In Law, Pragmatism and Democracy, Richard Posner wrestles with the ghost of John Dewey for the mantle of pragmatist jurisprudence. Most commentators have seen this work as pitting Posner against Dewey in a contest of pragmatisms, the stakes for which are no less than their respective legacies for legal and democratic theory. Some have sided with Posner and others with Dewey. I contend that the commentators have misidentified the target of Posner’s critique. Posner had another legal theorist in mind and (...) he was disingenuous in naming Dewey. A careful reconstruction of Posner’s argument shows that Dewey’s pragmatism provides a genuine middle way between Posner’s position and that of his intended rival. (shrink)

In the Marxist tradition, capitalism is understood as a commodified society based on markets. The article argues that the ultimate justification of this position does not lie in any ‘materialistic’ approach, but in the disembedding of markets that was the result of the historical ‘Great Transformation’ analysed by Karl Polanyi. Disembedded markets are not an economic subsystem within society but take the place of the most encompassing social system, which Durkheim had reserved for religion. The article distinguishes between spatial, social, (...) material and temporal dimensions of disembedding, thereby elaborating and correcting the analysis of Karl Polanyi. As a genuine form of society, disembedded markets give rise to the epistemological dilemma, which, as Luhmann had shown, is fundamental to any encompassing social theory: Society as a whole cannot be viewed by any observer. According to this viewpoint, economic theories take on ‘theological’ functions, as they provide rationality and legitimacy to a reality that is unknowable. (shrink)

This article considers whether there exists today a movement of similar strength to the synthetic 'new theoretical movement' of the mid-1980s. The author argues that one main trend in sociological theory today is the notion of creativity and efforts to understand it conceptually. The contemporary growth of contingency, it is claimed, is closely related to this creative perspective. After examining Parsons's notion of 'double contingency', the article suggests that neither rationality nor normativity alone is able to dampen recognition of the (...) vicissitudes attached to both personal destinies and social evolution. The author analyses the axis of structure and action, theories of history and evolution, together with the relationship between modernity and reflexivity, in order to substantiate the claim that creativity constitutes a trend today. This trend is then related to another, the cognitive approach, and the author proposes some ideas to bring them closer. Finally, a hypothesis to explain the current stress on creativity is suggested. (shrink)

From the beginning of his career Alain Touraine tried to develop a heterodox sociological terminology which promised to open up new ways of thinking about the dynamics of modern societies. This article tries to bring to light some of the Sartrean roots of Touraine's early theoretical tools and to reconstruct his intellectual development through the 1970s and 1980s when he formulated his ideas on the emergence of social movements within post-industrial society. It will be argued that Touraine's major works of (...) the 1990s - though not without some theoretical problems - offer fresh insights into the conditions of modernity and are able to correct and modify interpretations of modernity of major theorists such as Habermas and Taylor. (shrink)

Recent writing in social theory has seen a renewed preoccupation with questions of religion, secularization and civilizational difference. This article reappraises the work of one early twentieth-century thinker in relation to these issues: the German historical theologian and close colleague of Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923). The article concentrates particularly on Troeltsch’s late writings on Europe and ‘Europeanism’. The thesis is defended that Troeltsch offers an important gloss on Weber’s famous assertion of the ‘universal significance and validity’ of occidental rationalism. (...) Troeltsch offers a thicker, more concretized reading of Weber’s statement that serves as a precursor to contemporary thinking about ‘multiple modernities’ and also as a fund of trenchant counter-responses to the claims of recent post-colonial critics about Eurocentrism in western social science. Troeltsch’s writings give us one example among many of a current of cosmopolitan reflexivity in European social thought between the wars that avoided both nationalism and chauvinism, on the one hand, and nihilism and obscurantism, on the other. (shrink)

Recent developments in social theory, and especially in movement research, have deepened our understanding of the self-instituting and self-transformative capabilities of society. However, as the case of Alain Touraine's notion of historicity shows, there is a real danger that social praxis is being reduced to the function of self-thematization and self-programming, enshrining society in a self-referential circle. Ideas of self-transcendence and the non-identity of society with itself cannot be adequately accounted for as long as full scope is not given to (...) the interpretive dimension of human articulation. Moreover, the human ability of self-reflexivity and critique and the recognition of self-transformative faculties are often and principally denied to those societies which do not fit into the framework of modernity, thus subverting claims of universality. Against this Johann Arnason has suggested a return to an anthropology of the social subject which, over and above the constituting faculties, foregrounds the hermeneutical ability of (self-)distantiation and broadens the reference of human action and interpretation, or, rather, transcends the idea of a specific referent: constitutive of the human condition is the opening towards other possibilities, the opening towards the world. What seems required is an interactional approach towards society and culture which takes difference as constitutional, for society as well as social theory, and not as something which can be relegated to a secondary level of complicating conditions. (shrink)

