Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society

Roland Wulbert

For theorists like Wrong, the most fruitful--and insistent--question in sociology remains the oldest one: Why don't we act in our self-interest even more than we do? Wrong reads closely formulations of the question by seminal thinkers in Western civilization: Hobbes, of course, who first made problematic the question's subject, social order; Rousseau; Locke; and in this century, Freud and the American system builder, Talcott Parsons, who is currently enjoying a revival. Wrong's analysis is abstract; for some readers, it may be too philosophical, involving too many conceptual distinctions and not enough narrative and recitation of facts and hysteria over contemporary disorders. Others may relish Wrong's rigorous and sustained readings of canonical theory and his belief in human nature--the opposite of what he famously called the oversocialized conception of man long before such a formulation became at all fashionable among his peers. With Wrong as their medium, Hobbes and others help us think at length about the war of all against all, though hardly resolve it. But then, sustained thought is itself a kind of resolution.