Wisdom and Woe

Rousseau's A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind (1755) weaves together philosophy, political theory, and anthropology to explore the history of human societies. It postulates a moment in time--before any notions of property or justice--in which distinctions of rank, wealth, and power did not exist.

According to Rousseau, an individual is naturally endowed with the basic means of survival. The shortcomings of the human condition (exposure to the elements, for instance) are perfectly tolerable within the limits of one's own self-sufficiency (e.g., by an ability to fashion crude clothing and shelter).

However, interactions between people create the opportunity for material wealth to be shifted to some at the expense of others. And "from the moment it appeared an advantage for one man to possess the quantity of provisions requisite for two, all equality vanished." Through socialization, such inordinate desires may be normalized, legitimized, and institutionalized: as civil society takes shape, people (like domesticated plants and animals) may be abberrated into inhumane "monsters."

With an eloquent elaboration on the "noble savage" motif, Rousseau invokes nostalgia for a simpler existence, diagnoses our modern alienation from nature, and argues in favor of our material and psychological independence, anticipating Nietzsche's moral genealogy and Veblen's critique of "conspicuous consumption."

A Discourse Upon the Origin of Inequality:

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The explosion in prosperity and mass manufacture during the Industrial Era was of pivotal interest to those working in the fledgling social sciences. In the groundbreaking Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Thorstein Veblen attempts to trace the evolution of Western society into the class stratifications that characterized it at the end of the 19th century.

Veblen analogizes the industrialized system to a barbarian plunder, where the weaker members of society are subservient to the those exempt from the dredges of manual labor.

In Veblen's most famous argument, the leisure class acquires a surplus of time and money which it dedicates to "conspicuous" luxuries designed to advertise its wealth and promote social standing: "it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence."

Veblen considers (among other things) the conspicuous consumption of sports, fine arts, and clothing--particularly the corset, whose ostentation is a proportionate to its impracticality.

In Moby-Dick, Melville's criticism of the corset is comparatively tempered by Ishmael's in-character tendency to exalt such whale derivatives. But his most acerbic commentary on the garment comes from Mardi, where the women of the fictional island of Pimminee are so constricted by their corsets that they are prevented from gazing skyward.

Chapter 1, "Introductory"
Chapter 2, "Pecuniary Emulation"
Chapter 4, "Conspicuous Consumption"
Chapter 7, "Dress as an Expression of Pecuniary Culture"

Theory of the Leisure Class:

This meetup is hosted by Modernist Fiction, Its Origins and Beyond.
To RSVP, go to the dates listed BELOW.