The Social Philosophers by Robert Nisbet is a tour de force through human history and philosophy. He grounds the unifying theme of philosophy in society — or more precisely in community. Nisbet’s vast learning and his training as a sociologist flow from every page. Many readers will know Nisbet’s most popular book, The Quest for Community, as an indictment of an over-encroaching US government in the late twentieth century crowding out private associations and sources of community and, even worse, retarding the creation and development of new civil associations.
Nisbet also wrote Twilight of Authority, in which he reveals his at times radical, perhaps anarchic, desire for the absence of bureaucratic and political centralization in society. In The Social Philosophers, though, Nisbet takes a more neutral approach to analyzing types of community in history. While he demarcates six types of community for the sake of clarity, many of the communities bear striking similarities to others and often they exist simultaneously in societies as they vie for dominance.
The three primary forms of community are the Military, the Political, and the Religious. More recent organizing forms of community are the Revolutionary, the Ecological, and the Plural communities. Each community emerges through conflict with other forms of community. All of them represent departures from what we might call the “original” human community of kinship.
The military community powerfully competes with the community built around kinship. In a war band or an army, position and rank must often be achieved. There are also more forms of contract and competition in a military setting than in a family setting. The hierarchy is not inherently based on blood or age. Furthermore, the camaraderie of brothers at arms fosters friendships beyond the bonds of blood. The organization of the military units along communal lines also shapes that community in profound ways. But perhaps most importantly for Nisbet, the military community competes with and undercuts pure kinship ties.
Prior to the reforms of Cleisthenes (570–508 BC) and the Golden Age of Athens (480–404 BC) that we know through Plato and the Greek poets, Athenian society looked remarkably different. It was composed of large extended families “tribes, phatries, and gentes” in addition to households. Property was not owned by individuals but by families. Nor were men citizens in their own right, but only as representatives of their kinship ties. Law, judgment, and justice were also not matters of individuals and the state, but rather private family matters. The transgression of one stained the whole and extended families were responsible for policing and punishing their own.
Nisbet argues that the pressures of nearly continuous war in the sixth century BC had left Athens in a state of crisis. While Solon (630–560 BC) had instituted some reforms to bring order, it was Cleisthenes who came a little later and replaced the kinship structures and relationships with military ones. He declared the four major tribes in Athens defunct while creating ten new “tribes” not based on kinship. These new tribes were named after military heroes.
Kinship was replaced by contract, filial affection with military camaraderie. Other institutions like citizenship, property, law, and governance followed. Nisbet argues this radical change of social structure drew the individual out of the family and was responsible for the incredible creativity seen in fifth century Athens in philosophy, literature, and art.
In fact, much of the art, philosophy, and poetry was generated through wrestling with the implications of how society changed. What were one’s duties to family versus to the state? Enter Plato. Were the claims of justice primarily met by the family or were they fundamentally about the individual? Enter Greek tragedies. Wrestling with deep questions of community created the first social philosophers of Athens.
Nisbet tells a similar story about the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. Pressures from war were the crucible that forged Roman society into a military community. And the process was remarkably similar to what had occurred in Athens. In Rome, the idea of the “patria potestas” dominated during the Republic. Fathers were priest and king of the family. Families were their own religious and political communities. Every Roman household had its own gods, the “Lares and Penates.” Marriage was as much about adoption and religious conversion of the wife as it was about matrimonial union. Even births had to be formally accepted into the political family (and tragically sometimes weren’t).
This deeply formative kinship community, however, found itself increasingly supplanted by the military community. Augustus, when ushering in the Empire, used the legions. Not so much to force external obedience (though they were used for that), but as a vehicle for reshaping culture and politics. Young men developed loyalties to their officers (and to Caesar). They attained status through competition and performance, not by waiting to become the eldest male in their family.
It was in the setting of the Roman Imperium that generations of jurists developed the legal system that came to define western civilization and its laws — even to this day. The legal/contractual relations of soldiers shifted views of law, property, and politics. The change and disruption brought about by the military community was profound.
Feudalism also developed as a kind of militaristic community. It was concerns about military order and community that captivated the attention of Machiavelli(1469–1527 AD). He was fascinated by the role of war and war-making in the state. Similarly, Grotius (1583–1645 AD) wrote his monumental works about international law and rights through the prism of just and unjust warfare. In fact, warfare seems remarkably prevalent in western Europe over the past thousand years or so — perhaps not so coincidentally, Nisbet observes.
