Table Of ContentTh e Social
Community & Conflict in Wostem Thought
THE CORNER ROOK
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The
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Philosophers
G)iianunity and Conflict
inWdtem Thought
T h e
Social
Philosophers
Community and Conflict
in Western Thought
ROBERT NISBET
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1834
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Nisbet, Robert A.
The social philosophers: community and conflict in Western
thought.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Political science—History. 2. Sociology-
History. I. Title.
JA81.N.57 30T.01 72-83132
ISBN 0-690-74406-4 ISBN 0-690-74405,-6 (pbk)
To Caroline
Copyright © 1973 by
Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utiliza
tion of this work in any form or by any electronic, me
chanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, and
in any information storage and retrieval system is for
bidden without the written permission of the pub
lisher. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitz-
henry 8c Whiteside, Ltd., Toronto.
Text design by Angela Foote. “The Ball Puzzle” on the
cover and at the chapter openings is by sculptor Charles
O. Perry of Rome. The cover and chapter openings
were designed by 20/20 Inc., photography by Jacques
Hutzler.
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
A few words on the general nature of this book will perhaps be of use
to both students and general readers. I regard the book as falling in the
area bounded by what is commonly called intellectual history on the one
hand and social history on the other. The title properly suggests that the
larger part of the book is concerned with the philosophers and the sys
tems of ideas that form the mainstream of Western social philosophy
and provide indispensable background to any full understanding of the
contemporary social sciences. No single trend in recent years has been
more vivid in the social sciences than the reawakening of interest in the
sources and channels of the ideas, perspectives, and values that lie
beneath the varied theories and methodologies of the social sciences.
But as I look over what I have written, the book seems to me to be
almost equally a social history of western Europe since the time of the
Greeks. It has never been possible for me to think of ideas except in their
relation to institutions, processes, and events. I would have found it very
difficult, if not impossible, to have presented the history of the fundamen
tal ideas of Western social thought apart from the nature and crises of
V
Vi • PREFACE
the fundamental institutions in Western social history. Hence the atten
tion I have given in each chapter to the sociological elements of the type
of institution—or as I choose to call it, community—that is under con
sideration. Apart from the social history of militarism, politics, religion,
revolution, ecology, and pluralism, however abbreviated such history
must be for purposes of a single volume, I could not have made the ideas
discussed seem other than disembodied. Hence, too, the considerable
amount of attention, often necessarily at the expense of detailed treat
ment of certain philosophers and their ideas, to key events and processes,
to conflicts and crises in the social history of the West, reaching all the
way from the fragmentation of kinship society in ancient Greece and
Rome through the rise of Christianity, the first ecological communes, the
national state with its fateful centralization of power, the rise of modern
revolution and war, down to the great military-revolutionary states of
twentieth-century Russia and China.
That this book is selective in its treatment goes without saying—or
apology. How could it be otherwise? If there are ideas and events the
reader expects to find and doesn’t, I can only offer him in counterpoise
those in the book which he perhaps had not expected to find.
Although the structure of the book, its division by themes or topics
instead of conventional periods of Western history, is discussed at some
length in the Introduction, let me say herej by way of prefatory emphasis,
that I have long distrusted the conventional narrative method as the
means of trying to bring history, either intellectual or social, alive. The
truth is, history—in the objective sense of all that has happened in the
past—falls into no pattern or structure in and of itself. To suppose that
the narrative, unilinear, storylike, first-this-and-then-and-then pattern of
historical writing so commonly found is history is to suppose nonsense.
I do not suggest that there is any method or structure we can provide
that will be a faithful representation of subject. Modern historians are
only just beginning to be aware of the profound issues regarding the
relation between investigator and subject matter that physicists have
been aware of ever since the seminal works of Bohr and Heisenberg.
I mention this in passing only to reassure those readers who may think at
first sight that my topical approach to Western history in this book is a
wanton violation of what used to be called the “seamless tveb of history.’’
If the flavor of the classroom is occasionally to be found in the
book—the pedagogue’s inevitable references backward and forward to
subject matter—I apologize to those it annoys. From experience I know
there are others for whom it will be helpful in trying to keep on course
in waters that are notoriously difficult of passage. Suffice it to say the
book took shape in, and is bound to have retained the imprint of,
classes taught for many years at first Berkeley, then Riverside, in the
University of California. I acknowledge with pleasure the generous and
PREFACE • Vll
stimulating atmosphere of that great university. Parts of the chapters on
the revolutionary and plural communities were used in my William Allan
Neilson Lectures at Smith College in the fall of 1971. To President
Thomas Mendenhall and his colleagues I offer sincere thanks for the
privilege of membership in their distinguished academic community.
I would like also to express thanks to several editors of Thomas Y.
Crowell Company for their help: to Thomas Simpson for suggesting the
book in the first place, to James F. Bergin and Herman Makler for
valued suggestions and counsel, and to Virginia N. Brinkley for careful
editing of the final manuscript that became at times near-collaboration.
Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife. There is no other way of
suggesting the measure of her participation in it.
R.N.
Contents
Introduction /
The Military Community //
War and Western Values //
The Elements of the Military Community 16
War and the Fall of Kinship 23
War and the Greek Polis: Cleisthenes 28
The Augustan Revolution: 27 b.c. 33
The Rise of Western Feudalism 43
Western Warfare: Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft 33
Machiavelli and the Art of War 36
IX
X ■ CONTENTS
Grotius and the Limitation of War 65
The French Revolution and Total War:
Clausewitz 68
War and Communism: From Marx to
Mao Tse-tung y8
Cleisthenes and Mao 8g
The Political Community
9 3
Conflict and Politics gj
The Elements of the Political Community gg
The Crisis of the Polis 101
Plato and the Emergence of the Political
Community iog
The Rise of the Political Intellectual ny
The Romanization of the Modern West:
Machiavelli and Bodin 123
Hobbes and Leviathan 133
Rousseau and the General Will 133
The Religious Community
161
Religion and Society 161
The Elements of the Religious Community 163
Christianity, War, and Politics i6y
The Rise of Universal Religion ij2
Christianity and Conflict 1J4
Saint Augustine and the City of God 181
The Decline of Religious Community:
Erasmus and Montaigne igg
The Revolt against Religious Community:
Luther and Calvin 203
The Rediscovery of Religious Community 221
L.
