The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity

Author(s):  
Robert Wokler ◽  
Christopher Brooke

This chapter's overriding objective is to explain how both the invention of our modern understanding of the social sciences, on the one hand, and the post-Enlightenment establishment of the modern nation-state, on the other, encapsulated doctrines which severed modernity from the Enlightenment philosophy which is presumed to have inspired it. It offers illustrations not so much of the unity of political theory and practice in the modern world as of their disengagement. In providing here some brief remarks on how post-Enlightenment justifications of modernity came to part company from their Enlightenment prefigurations, it hopes to sketch an account of certain links between principles and institutions which bears some relation to both Enlightenment and Hegelian conceptual history.

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 69-89
Author(s):  
H. S. Thayer

It is generally agreed that the most influential philosophers in America are Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey. James's fame came rather suddenly in the latter half of his life—roughly, from 1880 to 1910; it flourished with the appearance of his Principles of Psychology (1890) and shortly thereafter with his advocacy of pragmatism and radical empiricism. James was acclaimed in England and Europe as well as in America. Peirce, on the other hand, was almost entirely neglected; his work remained unknown to all but a few philosophers and his chief acknowledgment was as a scientist and logician. His importance began to be recognized and his immense researches and writings studied some twenty-five years after his death. It was otherwise with Dewey. During his long lifetime his ideas not only engaged the reflections and critical discussions of philosophers, he also had a profound and contagious influence on education, the social sciences, aesthetics, and political theory and practice. In this respect his thought has reached a wider audience in America than that of either Peirce or James. In his day lawyers, labour leaders, scientists and several heads of state attested to the vitality of his wisdom.


1985 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 69-89
Author(s):  
H. S. Thayer

It is generally agreed that the most influential philosophers in America are Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey. James's fame came rather suddenly in the latter half of his life—roughly, from 1880 to 1910; it flourished with the appearance of his Principles of Psychology (1890) and shortly thereafter with his advocacy of pragmatism and radical empiricism. James was acclaimed in England and Europe as well as in America. Peirce, on the other hand, was almost entirely neglected; his work remained unknown to all but a few philosophers and his chief acknowledgment was as a scientist and logician. His importance began to be recognized and his immense researches and writings studied some twenty-five years after his death. It was otherwise with Dewey. During his long lifetime his ideas not only engaged the reflections and critical discussions of philosophers, he also had a profound and contagious influence on education, the social sciences, aesthetics, and political theory and practice. In this respect his thought has reached a wider audience in America than that of either Peirce or James. In his day lawyers, labour leaders, scientists and several heads of state attested to the vitality of his wisdom.


1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.


Author(s):  
Antje Gimmler

Practices are of central relevance both to philosophical pragmatism and to the recent ‘Practice Turn’ in social sciences and philosophy. However, what counts as practices and how practices and knowledge are combined or intertwine varies in the different approaches of pragmatism and those theories that are covered by the umbrella term ‘Practice Turn’. The paper tries to show that the pragmatism of John Dewey is able to offer both a more precise and a more radical understanding of practices than the recent ‘Practice Turn’ allows for. The paper on the one hand highlights what pragmatism has to offer to the practice turn in order to clarify the notion of practice. On the other hand the paper claims that a pragmatism inspired by Dewey actually interprets ‘practices’ more radically than most of the other approaches and furthermore promotes an understanding of science that combines nonrepresentationalism and anti-foundationalism with an involvement of the philosopher or the social scientist in the production of knowledge, things and technologies.


2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 616-618
Author(s):  
Diego Mazzoccone ◽  
Mariano Mosquera ◽  
Silvana Espejo ◽  
Mariana Fancio ◽  
Gabriela Gonzalez ◽  
...  

It is very difficult to date the birth of political science in Argentina. Unlike other discipline of the social sciences, in Argentina the first distinction can be made between political thought on the one hand, and political science in another. The debate over political thought—as the reflection of different political questions—emerged in our country in the nineteenth century, especially during the process of constructing the Argentine nation-state. Conversely, political science is defined in a general way as the application of the scientific method to the studies on the power of the state (Fernández 2001).


