ABSTRACT

The mission of good government is closely intertwined with the genesis of the worldly utopian group and the consciousness of time invoked in work and social relations. Social concerns of equality and justice similarly depend upon an institutional form of government in which universalistic administration of situations can operate evenly over time. A crisis of legitimacy is not experienced as a crisis of government, but as a more pervasive dissatisfaction with the entire web of social relations. In natural synchronic groups, domination through constellations of interest establishes a relatively unstable collegial government where personal prerogatives and faits accomplis counter unified administration. In apocalyptic communal formations, the nature of the mission differs from those of the worldly Utopians’, and the governing formation varies accordingly. In groups with produced enactments of social life, whether they are worldly utopian or apocalyptic, the virtuosi of collective life seek to avoid subjecting a legitimated structure of dominance to the play of interest constellations.