If Philosophy Marries Sociology: Some Reflections on the Innovations they Bring (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Idea of Philosophical Sociology
This article introduces the idea of philosophical sociology as an enquiry into the relationships between implicit notions of human nature and explicit conceptualizations of social life within sociology. Philosophical sociology is also an invitation to reflect on the role of the normative in social life by looking at it sociologically and philosophically at the same: normative self-reflection is a fundamental aspect of sociology's scientific tasks because key sociological questions are, in the last instance, also philosophical ones. For the normative to emerge, we need to move away from the reductionism of hedonistic, essentialist or cynical conceptions of human nature. Sociology needs equally to grasp the conceptions of the good life, justice, democracy or freedom whose normative contents depend on more or less articulated conceptions of our shared humanity rather than on strategic considerations. The idea of philosophical sociology is then sustained on three main pillars and I use them to structure this article: (1) a revalorization of the relationships between sociology and philosophy; (2) a universalistic principle of humanity that works as a major regulative idea of sociological research, and; (3) an argument on the social (immanent) and pre--social (transcendental) sources of the normative in social life. As invitations to embrace posthuman cyborgs, non-human actants and material cultures proliferate, philosophical sociology offers the reminder that we still have to understand more fully who are the human beings that populate the social world.
Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 2020
Challenging the still-established separation between philosophy and sociology, Daniel Chernilo claims in his latest book that, in order to defend today a universal humanism against the relativist post-humanist sensibility of contemporary culture, we should first encourage the coherent intellectual development of a new kind of 'philosophical sociology'. This future sociology seems doomed to be all the more philosophical that Chernilo rejects from the start that epistemological approach, advocated by Arnold Gehlen or Helmuth Plessner, which conceived 'philosophical anthropology' as a conceptual synthesis of dispersed scientific discoveries concerning human beings. Indeed, while arguing that only a firm grips on the distinctive properties of our species can give a foundation to a universalistic principle of humanity, Chernilo comes to read sociologists like Margaret Archer or Luc Boltanski only after having first endorsed the peculiar philosophical orientation of those phenomenological thinkers, such as Hannah Arendt or Charles Taylor, who tried to extract some elementary categories referring to specific human capacities from an unprejudiced exploration of our pre-scientific life-world. Although a deeper reflection on the epistemological procedures (e.g. transcendental arguments) enabling the justified introduction of anthropological categories from given ordinary experience could have helped the philosophical reader to better understand the ultimate reasons for the theses advanced throughout the book, the main question raised by Chernilo's quest for a universal humanism is not methodological. It is rather the very human ontology underlying his overall approach what deserves further discussion, at least from the perspective of a political philosophy that is supposed to follow a sociological viewpoint. There seems to be indeed a tension between the socio-anthropological perspective displayed in the course of his quite original readings and the final political-philosophical assessment presented in the epilogue, where Chernilo tries to summarize the main achievements of his hermeneutical confrontations with major figures of both philosophy and sociology. If one takes his inaugural reading of Arendt's seminal work, developed after having set the framework of the debate on humanism, one can only be struck by the emphasis placed on the social, against the letter of The Human Condition. As it is well known, by reducing 'social sciences' to an extension of political economy's key concepts, Arendt tried to liquidate any sociological viewpoint: her 'world' is common only because it is 'political', disclosed as such by the 'words' exchanged by a 'plurality' of agents interacting in a
Prospects of the Sociology of Philosophy
The article presents some key aspects of the approach called sociology of philosophy, as represented by Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Colins and others. Comparisons are made with the philosophical research programme, developed by Dieter Henrich, which goes under the name constellation research. One thing that unites the sociology of philosophy and constellation research is an interest in antagonistic constellations involving rivalry, competition and controversy. A few references to the case of Rorty are included in the discussion.
Towards a Sociology of Philosophy
Acta Sociologica, 2010
The article presents and discusses the sociology of philosophy as a theorybased empirically practised sociological subdivision that came to the fore in the 1980s. In the first part, the type of empirical material and the forms of data presentation that are available to the sociology of philosophy are discussed. In the second part, the focus is on two important attempts, those of Randall Collins and Pierre Bourdieu, to develop general sociological theories about the relationship between social being and thought. The main lesson to be drawn from them is that in normal circumstances philosophical thought cannot be reduced to socio-political conditions outside the attention space (Collins) or the philosophical field (Bourdieu). In the concluding part, we tentatively sketch a programme for a future sociology of philosophy. All in all, the sociology of philosophy is seen as an emerging new subdivision within sociology, the potential of which is far from exhausted with respect to theoretical development as well as empirical approaches.
Philosophy, Cultural Philosophy and Sociology
Simmel Studies
Every sociology rests on representations that are not explicitly thematised, and are in concordance with an atmosphere and cultural formations. These representations correspond to what Panofsky called a mental habit. which is transferable from one field of activity or thought to another. The essay shows how both the themes of individuality and of Bildung play back on G.…
Social Epistemology: A Philosophy for Sociology or a Sociology of Philosophy?
Sociology, 2000
About a dozen years ago I started a journal and wrote a book, both with the name social epistemology (Fuller 1988; Fuller 1996). In the intervening years a few intrepid philosophers and sociologists have tried to map this area, and the two books under review represent two very important, yet very different, efforts from both sides of the disciplinary divide. But before proceeding further, I should say that 'social epistemology' is not the only rubric that philosophers and sociologists have used to map a common conceptual space. To be sure, in the days when Popper and Wittgenstein aroused passions,'philosophy of the social sciences' could lay fair claim to that goal. Much of the work of Gouldner, Habermas, Foucault and Bourdieu is also easily interpreted as exercises in social epistemology, as each in its own way theorises the place of the knower in the production of social knowledge. However, at the same time, there has been considerable resistance to social epistemology amongst both philosophers and sociologists in Britain. (It is no coincidence that Collins and Goldman are American.) Instead, what may be called social ontology turns out to be the terms in which philosophy and sociology have sought common ground, and much of what today passes for 'social theory' -especially that which takes Anthony Giddens as a significant presence -falls under this rubric (Fuller 1995).