, in fact, the result of society's need for a new form of solidarity (organic solidarity). ¶18 Durkheim argues that the division of labour within modern society is a much broader issue than a purely economic issue. “We can observe its growing influence in the most varied fields of society. The political, administrative, and judicial functions are growing more and more specialised. It is the same with the aesthetic and scientific functions. It is long since philosophy reigned as the science unique; it has been broken into a multitude of special disciplines” (Durkheim 1893, Introduction. The Problem, p.40). This differentiation of functions is a solidifying agent. That is to say, society is becoming more and more differentiated (people are specialising more and more), but as we become more different from one another we grow closer together rather than further apart. ¶19 In mechanical solidarity, the members of society are held together by common beliefs and practices. Everyone is much more like everyone else than in organic solidarity. Historically, organic solidarity develops out of mechanical solidarity. So, in this sense, we can say that society makes us individuals (with the development of organic solidarity) rather than individuals making society (as state of nature and utilitarian theories suggest). So, Durkheim argues, societies are not so much the product of individuals as individuals are the product of society. In mechanistic societies human beings were not individualistic in the way they are in organic societies. The individual has evolved in the course of history. This has not happened because society has fallen apart, but because individualism provides a new and powerful way of holding society together. ¶20 Although organic solidarity is a different form from mechanical, Durkheim says that it cannot exist completely separately: “The division of labour canbe produced only in the midst of pre-existing societyThere is a social life outside the whole division of labour, but which the latter presupposes.” (Durkheim 1893 p.277) Contract, the binding bargain that makes exchange possible, is a derivation of sacred

ritual. If I break a contract: “I am committing sacrilege, because I am breaking an oath, I am profaning a sacred thing” (Durkheim 1937 p.193, quoted Nisbet 1965, p.44) Think of the kind of economic exchange you do every time you buy something in a shop. When you exchange money with a baker for a loaf of bread, both of you benefit and this binds you together. But it is not all that binds you. Exchange would be very complicated if we only calculated our advantage and tried to maximize our individual gain. We would always be calculating what we could get away with. Everybody would be a shoplifter when the shopkeeper was not looking and the shopkeeper would never dare turn his or her back on a customer! Economic life would be impossible. Instead, most of the time, we feel that we are under some obligation to act honestly. The intensity with which we can react to any slur on our honesty —even when we have been dishonest—indicates that we have very deep feelings about the issue that are not based on a calculation of economic gain. These feelings spring, Durkheim argues, from the mechanical solidarity that underlies the organic solidarity of exchange. Dishonesty is a betrayal of the community, and the community has a sacred charge in our emotional life. So we see that the organic solidarity of exchange is dependent on a more basic mechanical solidarity. ¶21 Common beliefs and practices, which are the characteristic of mechanical solidarity, are therefore the fundamental glue of all societies. “The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society forms a determinate system which has its own life; one may call it the collective or common conscience.It isindependent of the particular conditions in which individuals are placed; they pass on and it remains it does not change with each generation, but, on the contrary, it connects successive generations with one another. It is thus an entirely different thing from particular consciences, although it can be realized only through them” (Durkheim 1893 Chapter Two: The Causes, Section 4 pp 79-80). This collective mind, discovered in his analysis of the division of labour, became the central subject of Durkheim's study of religion (1912). ¶22 Durkheim and the Thing: Rules of Sociological Method (1895) A thing is something that is real. It can hit you. Try walking into a lamppost as if it was not there, and you will discover what a thing is. In his Rules of Sociological Method Durkheim tried to show that sociology is the study of society and that society has real substance. He said that we should treat social facts as things. They have the same property as the lamppost, they can hit you hard if you ignore them. ¶23 Durkheim believed that there is a need for a distinct science of society (sociology). The science of psychology, which was being developed in the laboratories of Wilhelm Wundt, had shown that we have ideas with a social orientation. But that, for Durkheim, is not enough. We need a distinct science of sociology, the central concern of which should be the study of society. Sociology should concern itself with "social facts". By which he meant that it should concern itself with the (social) realities external to the individual, that constrain an individual. “.. we can formulate and delimit in a precise way the domain of sociology. It comprises only a limited group of phenomena. A social fact is to be recognized by the power of external coercion which it exercises or is capable of exercising over individuals, and the presence of this power may be recognized in its turn either by the existence of some specific sanction or by

the resistance offered against every individual effort that tends to violate it.” (Durkheim 1895 p.10) “A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.” (Durkheim 1895 p.13) ¶24 An example of social facts are the suicidogenetic currents that Durkheim said run through the body of society. If society has nothing to do with why people commit or attempt suicide, if it is purely a psychological issue, you might expect the number of suicides and suicide attempts to vary greatly from year to year according to how many people just happened to have chosen to attempt suicide. Instead there is a fairly steady rate from year to year, which varies in relation to economic and social circumstances and according to the groups that people belong to. (Durkheim 1895 p.10. Quoted below). ¶25 In Ingmar Bergman's film, The Seventh Seal (1956), people are caught up in a dance of death that appears to us as a Durkheim and the Dance of Death: Suicide (1897) dance of collective madness. If you saw the grim reaper, death, leading a conga dance, would you join on the end of the column? Some people do kill themselves. But we think of this as a very individual, personal act. If you wanted to know why someone had committed suicide you would look for the meaning of the act to them. You would look around for a note. You would ask friends what insight they could give you into the state of mind of that individual before he or she died. You would not think that the individual had got caught up in a collective dance of death. ¶26 In his book, Suicide Durkheim tried to show that society is so real that it controls acts as (apparently) individual as suicide. According to Durkheim, there are “currents of opinion, with an intensity varying according to the time or place”, which “impel certain groups either to more marriages, for example, or to more suicides, or to a higher or lower birth rate”. These currents are examples of what he means by “social facts”. A marriage, suicide or birth rate "expresses a certain state of the group mind (l'ame collective)" (Durkheim 1895 p.10). ¶27 Durkheim tries to demonstrate this by examining different sub-groups of society. One sub-group he chooses are the religious sub-groups. He looks at the suicide rates for members of the protestant churches and members of the Roman Catholic church. Generally he finds that church membership protects people against being suicidal, but that protestants are less protected than catholics. What is the reason for this? It is not the teachings of the churches. “The beneficent influence of religion is..not due to the special nature of religious conceptions. If religion protects men against the desire for self-destruction, it is not that it preaches the respect for his own person to him with arguments sui generis; but because it is a society. What constitutes the society is the existence of a certain number of beliefs and practices common to all the faithful,

