Society
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Should we preserve the legacy of our institutions, or transform society in the name of progress?
The past hands down an experience no one designed alone, but also injustices no one dares touch any longer; reform can liberate, or undo what worked for reasons we never grasped. To take a position is to say where to place our trust: in what has lasted, or in our power to remake it better.
Where does our belonging lie first: with our own community, or with humanity as a whole?
Favouring our own gives us roots but can shut the door on the stranger; opening to all enlarges the heart but risks belonging nowhere. To decide is to say whom we owe something to first, when near and distant loyalties come into conflict.
To understand social life, should we start from individuals or from the social whole?
Is society merely individuals and their choices, or a whole that shapes them more than they know? Depending on the answer, we explain a crisis or a custom by personal decisions or by structures, and we hold different parties responsible. To take a position is to say what truly makes history: the whole, or the parts.
Are categories like gender, race or class natural, constructed, or objective social realities?
Depending on whether these categories are facts of nature, mere ideas we could dispel by changing our words, or very real social forces, we fight inequality in quite different ways. To take a position is to say what, in the social order, can be undone, and what can only be acknowledged.
Does society rest on an agreement between individuals, or on a community that precedes them?
If society arises from an agreement among individuals, we can renegotiate it, leave it, remake it as we wish; if a community precedes us, we are born caught in bonds and duties we never chose. To take a position is to say whether we belong to a society by consent or by birth.