Lecture Notes: "Order and Disorder in Society" II

Disregard the previous blog post. Below is the continuation of my notes on Ahrens' lectures.

WORK AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CORPORATE - OR ORDERED LIFE: PART I

A. Ahrens opens by stressing the primacy of work or action, both in explaining the individual and his/her character and the development of society.

1. Our character, our nature is developed/shaped through action -- study makes the scholar, business the businessman, crime the criminal.

2. Given that we have our existence in society, what explains the nature of society explains our nature -- that primitive, aristocratic, enslaved, business, or civic individuals are all what they are through their relation to the larger social order, be it primitive, aristocratic, etc.

B. Ahrens puts this in the context of sociology by suggesting that, at its most significant, it represents a reaction against modern individualism and psychology. It reaffirms the classical idea (Plato & Aristotle) that we are political animals (or social animals) whose lives cannot be made intelligible apart from that organized world. He mentions Comte in this regard.

C. But he goes on to observe that sociological literature offers little concerning the growth in life organization, especially focusing on the role of work, as Ahrens does.

D. Basically, Ahrens suggests that civilization or society is a by-product of action or work. As human beings grappled with problems of survival, they developed objects, inventions which became the basis for civilized life. They had not intended to do this -- "It was not human will that created civilization, but civilization that changed human beings and generated the will for its own preservation." (p. 157)

E. This leads Ahrens to discuss the nature of work, contrasting it with some common views.

1. "Any object cared for, created, or improved is work; hence we support a culture and civilization in and through our work life." (p. 158)

a.) When he refers to work, he is referring to something broader than work in a strictly economic sense -- something we do merely to make money. All cultural activities depend on industry (work) -- maintaining and fashioning the physical objects which enter into a person's physical, social and cultural life.

2. But prevailing conceptions of work are NEGATIVE -- work is seen as a necessary evil; leisure is ideal. In this view, people must be bribed to work, bribed by material rewards. Leisure is connected more with culture.

a.) But Ahrens sees it as confusing to value leisure (in the sense of loafing) over work, because leisure really contributes nothing to civilization.

b.) The notion that physical labor is demeaning is really a remnant of feudal thinking -- he acknowledges some forms of work, such as slave labor, may have this character. But where there is a real unity of person and work, "where work challenges and calls forth all our human capacities and powers,..." (p. 160) it is not demeaning.

3. A fundamental criterion of person-to-work unity is not ease or pleasantness of labor. Work may be hard yet very satisfying. We become one with our work when it issues in meaningful, significant objects. (eg., teaching, with students as the "meaningful, significant objects.")

4. Work may be driven by need and want, as in the case of primitive peoples, but as humans have progressed from a "state of nature" and developed culturally, we have come to work or act in terms of the value of the objects of culture.

a.) Work has come to be defined in terms of culture -- what elicits our efforts, drives, motivates us is the significance of the objects worked on. Not fundamentally in terms of compulsion or greed.

5. The meaning of work becomes inseparable from the meaning of objects -- a view which avoids the ambiguity of two dominant views: (1) view of Christianity (and other religions) which sees objects (the material world) as peripheral and really a danger to the soul. And (2) the view which sees the mere accumulation or possession of objects as external, having no value of their own.
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That's all for now. Look for more by the end of the week.