traditional and thus obligatory” (Durkheim 1897 p.170). Human beings are “double” because a “social” being superimposes itself on our “physical” being. “Social man necessarily presupposes a society which he expresses and serves. If this dissolves, if we no longer feel it in existence and action about and above us, whatever is social in us is deprived of all objective foundation.. Yet this social is the essence of civilized man.. Thus we are bereft of reasons for existence; for the only life to which we could cling no longer corresponds to anything actual; the only existence still based upon reality no longer meets our needs” (Durkheim 1897 p.213) “The conclusion from all these facts is that the social suicide-rate can be explained only sociologically. At any given moment the moral constitution of society establishes the contingent of voluntary deaths. There is, therefore, for each people a collective force of a definite amount of energy, impelling men to self-destruction. The victim's acts which at first seem to express only his personal temperament are really the supplement and prolongation of a social condition which they express externally.” “It is not mere metaphor to say of each human society that it has a greater or lesser aptitude for suicide; the expression is based on the nature of things. Each social group really has a collective inclination for the act quite its own, and the source of all individual inclination, rather than their result” (Durkheim 1897 p.299). ¶28 If being part of a church can protect us against the collective inclination to suicide, perhaps it is about time that we made a study of religion, to turn from studying the dance of death, to studying the dance of life. This Durkheim did by studying the reports of anthropologists on the religious practices of Australian aborigines. Durkheim and the Dance of Life: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) ¶29 Before looking at the detail of what Durkheim says in Elementary Forms of Religious Life, let us view it from a great height. Hover in your imagination over a tribe of aborigines in Australia. At some periods of the year you see them scattered in small groups or alone over a vast area of bushland. They are pursuing the economic tasks of hunting and gathering on which their material survival depends. In these periods the animation of their spiritual lives fades because they are separate from the tribe as a whole and the practice of its collective religion. So, periodically, we see them leaving the profane tasks of material survival and drawing together for great tribal meetings which will renew their spirits and give them the inner strength to carry on. The traditional ceremonies, rituals, dances etc of these meetings are the religion of the tribe, from the energy of which flows its art and its recreation. Durkheim argues that the life of the individual depends just as much on this spiritual re-creation as it does on the material sustenance that is hunted and gathered. ¶30 Durkheim sees this picture as a model for the spiritual life of all societies. The picture is simple enough for us to grasp it as a whole. The picture is much more complicated and confused in so called “civilised” societies, but the ability to see the features of the Australian example should enable us, if we have sufficient imagination, to trace the same features of the sacred and profane.

¶31 When you eat food it renews your animal energy, when you worship or engage in recreation or artistic creation, it renews your spiritual energy. Whilst reading the detail of Durkheim on religion do not lose sight of this image of energy giving activity. The practices he describes are a collective dance of life, renewing the joy of living. Durkheim seeks the meaning of those practices, but warns us that they are too full of life, too creative, to all have an agreed meaning. “The state of effervescence in which the assembled worshippers find themselves must be translated outwardly by exuberant movements which are not easily subjected to too carefully defined ends. In part, they escape aimlessly, they spread themselves for the mere pleasure of so doing, and they take delight in all sorts of games”. When explaining rites, it is a mistake to believe “that each gesture has a precise object and a definite reason for its existence. There are some whichmerely answer the need felt by worshippers for action, motion, gesticulation. They are to be seen jumping, whirling, dancing, crying and singing, though it may not always be possible to give a meaning to all this agitation” (Durkheim 1912 p.381). ¶32 So, we are looking for meaning, but may not always find it, because the meaningful activities of the collective religion fill us with so much energy that we create new movements of the dance without thinking of what their significance is. We can think of a writer, (Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, for example), writing a novel out of her imagination, drawing on the collective symbols of her society, without which her readers would not be able to understand it, but not able to say what the full significance of her novel is precisely because it is a creation of the imagination, not a copy of a social ritual. It is the ritual, however, that provides the creative energy. What is a religion?, Durkheim asks, what is a church? what is god? He gives some unusual answers. A religion, he says “is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden— beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them” (Durkheim 1912 p.47). It is not just beliefs, it is also practices, and those practices have to be part of a church: “In all history, we do not find a single religion without a church”. A church is any “society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas to common practices” (Durkheim 1912 p.44). An essential point that Durkheim is making is that religion has to be collective, and it has to be action (not just belief). ¶33 Not all religions believe in god, although all religions have a force at their centre. The Australian tribes that Durkheim writes about had totems: animals or plants that they held sacred. Durkheim comes to the conclusion that “The god of the clan, the totemic principle” is “the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem” (Durkheim 1912 p.206). Durkheim concludes that religion is a collective activity in which we perceive our society. It is a periodic renewal of our social energy, and it is essential to any society. He even derives the forms of thought that we use to understand the world from the images generated by the religion, images that reflect the structure of our society, and which will therefore vary from society to society. This means that different societies will perceive time and space differently. Just as an illustration we could say that some societies will think of time and space as having no beginning or end, whilst others will perceive them both as going round in circles. (Durkheim 1912,

Introduction, Subject of our Study: Religious Knowledge and the Theory of Knowledge. Section 2. pp 9-20. See extracts) ¶34 If you have fully understood this, you will probably have blown your mind. Lets hope that you still have a functioning mind left, even at the expense of not fully understanding Durkheim, and that your mind is critical. Perhaps you want to ask Durkheim how religion can be essential to society when so few people go to church? Unfortunately, he is dead, so we will have to question what he wrote. Look at his definition of a church. Perhaps something else has taken on the role of a church, in place of the institution we still call church? Is there any activity in our society that involves all the members of the society in it and which virtually nobody escapes? One of Durkheim's theoretical predecessors, Edmund Burke thought that the most effective form a religion could take was drama: the acting out in plays of the consequences of moral actions (Burke 1790 p.78). But it would be difficult to get everybody in a society to go to the theatre. What if we could put an electronic theatre in every home? Would the members of the society switch it on? Could it be, as Polly Toynbee recently suggested in The Radio Times, that television is "the nation's collective consciousness"? Are most of us practising members of the orthodox church of television, with a few non conformists who only use radios? Could our society hold together without television and radio? Would we have any collective life without them? Might we even lose interest in living if we could not get our media fix? MAX WEBER ¶35 The reality of society is the key issue on which we can contrast Durkheim with Weber: Durkheim believes that society is real—that it is out there—an objective reality constraining us. He believes it is this external reality that sociology is about. Weber believes that it is the individual that is real. He thinks society is an abstraction. He believes sociology is about individual actions that are socially orientated. If you continue to develop your theories in the company of sociologists you will learn that sociologists have their own peculiar way of swearing at one another. When a Durkheimian sociologist wants to be rude about a Weberian she shouts “reductionist”, which just means that the Weberian wants to reduce society to individuals. The angry Weberian shouts back “reification” (Latin for “to turn into a thing”), which just means that the Durkheimian is a lunatic to believe that society is real. ¶36 Do morals have solid substance? Underlying Rousseau and Durkheim's thought, like that of Kant, is the belief that morals have solid substance. They are not just what individuals choose to believe in, but have a rational base that is general to all human beings. In different ways, the writings of Rousseau, Kant and Durkheim are a search for this general will. Weber, and many other writers from the end of the 19th century to the present, are disillusioned with this belief in the objectivity of goodness. A phrase from Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883), by Friedrich Nietzsche is often quoted as symbolising their disillusionment. The philosophic hero, Zarathustra, meets an enthusiastic mystic praising God in a forest. He speaks with him, but then hurries away lest he should deprive the man of his joy. Alone he said to himself “Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not heard anything of this, that God is dead?” (Nietzsche 1883, Zarathustra's Prologue, end of section 2)