Yet the military community is just one among many. The rise of the political community emerges, phoenix-like, from the ashes of kinship communities burned down by the stresses of war. Political community grows up right alongside the military community. But it has different goals and different characteristics.
Nisbet emphasizes the ideas of sovereignty, territory, citizenship, positive rights, and laws within political communities. Plato, Machiavelli, Bodin, and especially Hobbes and Rousseau saw their projects as defining and justifying the ideal political state in terms that transcend kinship and military force. Nisbet’s interpretation of these philosophers is quite remarkable and worth reading carefully even if you don’t read anything else in the book.
The third major form of community contrasts with the first two. Christianity and the religious community have profoundly shaped western culture. Nisbet focuses on how subversive universal religions like Christianity are. Jesus demands complete obedience — even to the sacrificing of relationship with father, mother, sister, or brother. One’s relationship with Christ becomes the primary identity and the community of faith takes precedence over communities of kinship, military, and political. This is part of why defenders and advocates of these other forms of community tend to be deeply critical, or at least suspicious, of Christianity.
Nisbet names Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) as the most profound and influential advocate of the religious community or, in Augustine’s words, of the City of God. Augustine presents a radically different view of history and of the entire human race than any who had come before. No longer were specific nations or tribes or families important. No more were gods local and cultural. Humanity was the product of God’s hand and the clay He was intentionally shaping through history.
Of course, you have later religious thinkers presenting related visions of religious communities: Luther, Calvin, but also Erasmus, Montaigne, and even Newman, Kierkegaard, and Weber. In fact, modern sociology was largely built on the study of religion in human society and history. Even non-Christians recognize the power and centrality of religion to community.
The religious community relies upon the ideas of sacred and secular, of dogma, rites, and the cult. Rituals bind people to one another and separate them from those who do not participate in the rites. Dogma defines belief and unbelief and extends the authority of religion into all aspects of one’s personal life and decisions.
Interestingly, Nisbet sees Calvin and Luther as revolting against the religious community. This may seem odd, but Nisbet’s point is that both Calvin and Luther rejected many of the constituent elements of religious community — rites, dogma, and beliefs — while simultaneously elevating (or atomizing) the individual believer before God. The priesthood of all believers fundamentally undercut much of the structure of the Roman Catholic Church — and the various communities formed around it (monasteries, dioceses, religious orders, etc.).
In the second half the book, Nisbet discusses more modern forms of community, starting with the Revolutionary community. Though derivative, in a sense, of all three major types of community (Military, Political, and Religious), the revolutionary community has demonstrated incredible influence. From the French Revolution to the major communist revolutions of the twentieth century to the cultural Marxism and critical race theory of the twenty-first century, the revolutionary community is a force to be reckoned with.
Nisbet does an excellent job portraying just how radical the French Revolution (1789–1799 AD) was. The radical leaders of that revolution wanted to burn down everything that came before: holidays, the seven day week, the Catholic church, property structures, local governing bodies, etc. and centralize all of life in a “rational” state. In many important ways, the revolutionary community is the religious community without God and the political community with religious zeal — a potent mix!
It is also an unstable mix.
Because the revolutionary community has no metaphysical grounding — either in immutable nature or in an immutable Creator — it has no end. The Revolution is perpetual. That is why revolutions tend to eat their own. Robespierre and Danton went to the guillotine themselves. Trotsky was assassinated by Stalin.
Part of the perpetual revolution is practical — it must be perpetual in order for the rulers to maintain control. The deeper reason, though, is that modern revolutionaries are not primarily seeking new legal and political structures. They are seeking to remake people. Changing behavior is not enough; people must change their beliefs. This is why, for example, demands for toleration quickly turn into demands for affirmation. It is not enough to tolerate those people and beliefs you disagree with. You must cease to disapprove of them.
Rousseau bears a great deal of blame for this inward turn of the revolutionary. He was the philosopher who wrapped political community (and revolution) in the garb of moral righteousness. He defined virtue as the right kind of (political) willingness and the right kind of social beliefs. This is why he said that men must be “forced to be free.” Along with this moral garb came a relentless drive for “purity” in the revolutionary community. After all, what is a purge but a quest for purity?
