Analyzing Moral Danger and Self-Fear

Abstract

The relationship between fear and the rise of modern societies is central to some of the arguments made by the late German sociologist Norbert Elias. In his work The Civilizing Process (1978, 1982),¹ Elias argued that at the dawn of the modern era sociofunctional forces prompted the need to better regulate social relations. These imperatives are at the heart of what he terms the civilizing process—a process that marks the transition from the seemingly unpredictable, violent, and might-based societies of the Middle Ages to the predictable, pacified, and regulation-based societies of early modern Europe.