¶37 Weber and Hobbes Weber was very firmly in the disillusioned camp. He did not believe in general values. Values he thought, are irrational in the sense that they depend only on what individuals chose to be their values. Because of this, some force within society has to impose sufficient general agreement for civilisation to exist. Weber writes on the model of Thomas Hobbes, not that of John Locke or JeanJacques Rousseau. If one's theory of human nature does not allow a concept like reason as a law of nature (Locke), the general will (Rousseau) or the collective conscience (Durkheim), but insists that the individuals in society can only have individual wills, and not a general will, it seems that some kind of domination or power will be needed to get the individuals to act as a society. Hobbes thought that sovereign power was necessary even to establish a common language. Weber thought that human relations are essentially a struggle for domination. ¶38 Power and Legitimacy At the front of Hobbes' Leviathan the two types of weapon that the state uses are symbolised in a series of matching pictures. On the one side are the instruments of force (swords, guns, battle flags etc); on the other the matching symbols of ideas and religion. Weber agreed with Hobbes that it is just as important for the state to control ideas as it is to control weapons. According to Weber, all states are founded on political violence, but also on political legitimacy, the grounds of which vary from society to society and from time to time. The original meaning of legitimate is lawful. This means that a government has legitimacy if it is lawful. Political philosophy and sociology, however, have extended the use of the term. Rousseau said that he could not explain how the state managed to make its subjects slaves (a figure of speech in this context), but he thought he could explain what made the slavery legitimate (Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 181-182) But he did not mean lawful. “The first and most important rule of legitimate or popular government, that is to say, of government whose object is the good of the people, isto follow in everything the general will.” (Rousseau 1755(PE) p.135). Weber did not think that legitimacy depended on the general will of the people. Apart from anything else, he did not believe in a general will. He did, however, think that if a government is to survive its use of force must be supported by the beliefs of its people. A government was, therefore, as much concerned with securing the support of ideas as it was in securing the support of arms. ¶39 Weber provided matching definitions of state and church that fit neatly with Hobbes' concept that religion is a force that achieves peace on earth by threatening us with hell for ever after. “An imperatively coordinated corporate group will be called `political' if and in so far as the enforcement of its order is carried out continually within a given territorial area by the application and threat of physical force on the part of the administrative staff. A compulsory political association with continuous organizationwill be called a `state' if and in so far as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.” “An imperatively coordinated corporate group will be called a `hierocratic' group [hierocratic means ruled by priests] if and in so far as for the enforcement of its order it employs `psychic' coercion through the distribution or denial of religious benefits. A compulsory hierocratic association with continuous organisation will be called a `church' if and in so far as its administrative staff claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of hierocratic coercion.” (Weber 1947 p.154)

¶40 Weber and the Modern State We will listen in to part of a long lecture that Weber gave in 1918 at Munich University. This was published in 1919 as Politics as a Vocation. In 1918 Germany was in disarray at the end of a war in which its army was defeated. Parts of the country were under the revolutionary control of soldiers and workers, some of whom were fired with a vision of a society no longer governed by a state. It was in this atmosphere that Weber attempted to define what the modern state is, and what maintains its power. “Sociologically the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in hand, and there is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar to those associations which are designated as political onesUltimately one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to itnamely the use of political force” (Weber 1919/Politics pp 77-78). ¶41 Weber quotes the leader of the Russian communist army, Leon Trotsky, who had recently said that “Every state is founded on force”. Weber agreed, and added “if no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, the concept of "state" would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as "anarchy"”. The condition of anarchy is a condition of society without a state. Anarchists, following William Godwin, had argued that society is progressing towards a condition where everybody will be so reasonable that we will not need a state to force us. Friedrich Engels and Marx developed this idea by saying that the state is an instrument of force that is only needed when society is built on the conflict of classes. It is used by the ruling class to repress the ruled. If a classless society (communism) could be achieved it would not need a state. This was Trotsky's theory. Unfortunately, Trotsky's communist comrade, Joseph Stalin, arranged a violent death for Trotsky before the use of violence in society became redundant. This would not have surprised Weber, who was not convinced that the state would fade away or that violence would cease in human societies. In fact, he thought the state would continue to develop indefinitely. He pointed out, however, that violence is not the only means that the state uses to control its citizens: “Force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the state but force is a means specific to the state. Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one.” In the past, other institutions, like the church and the family, had their own armies, but the modern state strictly controls who uses force. “Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” “The right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the "right" to use violence. Hence, "politics" for us means striving to share power, either among states or among groups within a state.” Weber says that force is not the only or even the normal means by which a state maintains its domination. The “inner justifications” provided by the beliefs of the people are as important, or more important. “The state is a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence. If the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be. When and why do men obey? Upon what inner justifications and upon what external means does this domination rest?” (Weber 1919/Politics p.78). In the following part of his lecture Weber explored the types of idea that lead human beings to obey the state. Weber presents these as what he calls "ideal types", and I will look at what these are, and at Weber's concept of sociology, before discussing his types of legitimate authority.

¶42 Weber's concept of sociology Weber believed that the central concern of sociology should be the a theory of social action. By this he meant that sociology should start with the subjective meanings that individuals see in what they do. Sociology should start inside the individual with what his or her actions mean to him or her, and work outwards to understanding any laws or regularities that govern the whole of society. “Sociologyis a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. In "action" is included all human behaviour when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to it.” (Weber 1947 p.88) ¶43 Ideal Types: Weber's Toolbox Weber provides us with models of social actions that are unlikely to be found in a pure form in reality, but help us to analyze reality. The types of action and types of legitimacy that follow are such ideal types. Reality is not assumed to correspond to the ideal type, for many reasons, one of which is that any particular reality will contain elements of different ideal types. Take Weber's types of action as the example. In any particular action that we take, there will probably be a mixture of types. The ideal types are tools for discussing the significance of real actions. They are fictional models that help us to understand the real world. Another way of thinking about them is to imagine Weber as creating a tool kit of concepts for you. Weber actually wrote a book that is rather like a tool box of concepts for our use. Parts of it are arranged like a dictionary or encyclopedia and it has been suggested that he meant people to look things up in it rather than just read it straight through. The book is called Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society). It was written between 1910 and 1914, but not published until after Weber's death. It has been translated into English in various parts with different names. ¶44 Was Weber a sociologist? In Economy and Society Weber outlined ideal types and other concepts in an effort to establish “The Fundamental Concepts of Sociology”. He was, by this time thinking of sociology as a discipline to which he had something to contribute. But the title Economy and Society alerts us to the possibility that his primary interests were not sociological. Weber was an academic lawyer and a political economist, two disciplines that were closely linked in Germany. Sociology was a term he used, but was not very happy about. Economist is the description that fits the way he understood himself, and the way he was understood in Germany at the time. The reason he wrote so much that we consider sociology, is that political-legaleconomics in Germany tried to be a science of the whole human being. It distinguished itself from economics in England and France, which it said was concerned with human beings as if all they were concerned with was the pursuit of wealth. German economics, by contrast, attempted to create a science that was political, legal and historical as well. This was why it was quite natural for Weber to study the economic foundations of world religions. ¶45 Weber and Types of Action: Disagreements with Adam Smith German economists, from the 1840s, opposed themselves to Adam Smith's free-market and international economics. In his The National System of Political Economy (1841) Friedrich List complained that Smith had called his book on economics “The Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations (i.e. of all nations of the whole human

