Thomas Vesting 
Subjectivity Transformed 
The Cultural Foundation of Liberty in Modernity

This book provides a historically informed reconstruction of the social practices that have shaped the formation of the modern subject from the early modern period to the present. The formal legal protections accorded to subjects are, and always have been, latent in social practices, norms, and language before they are articulated in formal legal orders.

Vesting argues that in Western societies legal personhood is closely tied to three ideal types of social personhood – what he calls the gentleman, the manager, and Homo digitalis. By examining these three ideal types and their emergence in society, we can see that Western formal law does not bring these ideal types into being but, on the contrary, they arise from the social and cultural conditions that they generate and reflect. Correspondingly, Western legal personhood, or ‘legal subjectivity, ‘ arises from the history and culture of Western nations, not the other way around. Therefore, signature features of Western formal law, particularly its valorization of the rights of persons (whether natural or nonnatural), come from the particular sociohistorical cultural developments that had already generated the strong ideas of social personhood inherent in the ideal types of the gentleman, the manager, and Homo digitalis.

Subjectivity Transformed is a major contribution to legal and social theory and, with its original analysis of the formation of modern subjectivity, it will be of interest to students and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities.

Table of Content

List of Figures

Preface

§ 1 Introduction

§ 2 Instituting Power

§ 3 Culture as an Orientation-Forming Symbol System

I. The Universalist Heritage of Cultural Theory

II. The Dual Character of Modern Culture

III. The Challenge of Information Technology

§ 4 Creative Freedom as a Source of Cultural Dynamics

I. Transsubjective Conditions of Subjectivity

II. Imagination as Poetic Mimesis

III. On the Event Character of the New

§ 5 Bourgeois Culture

I. The Gentleman as a Personality Ideal

II. The Technical Attitude to the World

1. The Early Modern Era as a Foundational Phase of Disruption

2. Fulfillment through Tireless Effort?

III. The Social Body and the Body Politic

IV. Formation of the Subject – In the Mirror of Society

V. Legal Subjectivity and the Practices of Liberty Instituted in Society

VI. The Alien Claim and Disciplining Subjectification

§ 6 The Anglo-American Variant: The Gentleman

I. Experimental Thinking and Useful Knowledge

II. Sociability and Other Virtues

III. The Mirror of Society Becomes Better Endowed

IV. Inclusive Institutions and Instituting Power

§ 7 The Continental Variant: Honnête homme and Bildungsbürger

I. The Sophisticated World of the Paris Salons

II. The German Bildungsroman

III. Subjectification as Subjugation and Empowerment

1. Invocation and Subjugation

2. Empowerment by Means of the State

§ 8 Managerial Culture

I. The Rise of Large-Scale Enterprises

II. The Research and Development Laboratory

III. Trust between Strangers

1. The Legacy of Spontaneous Sociability

2. From the Inner-Directed to the Other-Directed Individual?

IV. Managers in America and Germany

1. The American Manager

2. Senior Executives in Germany

V. Annex: Images of Corporate Bodies

§ 9 The Culture of Information Technology

I. Homo Digitalis and the Theory of the Network Society

II. The Regional High-Tech Cluster

III. The Organization of Economic Production

1. Dissolution of Conventional Corporate Boundaries

2. Collective Learning through Informal Institutions

3. Continuous Experimentation: New Contract Models

IV. On the Environmentalization of Legal Subjectivity

1. Paradigms of the Development of Technology

2. On the Intelligibility of IT Milieus

3. The Ecotechnological Dimension

V. The Relevance of Instituting Power

§ 10 Epilogue

References

Notes

Index

About the author

Thomas Vesting is Professor of Law at Goethe University Frankfurt.