From the Hobbes-Parsons Problem to a Non-Linear Dimensionalist Model of Cultures

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reconceptualize the classical problem of social order in Thomas Hobbes and Talcott Parsons by utilizing the tool of game theory, and thereby to formulate its motivational and institutional solutions as the basis of a theoretically guided construction of major cultural types. An analysis of the social-order problem shall be presented based on the insight that three aspects (the nature of the cooperation problem as well as motivational and institutional solutions) of Hobbes’s and Parsons’s approach are important. Finally, the three motivational solutions (habits, morality, and altruism) can be combined with the three institutional solutions (rituals, markets, and bureaucracies) in order to form three ideal-types of cultures (one traditional and two modern types), which allows the perception of different types of modernities.