Sartre's Social Theory

Dialogue ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
Werner Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
The Other ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
Dialectical Reason ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Determining Factor ◽  
Individual Human

The title of Sartre's Critique de la raison dialectique evokes, quite intentionally, memories of Kant's critiques of reason. Let us compare the two undertakings. Kant circumscribed the knowledge claimed by the natural sciences of his time. He pointed out that science never grasps more than the appearance of things as conditioned by our cognitive processes; it cannot know the thing-in-itself. Sartre, for his part, circumscribes the knowledge claimed by orthodox Marxism. He agrees that Marxist economic theory understands the general course of contemporary historical developments, but not the dynamics of those developments. Both authors concede no more than a limited validity in deterministic ontology, in the one case to the exact sciences, in the other to Marxism. Nevertheless, both recognize fully the content of the knowledge they are criticizing, but explain it at the result or product respectively of deeper causes. A transcendental investigation is supposed to bring these causes to light. Kant's critique of scientific reason was directed at the interplay between the presumed thing in itself and the viewing, thinking self—the interplay that yeilds objectively-cognizable Nature. Sartre's critique of dialectical reason tries to show that the interaction between individual human activity and an always scarce supply of material things is the source of all social and cultural forms and events. In both works, then, the human subject is a determining factor in what appears to be objectively factual.

The Explainability of Experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Renz
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subjective Character ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Individual Human

This book provides a novel interpretation of Spinoza’s Ethics, and his views on the human mind in particular, by showing how the text—both as a whole and in a multitude of details—is motivated by the twofold notion that subjective experience is explainable and that its successful explanation is of ethical relevance, because it makes us wiser, freer, and happier. It argues that this allows Spinoza to reconcile seemingly inconsistent convictions, viz., on the one hand, the assumption that experience is irreducibly subjective and, on the other, that there are better and worse explanations of experiences. The proposed reconstruction establishes a specific view on the architecture of Spinoza’s theory of the human mind, according to which his account carefully distinguishes between three different parts, or approaches: an ontology of the mental, a theory of the individual human subject, and a theory of mental content that combines psychological and epistemological claims. On the basis of the distinction between these three approaches, Spinoza can avoid, from the outset, both reductionism and skepticism with respect to the subjective character of human experience.

scholarly journals MATERIALISME SEBAGAI PENGHAMBAT PEMBANGUNAN KESEJATERAAN SOSIAL

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-171
Author(s):  
Mohammad Sabiq ◽  
Akhmad Jayadi ◽  
Imam Nawawi ◽  
Mohammad Wasil
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The Other ◽  
Financial Security ◽  
The One ◽  
Positive Effect

Materialism and sich are the driving spirit of the community in achieving economic and financial security that saves a holistic and socially just welfare. This can be seen from the lives of people in materialistic developed countries, where the level of social stress is higher, economic inequality widens, horizontal conflict is rife. This research uses Pierre Felix Bourdieu's social theory in seeing people trust the expenditure of material with other values, such as spiritual and cultural values ​​that are no less urgent as elements of social welfare development. This study found that materialism on the one hand has a positive effect, where people are encouraged to use material standards in measuring the level of welfare they expect. On the other hand, materialism closes the presence of values ​​such as spirituality, local wisdom and agriculture in completing more holistic welfare standards.

Herbert Mac Cabe’s Philosophical Anthropology

Politeia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-260
Author(s):  
Franco Manni ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
External World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Language System ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Individual Human

From the ideas of Aristotle, De Saussure and Wittgenstein, philosopher Herbert McCabe elaborated an original anthropology. 'Meaning' means: the role played by a part towards the whole. Senses are bodily organs and sensations allow an animal to get fragments of the external world which become 'meaningful' for the behaviour of the whole animal Besides sensations, humans are ‘linguistic animals’ because through words they are able to 'communicate', that is, to share a peculiar kind of meanings: concepts. Whereas, sense-images are stored physically in our brain and cannot be shared, even though we can relate to sense-images by words (speech coincides with thought). However, concepts do not belong to the individual human being qua individual, but to an interpersonal entity: the language system. Therefore, on the one hand, to store images is a sense-power and an operation of the brain, whereas the brain (quite paradoxically!) is not in itself the organ of thought. On the other hand, concepts do not exist on their own.