race)He seeks to prove that `political' or national economy must be replaced by `cosmopolitical or world-wide economy'”. List and his followers sought to create an economics that was political in the specific sense that it was concerned with the nation. Alfred Marshall, the leading English economist contemporary with Weber, made this summary of the German approach: “The Germans are fond of saying thatthe school of Adam Smith underrated the importance of national life; that they tended to sacrifice it on the one hand to a selfish individualism and on the other to a limp philanthropic cosmopolitanism. They urge that List did great service in stimulating a feeling of patriotism, which is more generous than that of individualism, and more sturdy and definite than that of cosmopolitanism. There is no question that the recent political history of Germany has influenced the tone of her economists in the direction of nationalism. Surrounded by powerful and aggressive armies Germany can exist only by the aid of an ardent national feeling; and German writers have insisted eagerlythat altruistic feelings have a more limited scope in the economic relations between countries than in those between individuals.” (Marshall 1890/1920. 1966: p.634). Altruism is unselfish concern for the welfare of others. Marshall means that German economists promoted welfare state policies within Germany, to strengthen the nation, and an aggressive foreign policy for the same reason. This was the intellectual discipline to which Weber was introduced as a university student in 1882. ¶46 As a student there was at least one lecturer that Weber could not understand. The lecturer talked too fast. But Weber eventually understood him by doing some vacation reading. He wrote to his father “Now that I have gained a few economic concepts through studying Adam Smith and others, Knies makes a quite different impression on me” (Hennis 1987 p.40). This lecturer, Karl Knies, had written a book called Political Economy from the Historical Point of View (1853). In this he said “The economic life of a people is so closely interwoven with other areas of its life that any particular observation can only be made if one keeps in view its relation with the whole.” If you want to make economic predictions, you can only do so “on the basis of the entire development of the life of a people”. Economics should not limit itself to “the elaborations of laws in a world of material goods”. It should treat the life of people and state as members of a “living body”. (Knies 1853 quoted Hennis 1987 p.34) ¶47 Weber did not use the language that would represent society as a body. He wanted to explain everything in terms of individual action. The way he represented the idea that Knies was putting forward was to say that all economic actions had a “heteronomy of ends” (See Hennis 1987 pp 34 and 55). Heteronomy is a biological term that refers to the different parts of an organism having different purposes. Weber was saying that the economic policy of a nation has more than just economic objectives. It was this broad approach to economics that led him to analyze the different kinds of social actions that human beings take, and to demonstrate how many of them are not “rational” in the way that English economic theory understood rational. ¶48 Weber says that social action can be classified into four types, but that it would be very unusual to find actions in the real world that contained only one of these ideal types (Weber 1947 p.116). Nevertheless, I have tried to give real world examples of each type:

(1) Rational action in relation to a goal [zweckrational or goal-orientated conduct]. This would include actions motivated by self-interest. For example actions with an economic motive: market place actions like those Adam Smith described. Other examples that Raymond Aron suggests are “the action of the engineer who is building a bridge, the speculator at the stock exchange who is trying to make money, the general who wants to win a victory” (Aron 1967 volume 2 p.186) (2) Rational action in relation to a value [wertrational or value-related conduct]. Weber says this involves “a conscious belief in the absolute value of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behaviour, entirely for its own sake and independently of any prospect of external success”. We had an everyday example of this earlier, in the case of someone adhering to what Durkheim called the “sacred” value of contract even when he or she could (without risk of punishment) obtain material advantage by breaking it (See above under Mechanical and Organic Solidarity). If a shopkeeper gives you too much change and you return the difference, this is a rational action if financial honesty is one of your values. Aron gives the more dramatic example of a ship's captain who could save his (her?) life, but chooses to go down with the sinking ship because this is what he considers honourable (Aron 1967 volume 2 p.187) (3) Affective or emotional action. Weber says that “Affectually determined behaviour is the kind which demands the immediate satisfaction of an impulse, regardless of how sublime or sordid it may be, in order to obtain revenge, sensual gratification, complete surrender to a person or ideal, blissful contemplation, or finally to release emotional tensions” (Weber 1962 p.60. Weber 1947 p.116). Aron's examples are a punch given in a football match by a player who has lost self-control, or a slap by a parent who feels desperately angry with a child. Another example might be the flag waving of the audience at the last night of the proms, although this is also traditional. (4) Traditional action. (Weber 1947 p.115) “The great bulk of all everyday action to which people have become habitually accustomed” can be considered traditional, although much of it borders on behaviour rather than meaningful action, because we do not think about what we are doing. Some of it, however, is consciously explained in terms of tradition. We say that we do things like putting socks out for Santa Clause because it is a tradition, and that is how we would explain some people shaking hands in circumstances where other people would kiss cheeks. In the past, Weber argues, tradition was the main justification for action. ¶49 Weber's two types of social solidarity: communal and associative As far as I can tell, Weber did not talk in terms of types of society. There is not a division into successive stages in his concepts, like the division into mechanical and organic solidarity that we find in Durkheim. Weber's toolbox does, however, contain two “types of solidary social relations”, communal and associative, which he relates to ideal types of society constructed by another German theorist, Ferdinand Tönnies (Weber 1947 p.136). Tönnies also influenced Durkheim. So we can link Weber to Durkheim's two types of society (mechanical and organic) if we raid Tönnies tool box of concepts. An added advantage is that Tönnies' concepts link Weber's theories to those of Marx and Engels.