One of the most tragic elements of the revolutionary community is its ability to sanctify evil. Just as religion creates methods and rites for sanctifying work, sex, and discipline, the revolutionary mindset “sanctifies” violence, terror, and destruction. Not only are heinous acts approved of, they are lauded by revolutionaries. These are not “necessary evils” but rather a kind of holy work in service of right and truth. This is why the most brutal regimes in history have been revolutionary communities — and why those with a revolutionary bent hardly bat an eye when told about the horrors and deaths of millions of people at the hands of fascist and communists.
The ecological community probably has the least practical relevance today. Nisbet includes it because its aspirations seem so humane and modest. This community represents a desire to return to nature, simplicity, and fulfillment. Its proponents advocated (and sometimes lived) a more secluded communal life of renewal. Saint Benedict and the monastic order he formed is one of the best examples. But Nisbet also appears sympathetic to the left anarchists of the 18th and 19th centuries who wanted to abolish the state and capitalism.
The final community, the plural community, seems the most attractive to classical liberals – though also to many conservatives. It shares the ecological community’s deep suspicion and dislike of centralized political power and sovereignty. It advocates voluntary associations and intermediate institutions both to preserve tradition and to protect individual liberty. Yet the kind of liberty pluralists concern themselves with is very different from how advocates of the political community, like Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau conceived of liberty.
These philosophers have a radical unmoored view of individual freedom. They don’t like the idea that the church can have moral authority to prescribe or constrain people’s behavior. Nor do they like that families and local communities can shun or censor certain choices. Real freedom, for these philosophers, involves the state cutting down and demolishing all the various pockets of censure, disapproval, or moral suasion – leaving the individual “free.” Many libertarians find themselves wandering down this path.
The pluralist community offers something else. Pluralists argue that communities ought to be relatively free from coercion. They also argue that most of these communities should be voluntary forms of association. The voluntary part separates a modern classical liberal pluralist from, say, a reactionary medieval pluralist who saw society as composed of many unchosen communities which were hard to leave.
Burke championed the pluralist society for conserving tradition and institutions that protected and formed individuals. Tocqueville, on the other hand, championed pluralism and the multitude of voluntary associations for being a bulwark against the encroaching tyranny of centralized political government. Though having different ideals in mind, conservative pluralists and classical liberal pluralists share a great deal in common. In fact, their shared view of community forms the core of the fusionist project of Frank Meyer and others in the mid twentieth century.
The fraying of the Fusionist project occurred, in part, because increasing numbers of libertarians (Rothbard, Rand, etc.) sought a political or revolutionary form of community and freedom, even as more conservatives drifted towards Religious, Political, or even Militaristic visions of society. The application to Catholic Integralists and Christian Nationalists in our time should be obvious.
Pluralism is not without its tensions. Capitalism, mobility of labor, creative destruction, and innovation have all eroded many forms of traditional community: extended and immediate family structures, neighborhood cohesion, and a variety of other associations. It’s hard to say whether state policies — particularly the welfare state — or capitalist market forces have had the most corrosive effect on social capital and association.
Consider the changes in farming. Modern industrial large-scale farms are far more productive than smaller family-oriented farms — to the massive benefit of consumers. Trying to turn back the clock through regulatory restrictions on large-scale farming will reverse that benefit. And it will likely fail to recreate the family farm in its cultural and social components. Still, we can acknowledge that the technological and economic changes in farming have changed its communities, and not necessarily for the better.
The same can be said for modern manufacturing, the service industry, big box stores versus mom & pop shops, and fast food versus local varied restaurants. Huge material benefits have come about in these sectors of the economy. But it would be foolish to pretend that they haven’t frayed the social fabric in many ways. So what is a free market, conservative, classical liberal pluralist (all three of us) to do?
Well, we can advocate against Leviathan and for local associations and mediating institutions. We can encourage innovation, competition, and profit-seeking while also passing moral judgment on those who sacrifice family, religion, and community in pursuing them. We can continue to educate people that, in a world of scarcity, everyone must make tradeoffs. There may not be a single specific life plan that everyone ought to follow, but there are many life plans that we should warn people away from. That’s part of what makes us human.
Those who want to advance the pluralist vision of community should also practice participating in it.
This means being active in a variety of cultural institutions: family, church, school, business, local government, philanthropy, and others. Participation becomes imperative when one recognizes that simply ordering one’s own life, and one’s immediate family, will not preserve community.
Self-governance extends beyond one’s household. It’s only with the rise of the powerful centralized state and its efforts to cut out all mediating institutions that people have come to think of self-governance as being only about governing one’s own life well.
That might work under some forms of Political community, but it is insufficient to sustain the Pluralist community.