April 24, 2020
I like to quote Rousseau’s origin myth for humanity:
THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor … (Discourse on the origin of inequality p. 23)
And again:
THE strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty (The social contract I.3)
For Durkheim ([1918] 1966), and then Lévi-Strauss ([1960] 1976), these statements introduce the fundamental problematics of sociology and anthropology: there is the making of an arbitrary mark among a population, and then obedience, and then duty. I tend to agree with this, but not with the exact phrasing, or its development into the more particular problematics of the social “contract” apparently entered into by adults meeting in some neutral place who come to an agreement that this would be the grounds of their relationships. And then, it is imagined, they arrange for this contract to be enforced (for example by hiring teachers to drill students into the way a language should be spoken or written).