¶50 According to Marx and Engels the present stage of society is capitalism or bourgeois society. In this stage of society social relations are based on exchange. Power is in the hands of the owners of capital, who purchase labour from the people who have nothing to exchange but their labour (the workers or proletariate). We can make a rough and ready approximation of social relations in such a society to those in the type of society that Durkheim called organic. Marx and Engels thought that the social relations under capitalism could not last. They argued that the workers were developing more communal relations (trade unions and cooperatives for example) and that, eventually, the mass of the people would revolt and establish a communist society. “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”. (Marx and Engels 1848, end of chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists) ¶51 The way that Tönnies developed this idea was to argue that capitalism is based on relations of association (gesellschaft), which have replaced the communal relations (gemeinschaft) of the agricultural societies that preceded industrialisation. Geselle is a word that has associations with high society. It is used when you say “to go into society” and in the construction of words like evening dress. Gemein is associated with low, vulgar society. It is a closer and warmer word that is used in relation to shared property and to religious communion. Tönnies thought that gesellschaft lacked the solidarity needed to hold it together, and that the working class (common people) would promote a society based on a new form of solidarity. (See Krüger 1987, in which he discuses Weber and his contemporaries in the Social Policy Association—Verein für Sozialpolitik, p.74. Tönnies' book Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft was published in 1887) ¶52 In his toolbox, Weber divides “types of solidary social relations” into the communal and the associative, which he associates with Tönnies' gemeinschaft (communal) and gesellschaft (associative). We can match them to Durkheim's mechanical (communal, gemeinschaft) societies and organic (associative, gesellschaft) societies because Durkheim's Division of Labour developed directly out of his criticisms of Tönnies. Durkheim agreed more or less with Tönnies' picture of communal society, but thought that associative society had a much firmer solidarity than Tönnies credited it with (Lukes 1973, Chapter 7, section: Comte, Spencer, Tönnies). ¶53 Weber, reducing everything to the subjective feelings and thoughts of individuals, says that communal solidarity is a subjective feeling individuals have of belonging together. It can be an emotional or a traditional bond. If, however, people relate only on a rational calculation of what they can get out of the association (like in Adam Smith), the bond is associative. Tradition is thus linked to the early forms of society, which were more communal, and rationality to modern society, which is more calculating. If we now go back to the issue of legitimacy (the kinds of popular beliefs that support governments) we find that Weber has an ideal type called traditional authority which is particular useful for analysing the power in early, communal societies; an ideal type called rational authority which is particular useful for analysing power in modern associative societies, and an ideal type called charismatic authority which is particularly useful in explaining how societies change.

¶54 Traditional and Rational/Legal Authority Weber says there are three main types of legitimacy. “The most universal and most primitive” is “the sanctity of tradition” (Weber 1947 p.130). This is the authority that I linked to communal society. It has been the main legitimating factor for the greater part of human history. We see the vestige of its power in the English Common Law which derives from the time when, to settle a dispute, manorial courts would enquire into what the established customs were. ¶55 Rational authority, which I linked to modern associative societies, may have begun as long ago as the Roman Empire. Weber says “the type case of legitimacy by virtue of rational belief” is “natural law” (Weber 1947 p.131). He distinguishes this from revealed law, like the commandment “thou shall not kill” which Jewish society held to have been revealed by God (Bible 1611 Books of Moses two and five: Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5). For Weber, revealed law would be an example of charismatic authority, which I discuss below. When the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius says that “the universe is a kind of Commonwealth” from which “is derived our mind itself, our reason and our sense of law” (Marcus Aurelius 1961 p.17) he is saying that there is natural law (Latin: jus naturale) which is distinct and superior to the laws of nations (Latin: jus gentium), or positive law. This concept of natural law was a central feature of social theory in Medieval Europe, and Weber may be suggesting that it was an intermediate form of rational authority (between traditional and the modern rational authority). (Weber 1947 Chapter 1 The Fundamental Concepts of Sociology. Section 7: The Bases of Legitimacy of an Order pp 130-132. See also Russell 1961 pp 275-276) ¶56 Weber says that the modern form of rational/legal authority requires obedience to a specific type of rational rule. “Today the most usual basis of legitimacy is the belief in legality, the readiness to conform with rules which are formally correct and have been imposed by accepted procedure” (Weber 1947 p.131). This rational/legal authority is associated with bureaucracy, which is hierarchical organization orientated to a set of rules. “When a civil servant appears in his office at a fixed time” his behaviour is “not determined by custom or self-interest alone” but “by the validity of an order (viz, the civil service rules), which he fulfils partly because disobedience would be disadvantageous to him but also because its violation would be abhorrent to his sense of duty” (Weber 1968 quoted in Giddens 1971 p.154). Bureaucracy is the actual apparatus of the modern state, and is found in other organizations of modern society as well. Weber believes that the rational, bureaucratic state is an essential technical part of modern society. It is the professional way to obtain certain ends within large societies and cannot be dispensed with unless we dispense with those ends. In contrast to Engels, who believed that after the workers' revolution the state would "wither away" "fall asleep" or "die off" (Engels 1876/1878 & 1880 section 3); Weber anticipated that a socialist revolution, like that in Russia under Lenin and Trotsky in 1917, would lead to an increase of state bureaucracy. ¶57 Charisma Weber's analysis allowed his imagination to formulate what he saw as the problem for modern politics: the problem of leadership. This is associated with the problem of change in both traditional and modern society and the solution in both is associated with that magic little word “charisma”. Traditional societies may appear to stand still. Modern societies may appear to lose direction. In traditional societies the “eternal yesterday” justifies what happens today so how can there ever be change?

In modern societies the government of rules may mean that no one is able or prepared to be a real ruler who charts the future of the society, because such a political career cannot be based on following rules. ¶58 The Greek word charisma means a divine gift. Weber says that charisma means the “gift of grace” and that he takes the word from the vocabulary of early Christianity (Weber 1947 p.328). This is clear enough if you know what grace is. In theology, grace is the unmerited favour of God, it is something that God gives us as distinct from something we earn. Since Weber wrote, charisma has entered the English language with two distinct, but related meanings. We say that a politician has charisma if she has some kind of natural appeal that attracts people. We say that he lacks charisma if he is dull, even if he is very worthy. You may, for example, hear people say that John Major lacks Margaret Thatcher's charisma. The second form in which you may hear the word is in reference to charismatic movements in churches where God's spirit is believed to inspire people to speak in tongues. The word charismatic here is close to the early christian roots that Weber spoke of. Nowadays the speaking in tongues needs translating. The origin, however, is from an account in the Christian Bible of disciples of Jesus, after his death and ascension into heaven, being thoroughly dispirited. Suddenly a wind blew through the room, flames of fire burst out of their heads and they were inspired to preach to the crowds who had gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world. The disciples only spoke one language. The people in the crowds spoke many, but each heard the disciples preach in his or her own language. (Bible 1611, The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2) ¶59 Each of these meanings of charisma should help you understand what Weber means. Weber says it is “the absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership.” He gives as examples of charismatic domination, the power of prophet, an elected war lord, a ruler who secures absolute rule by plebiscite (popular vote), a great demagogue, or a political party leader (Weber 1919/Politics p.79). Each of these has charismatic authority if they secure their power by personal gifts in swaying people's opinions. “The term `charisma' will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.” [Weber 1947 p.358] ¶60 For Weber, charismatic authority is an innovating and revolutionary force. In traditional societies it may be the only such force. Weber says that: “Conscious departures from tradition in the establishment of a new order have originally been due almost entirely to prophetic oracles or at least to pronouncements which have been sanctioned as prophetic” (Weber 1947 p.131). In modern societies Weber thought charisma is essential. This was particularly true of Germany, the modern society to which, as a nationalist, Weber was committed. Giddens, in a short, succinct booklet on Politics and Sociology in the Thought of Max Weber (1972) attempts to unravel the complexities of the whole issue. Here I just try to explain the relation of charisma to German politics. Germany, as the state that we know today, has only existed since the 1870s. It was put together by war, diplomacy and politics under the leadership of Bismark. Before the 1870s one could speak of the German nation, in terms of people

