Cultural themes in European philosophy, law and economics

Abstract

I begin with the assumptions that one of the main problems of philosophy is to give an account of order and that paradigms of order are derived by metaphorical extension of patterns of social organisation. ’ Social scientists have identified three recurring patterns of social organisation in Europe, depending upon whether the priest, the warrior, or the agriculturalists are predominant.2 When the priestly function becomes predominant, the world is thought to be full of rules and rituals that must be enforced by a central authority to maintain order. When the warrior function becomes predominant, the world is thought to be full of conflict and strife-force and resistance. When the agricultural function becomes predominant, the world is thought to be full of interdependent living organisms that grow, develop and reproduce, and hence needed to be nurtured and given attentive care. Anyone who did not fit into one of these three functions was not a recognised member of any of the early European cultures. According to anthropologists, revitalisation movements arise among individuals who have the least ability to modify their own lives within a given social context.3 Such movements can engender messianic religions -religions of the excluded and oppressed which arise when there is acute social disruption. Our task is to articulate the social relations underlying these forms of life more clearly and then to trace their development into philosophical modes of thought about law, ethics and economics.