Reconstructing Social Theory, History and Practice: Volume 35

To determine where, when, how, and wherefore European social theory hit upon the formula of “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful,” and how its structural position as a skeleton for the theory of action has changed.

Genealogy, library research, and unusually good fortune were used to trace back the origin of what was to become a ubiquitous phrase, and to reconstruct the debates that made deploying the term seem important to writers.

The triad, although sometimes used accidentally in the renaissance, assumed a key structural place with a rise of Neo-Platonism in the eighteenth century associated with a new interest in providing a serious analysis of taste. It was a focus on taste that allowed the Beautiful to assume a position that was structurally homologous to those of the True and the Good, long understood as potential parallels. Although the first efforts were ones that attempted to emphasize the unification of the human spirit, the triad, once formulated, was attractive to faculties theorists more interested in decomposing the soul. They seized upon the triad as corresponding to an emerging sense of a tripartition of the soul. Finally, the members of the triad became re-understood as values, now as orthogonal dimensions.

This seems to be the first time the story of the development of the triad – one of the most ubiquitous architectonics in social thought – has been told.

An assessment of Axel Honneth’s reception and appropriation of Hegel’s theory of normative reconstruction as presented in his Freedom’s Right (Columbia University Press, 2014).

A comparative assessment of Honneth’s and Hegel’s approach to normative reconstruction focusing on three basic issues: general methodology, understandings of the logic and program of the Philosophy of Right, and analyses and assessments of modern market societies as detailed in Hegel’s account of civil society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft).

For Honneth, normative reconstruction consists in reworking modes of social rationality already realized in modern institutions. By contrast, Hegel is shown to advance an approach to reconstruction in which an account of social rationality is properly fashioned only in the reconstruction process itself. In this way Hegel is also shown to proffer an approach to normative reconstruction that is at once more robustly reconstructive and more robustly normative than is the case with Honneth.

The paper demonstrates the ongoing value of Hegel’s thought for social and political theory. It illuminates Hegel’s uniquely dialectical approach to immanent social critique, dedicated not only to explicating existing tensions and “bifurcations” (Entzweiungen) but – with the help of a distinctive account of Bildung (cultivation or formation) – to engaging those tensions and bifurcations in order to delineate the conditions for their constructive supersession. It also elucidates different ways in which critical social theorists, committed to notions of “immanent transcendence,” draw on the resources of market societies to mount normative challenges to the aporias of those societies.

Theoretical reconstruction for the sake of deeper and clearer understanding of an important theme in classical philosophy (aporia/euporia)

Logical critique (and reconstruction); aporetic and euporetic logic.

Using key texts by Plato and Aristotle on aporia and euporia, I attempt to show that Derrida’s, and more broadly deconstructive, readings are problematic and require careful and critical reconsideration.

A full account of aporia in the work of Derrida is beyond the scope of the paper – so too is a full account of aporia and euporia in the works of Plato and Aristotle.

The paper has important implications in terms of our reading and interpretation of important classical texts such as Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

The paper builds on important research by philosophers like Matthews and on the nature and role of aporia in classical philosophy, just as it extends the author’s own critique of deconstructive appropriations of aporia. It argues for the importance of reconstructing our understanding of aporetic and euporetic thinking in order to see it more clearly especially in its classical forms, contexts and frameworks.

In his influential study The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1971 [1959]), Erving Goffman provides an insightful account of the formation of social selves. Goffman’s work has been extensively discussed in the sociological literature. Yet, the presuppositional underpinnings, let alone the socio-ontological implications, of his conception of personhood have not been rigorously scrutinized.

The main reason for the lack of methodical engagement with the principal assumptions that lie at the heart of Goffman’s theory of the self is that his approach is widely regarded as an eclectic narrative that, while drawing on different sociological traditions, does not make any claim to universal validity.

The persuasiveness of the contention that Goffman’s analysis of the self cannot be reduced to a general theory of human personhood appears to be confirmed by the fact that both supporters and detractors of his sociological project tend to agree that it would be erroneous to deduce a foundational framework of investigation from his numerous studies concerned with the interaction between self and society.

Attention will be drawn to several controversial issues that arise when faced with the task of assessing both the strengths and the weaknesses of Goffman’s understanding of the self.

The aim of this paper is to challenge the aforementioned contention by demonstrating that Goffman provides a fairly systematic account of human personhood. More significantly, this enquiry suggests that a fine-grained examination of his key concepts permits us to propose an outline of a general theory of the human self.

This paper argues that the quest for meaning and the problem of suffering are in an irresolvable state of tension and that this tension remains of central importance in modernity and a prominent issue in the reconstruction of contemporary social theory and social science.

