Concept
Social order
Overview
The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order is contrasted to social chaos or disorder and refers to a stable state of society in which the existing social structure is accepted and maintained by its members. The problem of order or Hobbesian problem, which is central to much of sociology, political science and political philosophy, is the question of how and why it is that social orders exist at all.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Besides the classic treatises of Adam Smith, J. S. Mill, and Karl Marx, which are important for the relation of the economic to the whole social order during the past century, the following recent works in the general field give especial prominence to the ethical problems involved: Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, 1898; Hadley, _Economics_, 1896; Clark, _Essentials of Economic Theory as Applied to Modern…
John Dewey, Ethics
Opens on Social order; names Social order.
This may be so, but what sort of a social order is it which cannot be maintained without such shameful tyranny? Either the end sanctifies the means, or the inference of the badness of the end from the badness of the means is justified.
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 with a Preface written in 1892
States what Social order is; names Social order.
Social Order was regarded by the ancients as stationary: and its theory under this provisional aspect was admirably sketched out by the great Aristotle. In this respect the case of Sociology resembles that of Biology. In Biology statical conceptions were attained without the least knowledge of dynamical laws.
Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life
Opens on Social order; names Social order.
Philosophers who discussed Social order
Related ideas
- Ethnicity
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Jürgen Habermas
- Karl Marx
- Authority
- Sociology
- Political philosophy
- Political science
- Religion
- Social class
- Sexual orientation
- Institution
- Thomas Hobbes
- Social theory
- Society
- Gender
- Émile Durkheim
- Social contract
- Relations of production
- Upper class
- Talcott Parsons
- Social structure
- Education
- Physical attractiveness
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Liberalism.