In face of the postmodern ideal of a 'mutiple' subject, there has been talk at regular classical psychoanalysis's normative orientation toward intervals since the end of the the ego's capacity to cope consistently with reality may Second World War of psy seem obsolete. However, a psychoanalytic theory choanalysis being obsolete. which is revised in the light of object-relations theory, In these fields - where the integrationist social psychology, and an intersubjectivist notion is not just an ideolo account of the formation (...) of the drives can answer the gical weapon - this signifies postmodern challenge. According to this alternative the tendency of a growing psychoanalytic view, the goal of a 'healthy' development discrepancy said to have of personality is a state of an inner capacity for dialo opened up between the origue, able to account normatively for altering forms of ginal and the current socio-ego-identity under changing social conditions. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, the work of Georg Simmel (1858–1918) has again become of interest. Its reception, however, has been fairly one-sided and selective, mostly because Simmel’s philosophy has been bypassed in favor of his sociological contributions. This article examines Simmel’s explicit reflections on the nature of philosophy. Simmel defines philosophy through three aspects which, according to him, are common to all philosophical schools. First, philosophical reasoning implies the effort to think without preconditions. Second, Simmel maintains that in contrast (...) to other sciences, only philosophy is oriented toward constructing a general view of the world. Third, Simmel claims that philosophical work worthy of the name creates a sphere of a typical way of being in relation to world, a third sphere that is between the personal and the objective. According to Simmel, what has made philosophy’s eminent figures great is that they have advanced a type of thinking and developed it into a particularly interesting form, and this type can still correspond with the way we experience the world. It is significant that these three aspects through which Simmel defines philosophical activity emphasize the forms of questioning, not the contents or objects of thought. Still, he thinks that an interaction with concrete examples is always required in order to make philosophy a meaningful activity. This stance is reflected in the wide variety of topics studied by Simmel himself. In his last works Simmel began to emphasize another aspect of philosophy, its nature as a living movement of thought related to fundamental human limitedness: just as life itself ceaselessly reaches beyond its present form, so philosophy constantly strives to overcome the preconditions of thinking. (shrink)

It is always great good fortune for an author to have his writings meet with a receptive circle of readers who take them up in their own work and clarify them further. Indeed, it may even be the secret of all theoretical productivity that one reaches an opportune point in one's own creative process when others' queries, suggestions, and criticisms give one no peace, until one has been forced to come up with new answers and solutions. The four essays collected (...) here, in any event, jointly represent an ideal form of such a challenge: I am now compelled to make further theoretical developments and clarifications that lead me to a whole new stage of my own endeavours, well beyond what I initially had in mind in The Struggle for Recognition . For this reason, I will not concentrate here on interpretative issues regarding my earlier work but will instead take up the problems and challenges that have occasioned several revisions on my part. For this reason, it makes sense to begin (in section I) with the points that Carl-Göran Heidegren makes, in terms of a history of social theory, regarding my proposed theory of recognition. The issues that still motivate me today can best be expressed via an engagement with the conscientious interpretations he offers. The core of this rejoinder is based on Heikki Ikäheimo's and Arto Laitinen's suggestions and corrections, which they have used to develop my initial approach further, to the point where the theoretical outlines of a precise and general concept of recognition come into view. It is primarily these two contributions that helped me develop a productive elaboration of my originally vague intuitions (section II). By way of conclusion (in section III), I take up the penetrating questions raised by Antti Kauppinen regarding the use of the concept of recognition in the broader context of social criticism; he has compelled me to take on several extremely helpful clarifications, and they give me the opportunity, in conclusion, to summarize my overarching intentions. (shrink)

The philosophical usage of the terms "value as worth" ("vartosti") and "value as costs" ("tsinnosti") in the Ukrainian language has been studied. It is proved that it needs its fundamental and conceptual philosophical clarification. It was revealed, in particular, that the use of the term "value as costs" ("tsinnosti") is unjustifiably and inappropriately widespread in the Ukrainian everyday and scientific language, while the Ukrainian language also has the term "value as worth" ("vartosti") and its derivatives, which denote the sphere of (...) significance, that is basic to any possible values. It is concluded that the Ukrainian language as a language of philosophy has its own potential, which in relation to the category of "worth" and its subordinate concept of "value as worth" turns out to be richer than the potential of older and most recognized languages of philosophy. It is about distinguishing three types of values: unconditional, conditional and negative values. Conditional values as worth in certain research situations can be called values as costs, at the same time it has been proven that unconditional and negative values cannot be values as costs, therefore it is necessary to rethink the use of the terms "value as worth" ("vartosti’) and "value as costs" ("tsinnosti’) not only in the field of philosophy common to all knowledge, but also in special areas of individual humanitarian, social and other sciences. In each such area, such a rethinking can lead to different contextual terminological solutions, but it is proposed to consistently adhere to the general principle of distinguishing between the terms "value as worth" ("vartosti") and "value as costs" ("tsinnosti"). (shrink)

The writings of Weber and Taylor have some strong affinities. Both start from the anthropological idea that man evaluates his position in the world and constitutes the social world by values. Their analyses of values aim at an understanding of those intersubjective meanings that have constituted western modernity. But, at the same time, their anthropological starting point leads to different interpretations of modernity. Historically, both argue that rationalization (as instrumental rationality) is one of the most influential Kulturbedeutung of modernity. Weber's (...) thesis of rationalization is, however, entangled in a paradox. Overemphasizing the rationalized elements of modernity, he fails scientifically to grasp certain counter-movements in modernity, such as individuation, subjectivity and new life forms. Taylor, investigating the moral sources of expressivism, shows that these life forms are an inherent part of modernity. Yet his method of articulating the sources of modernity is insufficient to transform it towards a causal explanation of behaviour in everyday life. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the relationship between creativity and autonomy - originally related to each other in the concept of the `self' as one of the crucial parts of the Meadian and symbolic interactionist heritage - and asks how we should construe this relation today. After a brief reconstruction of the history of the notions of `self' and `identity' the paper takes up the postmodern challenge of these notions by clarifying and partially revising them. It discusses the three (...) aspects of a possibly over-socialized conception of the person, the irreducibility of difference between socialized individuals and the role of power and exclusion in processes of identity formation. (shrink)