This book confronts issues of meaning in a disenchanted, ‘godless’ world marked by the decline of organised religion. It proposes that right order is emerging as both the hidden structure of meaning that underpins the human condition, and the force that shapes existence. The author argues that right order is both prior, and to be made.
Men, women, and children depend on a sense of right order to feel at home in their world. They live by it. Order making is native, constitutive of who they are, imprinted in their genetic make-up and informed by the human drive to make things right. Right order is often obscured, faintly seen or hardly felt. It can be elusive, fearsomely difficult to grasp. This book clarifies the nature of right order through examples including Abraham Lincoln, Harry Potter, a football coach, and a heroic widow. It considers cases of disorder, from politics to female injustice to personal malaise, and turns for guidance to he who most profoundly mined his vast home terrain, stretching between God and atheism: William Shakespeare.
Rooted in sociological traditions derived from Max Weber’s work, yet offering an optimistic approach that illuminates the hidden structure eliciting, grace, form, balance, and composure, this high-level work of outstanding originality represents the culmination of the author’s distinguished, fifty-year-long intellectual career. It will appeal to both scholars and students of cultural sociology and social theory with interests in morality, popular culture, and metaphysical sociology.
Table of Contents:
1. The Proposition Part I: Setting the Scene 2. Right Order 3. The Five Human Needs 4. Egoism 5. Immortality 6. Sin Part II: Case-Studies 7. Politics 8. Shakespeare 9. Misfortune 10. The Female Righting 11. Tolstoy 12. Harry Potter 13. Ethan 14. The Widow 15. All’s Well in Right Order
About the Author :
John Carroll is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at La Trobe University, Australia, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, USA. His books include Land of The Golden Cities; The Existential Jesus; The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited; The Western Dreaming; Ego and Soul: The Modern West in Search of Meaning; and Break-Out from the Crystal Palace. For more information on John Carroll visit www.johncarrollsociologist.wordpress.com.
Review :
'Throughout his career, John Carroll has made a point of addressing questions that many sociologists shy away from or leave to other disciplines, such as how to find meaning in a ‘godless’ world. In Right Order, with reference to case studies ranging from The Tempest to Harry Potter, from Greek tragedy to Australian football, Carroll makes a further contribution to debates and expertly examines how in the face of life’s challenges, humans are driven to get their lives in balance and obtain a sense of equanimity.'
Simon Stewart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth, UK.