Desire all the way down

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROXANNE LYNN DOTY
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
First Principles ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Metaphysical Foundation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

Alex Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics demonstrates perhaps more long and hard thought about social theory and its implications for international relations theory than most international relations scholars have dared to venture into. He admirably attempts to do in an explicit manner what most scholars in the discipline do only implicitly and often accidentally: suggest a social theory to serve as the foundation for theorizing about international relations. However, there are problems with his approach, a hint of which can be found in the epigraph he has chosen: ‘No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics, which tacitly it presupposes’. Because metaphysics cannot ultimately be proven or disproved, it is inherently insecure. The insecurity and instability of the metaphysical presuppositions present in Social Theory are not difficult to find, and what Wendt ends up demonstrating, despite his objective not to, is the absence of any secure, stable, and unambiguous metaphysical foundation upon which IR theory could be firmly anchored. Indeed, what Social Theory does illustrate is that there is no such ultimate centre within the discipline except the powerful desire to maintain the illusion of first principles and the essential nature of things. If I may paraphrase Wendt, this is a ‘desire all the way down’ in that it permeates his relentless quest for the essence of international relations. Two goals characterize this desire: on the one hand, to take a critical stance toward more conventional international relations theory such as neorealism and neoliberalism; on the other, to maintain unity, stability, and order within the discipline. Social Theory oscillates between these two goals and in doing so deconstructs the very foundations it seeks to lay.

scholarly journals Under Darwin’s Cosh? Neo-Aristotelian Thinking in Environmental Ethics

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 22-23
Author(s):  
Michael Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
General Position ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Individual Human

As a first shot, one might say that environmental ethics is concerned distinctively with the moral relations that exist between, on the one hand, human beings and, on the other, the non-human natural environment. But this really is only a first shot. For example, one might be inclined to think that at least some components of the non-human natural environment (non-human animals, plants, species, forests, rivers, ecosystems, or whatever) have independent moral status, that is, are morally considerable in their own right, rather than being of moral interest only to the extent that they contribute to human well-being. If so, then one might be moved to claim that ethical matters involving the environment are best cashed out in terms of the dutes and responsibilities that human beings have to such components. If, however, one is inclined to deny independent moral status to the non-human natural environment or to any of its components, then one might be moved to claim that the ethical matters in question are exhaustively delineated by those moral relations existing between individual human beings, or between groups of human beings, in which the non-human natural environment figures. One key task for the environmental ethicist is to sort out which, if either, of these perspectives is the right one to adopt—as a general position or within particular contexts. I guess I don’t need to tell you that things get pretty complicated pretty quickly.

scholarly journals Die Ordnung des Wissens

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (151) ◽  
pp. 255-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Kappeler
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Archaeology Of Knowledge ◽  
The One ◽  
Critical Social

In its first part, the article deals with Michel Foucaults "discourse analysis", as developed in his "Archaeology of knowledge". The second part considers the concept of discourse in relation to Foucaults "analytic of power" and to a critical theory of society inspired by Karl Marx, especially Louis Althussers notion of ideology. Thus, on the one hand, some propositions for a methodology of discourse analysis are being made, and, on the other hand, its position within a project of critical social theory is discussed.

From Red to Black

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Messer-Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
The Other ◽  
Industrial Change ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
Steady Growth ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
The One ◽  
Fundamental Shift

This chapter looks back to how, over the course of a decade, Chicago's “communists” had gone from counseling their followers to avoid violent confrontations to planning them. This evolution of tactics rested on an even more fundamental shift in outlook and social theory. In 1877 when leaders of the Workingmen's Party acted to restrain mob violence, they did so in the belief that industrial change would come about through the steady growth of trade unions and the gradual raising of the working class's consciousness. But in 1886 the men in Greif's basement were skeptical that trade unions could ever deliver more than a few extra crumbs to the workingman's table and had come to believe that workers were ready for violent class struggle. Between the one outlook and the other was a wholesale shift in the socialist movement that began in Europe and swept into America.

