Carlyle and the Search for Authority

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Carlyle and the Search for Authority
"The authority of the hierarchical state was being challenged, and political discourse, like religious discourse, had begun to represent authority as vested in the individuals that con­stituted the state rather than in monarchical hierarchy. ... Society was understood as a series of contracts among competing individuals in­stead of a corporate body united as a single family." Sound familiar? No, it's not Web 2.0. Rather, these sentences describe the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, the subject of Thomas Carlyle's work in the 1800s. This book - and 49 others on different topics - have now been made available for free (on PDF, sadly) by The Ohio State University Press. Good for them. Let's see more of this. More...