Author(s):  
Silvia Arribas-Galarraga ◽  
Izaskun Luis-de Cos ◽  
Gurutze Luis-de Cos ◽  
Saioa Urrutia-Gutierrez

There has been a decrease in sports practices among the adolescent population, and several authors have tried to identify variables that can explain this decrease by analyzing psychosocial aspects such as perceived fitness and self-efficacy. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine the association of perceived fitness and self-efficacy with sport practices and to determine whether perceived fitness is a mediator of the association between self-efficacy and sport practice in Spanish adolescents. The sample was composed of 882 students between 13 and 17 years old from Gipuzkoa (Spain). A descriptive, correlational and direct/indirect effect approach was used, using the PROCESS macro for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Among the results obtained, it is highlighted on the one hand, that perceived fitness significantly correlates with both self-efficacy and sport practice, on the other hand, it is confirmed that perceived fitness is a mediator in the relationship between self-efficacy and sports practice. This finding highlights the importance of psychosocial aspects in efforts to increase sports practice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-114
Author(s):  
I.S. Duisenova ◽  

The study of social anxieties requires careful research due to the development of modern society. Modern Kazakh society is unique in its own way,and besides, it is not without causes of social anxiety. Moreover, a comprehensive study of social anxieties provides a person with broad opportunities for knowledge and creativity. On the other hand, the coronavirus pandemic has made its own adjustments to the modern world, which is unstable in its development, it remains uncertain and unpredictable, which does not allow a person to feel completely protected, and this all creates anxiety.


Stasis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-155
Author(s):  
Dmitry Lebedev

As climate change rapidly intensifies, political theory urgently needs to respond to the shock of the Anthropocene and bring nature back to politics. William Connolly’s work is a paradigmatic example of such a theory that actively emphasizes the role nonhuman forces play in the social and political world and the discontinuity this emphasis brings to political theory. Connolly underscores fragile resonances between nature and culture and productively problematizes a human-centric vision of politics. However, while interrogating how contemporary political conjuncture catastrophically increases planetary fragility, he still insists on the continuity of his vision for democratic pluralism that this very conjuncture fundamentally puts in question. Thus, Connolly’s type of post-anthropocentric ontology remains rather inconsistently connected to explicitly political concerns. This article aims to clarify this connection. On the one hand, it shows how his brand of democratic politics that answers to the challenges of the Anthropocene presupposes a heightened degree of political negativism and universalism that used to be excluded from this politics. On the other, it demonstrates how the discontinuities in ontology must be simultaneously thought of as the discontinuities in established political theorizing and to continuously interrogate the very conjuncture that reveals the relevance of these ontological and political discontinuities.


1970 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 64-81
Author(s):  
Albrecht Wellmer

If one were to write a history of the philosophy of science in the spirit of T. S. Kuhn, one would have to consider the model of scientific explanation which Popper proposed and Hempel and Oppenheim developed to be one of the great paradigms of contemporary analytical philosophy of science. This analogue to the historically important paradigms of the individual sciences seems to me to be justifiable for the following reasons: first, the Hempel—Oppenheim model (or HO-model, as I shall call it) claims universal methodological validity; second, discussions on the problem of explanation have centred on this model for some time; third, the recent cognitive progress in this field has been largely the result of the interrelation between criticism of this model on the one hand and its improvement and explication on the other hand; and lastly, this model stands for a particular comprehension of the problems and possibilities of science, a concept of quite important practical consequence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 705-722
Author(s):  
Leandro Rodriguez Medina

The study of the internationalization of science seems to be focused on the natural and formal sciences and on networks of the Global North. A shift towards the social sciences and a peripheral region (Mexico) is proposed here and shows that two different types of networks are enacted to face the challenges of internationalized research. On the one hand, there are strategic networks which internalize the pressure of incentives brought to bear on academics and tend to reproduce an over-professionalized idea of the academia. On the other, there are engaged networks that try to strengthen international bonds according to certain politico-ethical imperatives. In this article, relying on current research on internationalization of the Mexican social sciences, the author explores the usefulness of these ideal-types of networks and discusses their implications.


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