Modernization and the noble/common distinction: Reading modern literature through Luhmannian and Foucauldian lenses

Abstract This article draws on Luhmannian and Foucauldian social theories to analyse the decline of the “nobility/commoner” distinction. Evidence from 17th‐ and 18th‐century tracts, treatises, letters, novels, and other sources suggests that the distinction between the nobility and the commoner lost currency as functional differentiation overruled social stratification in the second half of the eighteenth century. But to preserve a sense of difference, defenders of the nobility/commoner distinction adopted a “true nobility/pretended nobility” distinction, according to which the hereditary nobility possessed noble qualities by nature, whereas the rising commoners could acquire only false nobility. Functional differentiation was met with a countermovement that attempted to establish a tighter, grid‐like social order in place of the looser medieval social order. Finally, the complexity–sustainability trade‐off principle helps to explain why the hereditary nobility might have ignored the seemingly clear evidence of an impending threat to their privileged status.