Abstract
As is commonly known, Talcott Parsons insisted that utilitarian social theories pretended to solve the Hobbesian problem of order by extending the concept of “rationality” tacitly. But, even though it is true, Parsons did not clarify what do they require in addition to the concept of “rationality” to solve the problem. In this paper, I try to identify it on a logical basis. Roughly speaking, there are two solutions, i. e.“constructivist solution” and “spontaneousness solution”, which utilitarian social theories are able to present. But at the bottom these solutions commonly have a crucial concept to solve the problem. that is: sympathetic imagination. I mean by this our dispositions to accept other's various behaviors as something to be able to give a new “meaning” or to start a new “game”. Because classical utilitarian social theories incorporated this concept of “sympathetic imagination” with the concept of “rationality” into their understandings of human beings, the Hobbesian problem of order was able to be a interesting problem for them.
