Cosmopolitanism and Globality: Kant, Arendt, and Beck on the Global Condition

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Axtmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Intercultural Dialogue ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Transnational Actors ◽  
Global Condition

The notion of cultural plurality and the idea of intercultural dialogue have been central to the discussion of cosmopolitanism in both political philosophy and social theory. This point is developed in an exposition of the arguments put forward by Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt and through a critical engagement with Ulrich Beck's social theory of cosmopolitanism as a “social reality.“ It is argued that Beck's analysis fails to convince as a sociological extension of a long philosophical tradition and that instead of Beck's macrostructural analysis it is more promising to formulate an actor-centred sociological theory on the transnationalization of social spaces and the formation of a “cosmopolitan“ consciousness or awareness of transnational actors.

scholarly journals The ‘duplex’ perspective as an attempt to resolve the key sociological dilemma

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-175
Author(s):  
I. Šulc
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Scientific Interest ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Sociological Thought

This article is a review of the books by the famous Czech sociologist, head of the Historical Sociology Chair of the Faculty for Humanities at the Charles University (Prague), Jiří Šubrt Historical Processes, Social Changes, and Modernization in the Sociological Perspective (Moscow: RUDN; 2017. 248 p.), Antinomies, Dilemmas, and Discussions in the Contemporary Sociological Thought: Essays on Social Theory (Moscow: RUDN; 2018. 280 p.), and Individualism, Holism and the Central Dilemma of Sociological Theory (Bingley: Emerald Publishig; 2019. 184 p.). All three works focus on the key sociological dilemma - individualism versus holism, which has been the main scientific interest of J. Šubrt in recent years. The relevance of this dilemma is obvious: individualism declares the subjectivity of the person, while holism insists on the objectivity of the supra-individual social reality, and this contradiction hinders the development of theoretical knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary to try to resolve this contradiction, which Šubrt does by critically analyzing the previous attempts to resolve this dilemma and by considering it in the ‘duplex’ perspective that reflects both voluntarist and social principles.

scholarly journals Searle's conception of institutional reality

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-198
Author(s):  
Ivan Mladenovic
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Central Notion ◽  
Institutional Reality ◽  
Rationality Assumption

This paper aims to present Searle's conception of institutional reality as an important contribution to contemporary political philosophy and social theory. Its importance notwithstanding, the two objections will be raised concerning the central notion of collective intentionality. Searle thinks of this notion as crucial for explaining human cooperation and social reality. The first objection is that Searle missed to take into account the rationality assumption in his explanation of cooperation and human interaction. The second objection is related to the previous one. Additionally, Serle missed to investigate the role of autonomous moral agent in the procedure of constructing social reality. Given this shortcoming there is no possibility for addressing the question of justice within Serle's theory of institutional reality.

scholarly journals The Application of Abductive and Retroductive Inference for the Design and Analysis of Theory-Driven Sociological Research

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha B. Meyer ◽  
Belinda Lunnay
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Heart Disease ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
Stage Model ◽  
Qualitative Research Design

Abductive and retroductive inference are innovative tools of analysis which enable researchers to refine and redevelop social theory. This paper describes and demonstrates how to apply these tools to strengthen sociological theory-driven empirical research outputs. To illustrate how abductive and retroductive inference work for the benefit of enhanced qualitative analysis we present the findings of a qualitative study that investigated heart disease patients’ trust in medical professionals (n=37). We outline the research process using a six-stage model developed by Danermark et al. (1997) that will guide researchers doing exploratory research in how to use abductive and retroductive inference in qualitative research design and analysis. A snapshot of the study findings are provided for illustration purposes. The reader will learn how the application of these under-utilized methodological tools provides a novel way of analyzing sociological research.

Historical Roots of Existentialism

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-71
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
Keyword(s):  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Context Features ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

This chapter shows the inheritance by existentialism of ideas from the philosophical tradition. Socrates serves for Kierkegaard and Marcel as a model for the authentic practice of philosophy and for initiating interior reflection of the self. Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus debated Stoicism’s understanding of freedom from external circumstances. Husserl and Heidegger interpreted Augustine’s conception of time, while Heidegger along with Beauvoir adapted, in a secular context, features of his conception of religious conversion. Augustine, Shakespeare, and Montaigne explored inner reflection and the nature of the self which came to be critically echoed in existentialist conceptions. The Enlightenment generated a philosophy of human freedom, defending the rational autonomy of the individual. Critical engagement of these ideas is shown to have shaped existentialist conceptions of authenticity, subjectivity, inwardness, freedom, and responsibility.