with a common language and culture, but not of the German state. A German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles on January 18th 1871, when Germany won a war it had engineered with Napoleon 3rd of France. Both Bismark and Napoleon were what Weber called charismatic leaders—specifically the type who secured absolute rule by plebiscite, or popular vote. Democracy was not one of Weber's ideals, but he came to think it necessary as a means for training charismatic leaders. According to Giddens, Weber saw the likelihood of uncontrolled bureaucratic domination as the greatest threat facing Germany after Bismark, because there was a lack of political leadership. Democracy, as a means of choosing a leader, could be the means of rising above a rule-bound bureaucracy. In the modern world democracy was almost unavoidable. So, Weber said, “there is only the choice: leadership-democracy (Führerdemokratie)or leaderless democracy”. Leaderless democracy would be “the domination of "professional politicians" without a vocation, without the inner charismatic qualities that alone make a leader” (Weber 1958 p. 532, translated and quoted Giddens 1972 p.19). The German word Führer just means leader, guide or conductor. ¶61 Weber thought that politics, by its nature, is a dirty business, but that it should be pursued in the cause of worthy cultural ideals. One of the cruelties of history is that a clause Weber was instrumental in inserting in the German constitution, proved the way to power for Adolph Hitler, a charismatic leader far nastier than any that Weber would have supported. ¶62 Integrating Durkheim and Weber In this essay I have contrasted Durkheim and Weber. I think this is sensible in an introductory essay because the two theorists start from such different premises. Some commentators have suggested that they probably would not have thought of themselves as studying the same subject. But that does not mean that our theories have to be either Weberian or Durkheimian, we can also attempt to integrate their theories. Like making theories in the first place, integration is a work of creative imagination. What emerges is something new that loses some of the old imaginations, and gains something from the imagination of the person who integrates. After the second world war a new sociology was created in America based on Talcott Parsons' integration of Durkheim, Weber and other theorists (Parsons 1937, followed by Parsons 1951). It really was a new sociology. In the process of integrating, Parsons changed the theories, lost some of their meaning, and created something new and valuable in its own right. Most of the sociology you read in text books is written in the light of this integration, and the criticisms that have been made of it. ¶63 The end of a long essay is not the place to outline the imagination of Talcott Parsons. Instead I will take a few pages from a book by Frank Pearce which argue that Weber's concept of charisma can be made more useful if it is integrated with Durkheim's understanding of society (Pearce 1989, chapter 2, especially pages 29 to 38 Durkheim and the concept of charisma and Politics and Charisma). Pearce draws out the similarities between charisma and the mana with which, according to Durkheim, society can imbue individuals. Mana is a polynesian word for an impersonal spiritual force that results in people having good fortune or magical powers. “It shows itself inany kind of power or excellence which a man possesses” (Durkheim 1912 p.194 quoting Codrington, The Melanesians). The similarity with charisma is very clear, but Durkheim's concept has a richness that Weber's lacks. One aspect of this is that mana comes from the society. It can sustain someone who has no

real personal gifts. For example, a king might be a very ordinary person if he was not king, but the role imbues him with character that he actually takes on. Equally, however, he could be a person with characteristics that particularly suite him to the social role. Pearce says that for Durkheim “charisma [mana] is a real phenomenon and a social relationSociety `deifies' a man who personifies its principal aspirations” (Pearce 1989 p.31). One of the ways in which this enriches the use of Weber's concept is that it allows one to create theories about the content that society contributes to a particular charisma. “`Charismatic' qualities are inevitably contextdependent and need to be socially sustained. The appeal of such leaders to their followers depends upon a shared background of culture—of style, symbols, myths etc” (Pearce 1989 p.32). In Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee her family was “represented as the essence, the purest example of the British family”. This, Pearce suggests, had as much or more to do with qualities projected on the Royal Family by our society, as it had to do with any intrinsic qualities in the Queen's family. Pearce links this into concepts of class struggle that he takes from marxism. The family image identifies the rulers with the ruled. The royal family are portrayed as like ordinary families and this counters the divisive influences of class conflict. “Thus charisma can take various forms and it may or may not be stage-managed, but what is important is that through it individuals should experience themselves as part of a national collectivity where differences between social ranks are believed to be a matter of degree rather than signifying irreconcilable antagonistic differences”. (Pearce 1989 p.38). ¶64 Frank Pearce's fairy tale is not pure Durkheim, pure Weber or pure Marx. It is his own. But he could not have made it without trying to understand the imagination of Durkheim, Weber and Marx. Anyone who has reached the end of this essay will have worked very hard trying to understand Durkheim and Weber. Perhaps it is time to follow Frank's example and make your own fairy tale? Or perhaps it is time to do something completely different!

Citation suggestion Referencing My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry: Roberts, Andrew 1997 Social Science History for Budding Theorists Middlesex University: London. Available at http://studymore.org.uk/ssh.htm With references in the text to "(Roberts, A. 1997 ch.6, par. -)"

Remember to print the bibliography to the book as well as the chapters that you want.

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists By Andrew Roberts

Bibliography Acton, J. (Lord) 1895 Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History. Delivered at Cambridge, June 1895, reprinted in Lectures on Modern History, originally published 1906, page number from Fontana reprint 1960. Aiken, H.D. (Editor) 1956 The Age of Ideology. The Nineteenth Century Philosophers. New American Library Aristotle/Metaphysics Metaphysics Translated by W. D. Ross Aristotle/Politics Politics Translated by Benjamin Jowett 1885, Oxford 1905. (See extracts section) Aron, R. 1967 Main Currents in Sociological Thought Penguin edition Bacon, F. 1627 Novum Organum: or, True Directions for the Interpretation of Nature Bahmueller, C.F. 1981 The National Charity Company. Jeremy Bentham's Silent Revolution Beck, Lewis White (Editor) 1963 Kant on History Bobbs-Merrill Belloc, H. 1911 The French Revolution Bentham, J. 1776 A Fragment on Government Bentham, J. 1793 Manual of Political Economy (written, but not published) Bentham, J. 1797/Outline Outline of a Work Entitled Pauper Management Improved. Reprinted in French in 1800; in English in 1812. Bentham, J. 1797/Observations Observations on the Poor Bill (circulated in handwriting) Bentham, J. 1791 Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House: containing the idea of a new principle of construction applicable to any sort of establishment, in which persons of any description are to be kept under inspection. Bentham, J. 1830 History of the War Between Jeremy Bentham and George 3rd, By One of the Belligerents. Bible 1611 The Holy Bible authorised to be read in churches by King James 1 of England in 1611. Blackstone, W. 1765/9 Commentaries on the Laws of England.

