Critique of Society. Society is seen both as a boon
and as a burden. It supplies that “additional force,
ability and security without which individual life could
not persist” (Hume, Treatise, Book III, Part II, Sec.
II). However, society requires organization by law
which safeguards the liberty of the individual by
curbing his license. Some persons are strong and some
are weak; there is both biological and sociological
inequality. Society can therefore be oppressive, and
the legislator must take steps to protect the weak and
safeguard equality of opportunity for all individuals.
The critique of society in the eighteenth century
takes up prophetic and Stoic themes. In this sense it
is a critique of the human situation in general, a part
of the eternally recurring revolt against civilization and
its discontents. A judicious investigation of late eight-
eenth-century popular English novels of the period has
led Lois Whitney to this conclusion:
Common to them all... is the conviction that the time
... is out of joint; that what is wrong with it is due to
an abnormal complexity and sophistication in the life of
civilized man, to the pathological multiplicity and emula-
tiveness of his desires and the oppressive over-abundance
of his belongings, and the factitiousness and want of inner
spontaneity of his emotions; that “art”, the work of man
has corrupted “nature”...
(Primitivism and the Idea of
Progress, London [1934], p. XIV).
This lament of man's lost innocence (the Fall,
Prometheus, Pandora's Box) spills over into the
anxieties of the romantics, of Marx, Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Kafka, and so on. Critique of society is
inextricably mixed with that of the human situation.
By contrast, the thinkers in the mainstream of the
Enlightenment restrict themselves (for the reasons set
out in the section above on Happiness) to the critique
of society to the extent that it is sociologically deter-
mined. “No society,” says Adam Smith, “can surely
be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part
of the members are poor and miserable” (Smith, Book
I, Ch. VIII). The division of labor not only produces
prosperity but is also the source of inequality, far
beyond the biological inequality of talents. It “destroys
intellectual, social and martial virtues unless govern-
ment takes pains to prevent it” (Book V, Ch. I, Part
III, Article II). Traditionally, government has been on
the side “of the rich against the poor” in the defense
of property. It is therefore necessary to counteract the
dangers inherent in the commercial and industrial state
by means of public education and other appropriate
agenda of the state designed to redress the social
imbalance which competition and the division of labor
have created. This analysis of the Wealth of Nations
finds its parallels in the writings of D'Alembert,
Rousseau, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and Dugald
Stewart who all emphasize both the good and deleteri-
ous effects of commercial and industrial society, and,
in particular, what has come to be called the social
and economic alienation of man, i.e., the freezing of
the individual in a rigid system of role allocation.
According to John Millar, for example,
... competitions and rivalships, which contract the heart
and set mankind at variance..., [arouse] envy, resentment
and other malignant passions... the pursuit of riches
becomes a scramble, in which the hand of every man is
against every other.... The class of mechanics and
labourers, by far the most numerous in a commercial nation
... become like machines... are... debarred from ex-
tensive information... in danger of losing their importance,
of becoming the dupes of their superiors and of being
degraded...
(An Historical View of the English Government
[1787, London, 1803 ed.], IV, 248, 249, 146, 156).
Specific criticisms of the capitalist order are also
advanced by Jean Meslier, Morelly, G. B. de Mably,
S. N. H. Linguet, William Godwin, Thomas Paine, and
others.