scholarly journals Social Theory after Strathern: An Introduction

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 7-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Street ◽  
Jacob Copeman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Subject And Object

Taking its cue from the articles in this special issue, this introduction explores what value a critical engagement with Strathern’s work might have for the social sciences by setting such an engagement in motion. It argues that Strathern’s writings are a particularly fruitful starting point for reflecting on our assumptions about what exactly theory might be and how and where it may be made to travel. Through the juxtaposition of articles published in this special issue and Strathern’s writings on Melanesia it explores the theorization of power in the social sciences as one arena in which Strathernian strategies might be harnessed in order to reflect on and extend Euro-American concepts. It also takes Strathern’s own interest in gardening as a metaphoric base for generating novel topologies of subject and object, the particular and the general, and the concrete and the abstract. This introduction does not provide a primer for ‘Strathernian theory’. Instead it reviews some of the original strategies and techniques – differentiation, staging of analogy, surprise, bifurcation, the echo, and an unremitting focus on how we make our familiar categories of analysis known to ourselves – that Strathern has used to ‘garden’ her theory: it can be used, if you like, as a conceptual toolkit.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
GerShun Avilez
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
African American ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Universal Negro Improvement Association ◽  
The 1960S

This introductory chapter provides a background of Black Nationalism. Black Nationalism is a political philosophy that has played an integral part in African American social thought from the nineteenth century forward. There are two main threads of this philosophical tradition: classical and modern. Classical Black Nationalism is a political framework guided primarily by concerns with the creation of a sovereign Black state and uplifting and “civilizing” the race. With regards to Black Nationalist thought in the twentieth century, two moments loom large: Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1910s/1920s and the Black Power Movement in the 1960s/1970s. Modern Black Nationalism is characterized by two specific shifts away from the foundational ideas that governed the classical form. It departs from its predecessor in the general lack of an explicit emphasis on an independent Black nation-state. It also shifts attention to mass culture and Black working-class life.

The Order of Body

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Iwona Krupecka ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Intercultural Dialogue ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Human Kind ◽  
Cultural Interactions

This text focuses on the possibility of acquiring universal knowledge (especially about values) by individual subjective consciousness as determined both corporeally and culturally. Along with the appearance of the “question” of the cultural Other (and with the cultural relativism as its other side) the attempts of European philosophers to establish a kind of a universal sphere—intellectual basis for an intercultural dialogue—became more intensive, but still often limited by their relation to the values and ideas of the only one culture. In other words, the attempts to search the community of human kind in an intellectual sphere often led to the universality being the “universalized particularity” (Wallerstein), maintained by the empty signifiers (Laclau). But there is also another philosophical tradition, in which the “universality” of ideas, concepts or values is being perceived as a quasi-universality or pluri-versality, mediated by human organic and cultural interactions, and is being derived rather from “beyond”—from the condition of embodiment—than from “above,” the pure intellectual cognition. I focus on three instances of moving from the order of body towards the quasi-universal values: on Bartolomé de Las Casas’s posing a problem of the universal values in the context of intercultural dialogue, on Michel de Montaigne’s reflections on human nature and Walter Mignolo’s naturalistic foundation of the comparative studies. I chose these examples, because they offer a clear and expressed attempt to reformulate the very idea of possible universality in the context of the desired intercultural dialogue, but within the optics of the embodied subjectivities.

THE CURIOUS HISTORICAL DETERMINISM OF RANDALL COLLINS

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
BARBARA MISZTAL ◽  
DIETER FREUNDLIEB
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Global Theory ◽  
China And India ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medieval China ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intellectual Creativity

Randall Collins' The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998) examines and compares communities of intellectuals linked as networks in ancient and medieval China and India, medieval and modern Japan, ancient Greece, medieval Islam and Judaism, medieval Christendom and modern Europe. The book has been the subject of many interesting and often positive reflections (for example, European Journal of Social Theory 3 (I), 2000; Review Symposium or reviews in Sociological Theory 19 (I), March 2001). However, it has also attracted a number of critical reviews (for example, reviews in Philosophy of the Social Sciences 30 (2), June 2000). Since not many books achieve such notoriety, it is worthwhile to rethink Collins' controversial approach. The aim of this paper is to encourage further debates of notions and issues presented in Collins' book. We would like, by joining two voices—sociologist and philosopher—to reopen discussion of Collins' attempt to discover a universality of patterns of intellectual change, as we think that more interpretative rather than explanatory versions of our respective disciplines can enrich our understanding of blueprints of intellectual creativity.

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