The approach focuses on an examination of the work of Max Weber and Emmanuel Levinas on issues of rationality and suffering bringing them into a productive dialogue and juxtaposition.

The work of Max Weber shows how practices of rationality in modernity are still haunted by the ethical call to responsibility that suffering incurs. The work of Emmanuel Levinas complements and reconfigures Weber’s framing of the issues involved and deepens the general point that a reconstructed social theory would incorporate the implications of suffering more deeply into its practices.

A social science and social theory oriented by an epistemological framework is inadequate to the ethical responsibility the presence of suffering invokes. A reconstructed social theory in an ethical framework calls for the best knowledge capable of being produced. As such, a nihilistic or disengaged pluralism, as well as a social science framed primarily by methodological concerns, is inadequate. What will be required is both critical examination of explicit and implicit assumptions of theory and research as well as active, engaged dialogical practices with alternative perspectives.

An engagement between Weber and Levinas is almost unprecedented, especially on issues rationality and suffering despite their shared perspectives. What Levinas offers the reconstruction of social theory today is explored.

In this paper I argue that the liberal problem of religion, which defines religion in terms of dogmatism or opaque justifications based on ‘revealed truth’, needs to be rethought as part of a broader problem of dialogue, which does not define religion as uniquely problematic.

Habermas argues for religious positions to be translated into ‘generally accessible language’ to incorporate religious citizens into democratic dialogue and resist the domination of instrumental rationality by enhancing ‘solidarity’. I contrast this with Rowan Williams’ and Gadamer’s work.

Williams conceptualises religion in terms of recognising the finitude of our being, rather than dogmatism or opacity. This recognition, he argues, allows people to transcend the ‘imaginative bereavement’ of seeing others as means. Using Williams, I argue that Habermas misdefines religion, and reinforces the domination of instrumental rationality by treating religion as a means. I then use Gadamer to argue that the points Williams makes about religion can apply to secular positions too by recognising them as traditions subject to finitude.

This is original because it argues that the liberal problem of religion misdefines both religion and secular positions, by not recognising that both are traditions defined by finitude. To reach, dialogically, a ‘fusion of horizons’, where religious and secular people are understood non-instrumentally in their own terms of reference, will take time and not trade on immediately manifest – ‘generally accessible’ – meanings.

Theoretical reconstruction for the sake of practical political relevance is inherently resistant to the theorisation of a rigorous sociological discipline. Yet, the need for such theoretical reconstruction recurs in history, particularly in times of social and economic crisis when social reconstruction of damaged, fractured and conflict-ridden societies was seen as urgent by both applied sociologists and publics at large.

This paper directs itself to questions regarding the intellectual and political origins of the Swedish, egalitarian, democratic welfare state ideology in the 1930s, and how it came to be theoretically defined in opposition to the overarching binary frameworks of ‘conservative’ capitalism and ‘progressive’ Marxist socialism.

Using McLennan’s notion of a ‘vehicular’ concept, I will attempt to show that the ‘third’ or ‘middle way’ compromise between opposing interests has, since its inception in the earlier parts of the twentieth century, changed over time, and will continue to change, within shifting political contexts and changing practical, political demands to ‘move things on’.

This paper also examines the concept of social planning – social engineering – as a ‘third way’ practical strategy and how it came to be used as a political and theoretical stick by which attack ‘third way’ democracy by both neo-liberal and Marxist theorists.

The paper builds on the author’s previous research on the intellectual and political visions of the Swedish social scientists and reformers, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, and argues for the continuing importance of theoretical reconstruction and innovation in the preservation of justice and democracy.

After some discussion of Habermas’ model of reconstruction and the ways in which he and others have applied it to the European Union (EU), I venture some remarks about the development of EU law and European democracy.

I trace the way in which a meta-theory of social science can be extended to illuminate questions of political and constitutional legitimacy.

It is found that Habermas’s model points to the double character of EU citizenship, in which one is a citizen both of the Union and of one if its member states, and the corresponding creative tension between these two levels of governance.

A contribution to the so-far rather under-developed theorisation of the political philosophy of a united Europe.

This paper reviews and assesses the aim, substance, and impact of Simon Susen’s book, “The Postmodern Turn” in the Social Sciences.

The review follows the structure of Susen’s book, by description and by evaluation.

Susen’s book encompasses a very large volume of literature of the self-defined “postmodern,” then concludes that the covered material has contributed little that is new to the social sciences.

The review has not been previously published, does not replicate any prior assessment known to the author.