Figurational Sociology as a Counter-Paradigm

1987 ◽  
Vol 4 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 429-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Arnason
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sociological Tradition ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

Two key themes in contemporary social theory are particularly relevant to the interpretation and critique of figurational sociology. On the one hand, some recent critiques of the sociological tradition — Touraine's attempt to deconstruct the received image of society is the most important example — have called into question a dominant paradigm that underlies both Marxist and structural-functional theories. Norbert Elias has not only anticipated some of the most important criticisms but also suggested correctives to some of the currently fashionable alternatives. More specifically, his relationship to the sociological traditions and to its contemporary offshoots can be described in terms of six antitheses: his approach is anti-economistic, anti-normativistic, anti-reductionistic, anti-functionalist, anti-structuralist and anti-individualistic. On the other hand, the impact of all these critical strategies is somewhat blunted by the one-sided emphasis on power. A more balanced version of figurational sociology would need a concept of culture to match and counter-balance Elias's insights into the problematic of power. Further exploration of this issue could draw both on the classics (especially Weber) and on post-Parsonian debates about cultural power and their interconnections. Cultural interpretations of power are the most important link between those two dimensions of social life; although Elias has never explicitly thematized them, his recent writings touch upon some aspects of their specifically modern variants.

‘Foundations of Social Theory’ oder ‘Foundations of Sociology’?

1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Esser
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Collective Effects ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Sociological Profession ◽  
The One ◽  
Present Understanding

AbstractThe comment deals with the relevance of Coleman’s Foundations of Social Theory for so called ‘sociological theory’. On the one hand Coleman’s work is an extraordinary contribution to the solution of some of the most important ‘classical’ questions of sociology. On the other hand it is to be expected that the enormous potential of the book probably has only limited effects within the wider sociological profession. One reason for that estimation is the unfamiliarity of many sociologists with Coleman’s instruments of aggregation of collective effects. The other - more important - reason is that Coleman almost completely leaves out any discussion of the importance of ‘symbolic’ and ‘cultural’ processes. Insofar the book is indeed a ‘Foundation of Social Theory’ but not a foundation of ‘sociology’ in its past and present understanding.

Absolutism and Relativism in Philosophy and Politics

1948 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 906-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Kelsen
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Absolute Truth ◽  
Relative Truth ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
Is Theory ◽  
The One ◽  
Object Of Knowledge

Since there exists philosophy, there exists the attempt to bring it in relation with politics; and this attempt has succeeded in so far as it is today recognized to the degree of a truism that political theory and that part of philosophy we call ethics are closely connected with each other. But it seems strange to assume—and this essay tries to verify this assumption—that there exists an external parallelism, and perhaps also an inner relationship, between politics and other parts of philosophy such as epistemology, that is, theory of knowledge, and theory of values. It is just within these two theories that the antagonism between philosophical absolutism and relativism has its seat; and this antagonism seems to be in many respects analogous to the fundamental opposition between autocracy and democracy as the representatives of political absolutism on the one hand and political relativism on the other.IPhilosophical absolutism is the metaphysical view that there is an absolute reality, i.e., a reality that exists independently of human knowledge. Hence its existence is objective and unlimited in, or beyond, space and time, to which human knowledge is restricted. Philosophical relativism, on the other hand, advocates the empirical doctrine that reality exists only within human knowledge, and that, as the object of knowledge, reality is relative to the knowing subject. The absolute, the thing in itself, is beyond human experience; it is inaccessible to human knowledge and therefore unknowable.To the assumption of absolute existence corresponds the possibility of absolute truth and absolute values, denied by philosophical relativism, which recognizes only relative truth and relative values.

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