Burke, E. 1790 Reflections on the French Revolution and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. Dent/Everyman 1910 Carlyle, T. 1837/1839 The French Revolution. Two Volumes Dent 1906 Checkland S.G & E.O.A. (Editors) 1974 The Poor Law Report of 1834 Penguin Cobban, A. 1961 (2nd edition) A History of Modern France, vol. 1: 1715-1799. Penguin Cook, T.I. 1947 Two Treatises of Government by John Locke with a supplement: Patriarcha by Sir Robert Filmer Haffner Library of Classics Coole, D.H. 1988 Women in Political Theory: From Ancient Misogyny to Contemporary Feminism. Chapter 4, “Hobbes and Locke: Natural Right against Natural Authority”. Diana Coole discusses the same three theorists (Hobbes, Filmer and Locke) as I do, but with special reference to the implications their theories have for the power relations between men and women. Comte, A. 1853 The Philosophie Positive of Auguste Comte A condensed version of Cours de Philosophie Positive, freely translated into English by Harriet Martineau. Extracts Aiken 1956 pp 124-137. Davis, D.B. 1975 The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. 1770-1823 Cornell University Press. Durkheim 1892 Quid Secundatus Politicae Scientiae Instituendae Contulerit Durkheim's latin thesis on Montesquieu. English version in Durkheim 1960. Durkheim, E. 1893 (English 1933) The Division of Labour in Society Durkheim, E. 1895 (English 1938) The Rules of Sociological Method Durkheim, E. 1897 (English 1952) Suicide. A Study in Sociology Durkheim, E. 1912 (English 1915) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (See extracts section) Durkheim, E. 1918 Le `Contrat Social' de Rousseau, published. Part of lecture course given 1901-1902. English version in Durkheim 1960 Durkheim, E. 1937 Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. Translation of lectures not published in Durkheim's lifetime. Durkheim E. 1960 Montesquieu and Rousseau. Forerunners of Sociology Containing translations of Durkheim 1892 on Montesquieu and Durkheim 1918 on Rousseau's Social Contract.

The Encyclopédie (of Diderot and D'Alembert). Selected articles (in French). Edited by J. Lough 1954 (second edition 1969) The Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert. Cambridge University Press. Encyclopedia Britannica Articles by James Mill from the supplement 1816-1823 reprinted in Mill, James 1825/1967 Engels F. 1876/1878 Anti-Dühring, quoted Draper, H. 1970 The Death of the State in Marx and Engels in Socialist Register 1970 p.303 Engels F. 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific Evelyn, John 1818 The Diary of John Evelyn, edited (1818) by William Bray. Dent 1907 Filmer, R. 1680 Patriarcha or The Natural Power of Kings (See extracts section). It is reproduced in Cook, T.I. 1947 Locke Two Treatises of Government with Filmer's Patriarcha and Laslett, P. 1949 Filmer's Patriarcha and Other Political Works. There are many quotations from this in Locke's first treatise. Locke 1689 treatise 1 chapter 2 paragraph 8 is Locke's summary of Filmer. Locke refers to Filmer as "A" or "our author". When he puts "O" beside a reference it is to Filmer's Observations on Hobbs, Milton etc (see extracts section), otherwise the reference is to Patriarcha. Fletcher, R. 1971 The Making of Sociology. A Study of Sociological Theory. Volume 2 Developments Ford, J. 1975 Paradigms and Fairy Tales. An Introduction to the Science of Meanings. Fraser, D. 1984 [2nd edition] The Evolution of the British Welfare State. Gerth, H.H. and Mills, C.Wright (Editors) 1948 From Max Weber Giddens, A, 1971 Capitalism and Modern Social Theory. An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber Giddens, A. 1972, Politics and Sociology in the Thought of Max Weber. Gilmour, I. 1983 Britain Can Work Chapters 2: Political Economy, 3: The Socialist Antithesis, 4: The Synthesis and the Tory Tradition. Goffman E. 1961 “On the Characteristics of Total Institutions” in Asylums. Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates Gouges, O. 1791 Les Droits de la Femme English translation in Levy, D. 1979 pp 8796. Includes Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (See extracts section) Halevy, E. 1913 England in 1815

Halevy, E. 1927 The Triumph of Reform (1830-1841). Page number refers to the 1961 Benn edition. Hansard: The record of Parliamentary Debates. Hayek, F. 1952 The Counter Revolution of Science Hegel, F./History. The Philosophy of History. Based on lectures given first in 18221823. He discuses the French Revolution in part 4, section 2, chapter 3: The Eclairissement and Revolution. Hillerbrand, H.J. (Editor) 1968 The Protestant Reformation. Harper & Row Hobbes, T. 1651 Leviathan, or The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil. Hobhouse, L.T. 1913 Development and Purpose. Hooker, R. 1593-1648 (8 Volumes) Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Quoted Locke, J. 1689. Extracts in Hillerbrand 1968 Hufton, O. 1971 “Women in Revolution, 1789-1796” Past and Present no.53, November 1971. Reprinted as Chapter 6 in Johnson, D. 1976 (pp 148-166) Hume, D. 1739/1740 A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Book 1 Of the Understanding; Book 2 Of the Passions; Book 3 Of Morals. Hunt, L. 1992 The Family Romance of the French Revolution Inglis, B. 1972 Poverty and the Industrial Revolution. Panther James, C.L.R. 1938/1980 The Black Jacobins. Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Johnson, Douglas (Editor) 1976 French Society and the Revolution. Essays published in "Past and Present" 1966-1976. Kant, I. 1784 What is Enlightenment? First published in Berlinische Monatsschrift 4, 12.12.1784. In Beck 1963 pp 3-10, and Reiss 1970 pp 54-60. Kelly, Linda 1987 Women of the French Revolution. Hamish Hamilton. Kline, M. 1953 Mathematics in Western Culture. Page numbers from Pelican 1972 edition. Knies, Karl 1853 Die Politische Oekonomie vom Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode [Political Economy from the Historical Point of View]

Krüger, D. 1987 Max Weber and the Younger Generation in the Verein für Sozialpolitik in Mommsen 1987 pp 71-87. Laslett, P. 1963 Locke, J. 1689 Two treatises of government. A critical edition with an introduction and apparatus criticus by Peter Laslett. Levy D., Applewhite H.B., Johnson M.D. (Editors) 1979 Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795. Selected documents translated with notes and commentary. University of Illinois Press Locke, J. 1689 Two Treatises of Government. “In the former, the false principles and foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers are detected and overthrown. The latter is an essay concerning the true original, extent and end of civil government.” (See extracts section) Locke, J. 1690 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Logan, R.W. 1963 Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Oxford University Press. Lowes Dickinson, G. 1927 (2nd edition) Revolution and Reaction in Modern France George Allen and Unwin Lukes, S. 1973, Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work. A Historical and Critical Study. Macaulay, T. B. 1829 Review of Mill's Essay on Government. Edinburgh Review, vol.49, 1829. Page numbers as reprinted in appendix to Mill, J.S. 1976. Macpherson, C.B. 1968 Introduction to the Penguin edition of Hobbes' Leviathan. Malthus, T. 1798 An Essay On the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, With Remarks on the Speculations of Mr Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. Malthus, T. 1803 Second (much enlarged and altered) edition of Essay on the Principle of Population Marcus Aurelius, translated by A.S.L Farquharson. Dent 1961. Meditations. Marcuse, H. 1955 (2nd edition) Reason and Revolution. Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. Marshall, A. 1890 Principles of Economics. An Introductory Volume. Page 634 in Macmillan (1966) reset reprint of 8th (1920) edition. This appendix was part of the Introduction in the 1890 edition. Marx and Engels 1848 The Communist Manifesto McCulloch, J.R. 1828 “On the poor laws” Edinburgh Review May 1828

Mead, G.H. 1934 Mind, Self and Society, From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist. Edited with an introduction by Charles W. Morris. Mill, James 1820 Essay on Government Page numbers as in Mill, James 1825/1967 Mill, James 1821-1822 Elements of Political Economy. Mill, James 1825/1967 Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, the Liberty of the Press, Prisons and Prison Discipline, Colonies, the Law of Nations, and Education. Reprinted by permission from the Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Reprints of Economic Classics, Augustus M. Kelley, New York 1967 Mill, James 1829 Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind. Mill, J.S. 1843 (8th edition 1872) A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive Being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation References by book, chapter, section. Mill, J.S. 1844 Review of Michelet's History of France. Edinburgh Review volumes 79, 1844. Reprinted in Mill, J.S. 1976 pp 90-93 Mill, J.S. 1845 "The Claims of Labour" (a review) in the Edinburgh Review. Vol. 81. April 1845. Reprinted in Mill, J.S. 1976 pp 273-302 Mill, J.S. 1848 Principles of Political Economy - With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. Mill, J.S. 1865 Auguste Comte and Positivism. Page numbers from Mill, J.S. 1969. There are also selections from the 3rd edition (1882) reprinted in Mill, J.S. 1984 pp 429-447 Mill, J.S. 1874 Autobiography Page numbers from 1969 Riverside Edition, edited by Jack Stillinger. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Mill, J.S. 1969 Collected Works volume 10 Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society Mill, J.S. 1976 On Politics and Society (Essays selected and edited by G.L. Williams) Fontana Mill, J.S. 1984 Utilitarianism, on Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government. Everyman/Dent Mommsen, W. and Osterhammel, J. (Editors) 1987 Max Weber and his Contempories. Morton, A.L. (Editor) 1962 The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen Newton, I. 1686/1729 Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the Worlds. Translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729. The translations revised, and supplied with an historical and explanatory

appendix, by Florian Cajori. University of California Press. 1934. Volume One The Motion of Bodies Nietzsche, F.W. 1883 Thus Spake Zarathustra. Part One Nisbet, R. (Editor) 1965 Emile Durkheim: With Selected Essays Owen, R. 1814/4th Essay The Principles of the Former Essays applied to Government Addressed to the Prince Regent. (in Owen 1927 pp 63-90) Owen, R. 12.3.1817 Report to the Committee for the Relief of the Manufacturing Poor. (Owen 1927 pp 156-169) (“The first statement of Owen's famous Plan”. Morton 1962 p.34) Owen, R. 1820 Report to the County of Lanark (Owen 1927 pp 245-298) Owen, R. (1927 Edition) A New View of Society (and Other Writings) Everyman/Dent 1927. Parsons, T. 1937 The Structure of Social Action Parsons, T. 1951 The Social System Pearce, F. 1989 The Radical Durkheim Pearson, R. and Williams, G. 1984 Political Thought and Public Policy in the Nineteenth Century. Popper, K.R. 1945 The Open Society and its Enemies Popper, K.R. 1963 Conjectures and Refutations. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge Poynter, J.R. 1969 Society and Pauperism Proctor, C.E. 1990 Women, Equality and the French Revolution. Greenwood Press: London Rendall, J. 1985 The Origins of Modern Feminism. Women in Britain, France and the United States. 1780-1860 Macmillan Reiss, H. (Editor) 1970 Kant's Political Writings Ricardo, David 1817 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Page number from Everyman edition. Rousseau/Cole 1913/1986 Everyman collection The Social Contract and Discourses. Page numbers from the 1986 setting. Rousseau, J.J. 1750 A Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences pp 2-29 of Rousseau/Cole1913/1986

Rousseau, J.J. 1755(I) A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality: pp 32-126 of Rousseau/Cole 1913/1986 Rousseau, J.J. 1755(PE) Political Economy: pp 128-168 of Rousseau/Cole 1913/1986 Rousseau, J.J. 1759 The General Society of the Human Race Chapter two of the original draft of The Social Contract (the Geneva Manuscript). pp 169-177 of Rousseau/Cole1913/1986 Rousseau, J. 1762(SC) The Social Contract: pp 180-308 of Rousseau/Cole 1913/1986 (See extracts section) Rousseau, J.J. 1762(E) Emile Rude, G. 1959 The Crowd in the French Revolution Oxford University Press Rude, G. 1988 The French Revolution Weidenfeld and Nicholson Runes, D.D. 1960 Dictionary of Philosophy Peter Owen Russell, B. 1961 (2nd edition) History of Western Philosophy Scruton, R. 1980 The Meaning of Conservatism Chapter 2 "Authority and Allegiance" Smith, A. 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith, A. 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Stoddard, T. Lothrop 1914 The French Revolution in San Domingo Negro Universities Press, Westport, Connecticut 1970 Stone, G.P. and Faberman, H. 1967 “On the edge of Rapprochement: was Durkheim moving towards the Perspective of Symbolic Interaction?” Sociological Quarterly, 8. Sumerscale, J. (Editor) 1965 The Penguin Encyclopedia Taylor, A.J. 1972 Laissez-faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth Century Britain. Thompson, W. 1824 An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness Thompson, W. 1825 Appeal of One-half of the Human Race, Women, Against The Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery. Tomalin, C. 1974 The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Penguin 1977 Tuck, R. 1989 Hobbes Oxford Past Masters

Tyson, G.F. 1973 (Editor) Toussaint L'Ouverture. (Great Lives Observed) PrenticeHall. Spectrum. Watkin, B. 1975 Documents on Health and Social Services 1834 To the Present Day. Watkins, J.W.N. 1957 "Historical Explanation and the Social Sciences" British Journal of Philosophy of Science 1957 Weber, M. 1919/Politics Politics as a Vocation in Gerth & Mills (Editors) 1948 pp 77-128 Weber, M. 1930 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, being a translation by Talcott Parsons of an article published by Weber in 1904/1905 Weber, M. 1947 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. A translation by Talcott Parsons of volume 1 part one of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Weber, M. 1958 Gesammelte politische Schriften quoted Giddens 1972 with a note that it is the standard collected edition of Weber's political writings Weber, M. 1962 Basic Concepts in Sociology. This is Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Volume 1 part one, chapter 1. Translated and introduced by H.P. Secher, who tries to use more everyday language than Parsons used in Weber 1947 Weber, M. 1968 Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Being an English edition of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich incorporating earlier translations of parts. Wollstonecraft, M. 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Chapter 1, The Rights and Involved Duties of Man Considered.