This article offers a new explanation for the sudden rise in popularity of French existentialism, in particular of Sartre’s version, in the mid-1940s. It develops a multidimensional account that recognizes both structural and cultural factors. The explanation differs from, and more fully addresses the complexity of the situation than, the two most prominent existing explanations: namely Anna Boschetti’s Bourdieu-inspired account and Randall Collins’s network-based approach. It is argued that, because of specific socio-political circumstances, the intellectual establishment became tainted and lost (...) legitimacy, with its aesthetic and philosophical views now regarded as outdated if not politically dangerous. This hiatus brought unprecedented publishing opportunities for a new philosophical current, and skilful public performances by the main protagonists helped its ascendancy. Most importantly, existentialist writers colluded with de Gaulle in portraying a cohesive and defiant French nation; and their philosophy, especially in its notion of responsibility, enabled sections of French society to assimilate and make sense of the recent past, whilst drawing a line underneath it so as to move forward. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author takes up aspects of Richard Rorty's account of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the light of such developments. In an autobiographical essay Rorty recounted an early phase of his intellectual life in which he became disillusioned with the Platonist "quest for certainty" that he had harbored up to that time. Rorty's parallel vision of Hegel as providing a philosophical form of this redescriptive path to freedom and thereby as providing a philosophical narrative without a "moral" (...) or any "aspect of eternity" is one that, of course, stands in stark contrast to the usual picture of Hegel's philosophy. Rorty had been obviously attracted to the strongly anti‐Cartesian dimensions of Hegel's account of "Anerkennung" in which mindedness is treated not as a fixed human capacity but as having a history in virtue of being dependent on historically variable forms of social interaction. (shrink)

Richard Rorty interpreted religion as a historically constituted part of culture. As a philosopher, he sought primarily to understand religion’s socio-cultural nature and role. His approach was socio-critical, intellectually sympathetic and humanistic. The paper provides an account of Rorty’s key phases in his philosophy of religion. During phase one, he was primarily interested in whether, in a democratic society, religion should simply be a private matter or also one of public concern. During phase two, his thinking on cultural politics developed (...) more broadly, and he wrote about ‘romantic polytheism’ and the future of religion, etc. In his writing from phase one, he portrays himself as a ‘secular humanist’ as well as an atheist and, in his writing from phase two, as a ‘non-theist’ and ‘anti-clericalist’. (shrink)

This article uses participant objectivation in sociology and philosophy as two knowledge fields to provide a reflexive comparison of their synced field effect in historical circumstances. Drawing on the philosopher and historian of science Gaston Bachelard, I theorize fielded knowledge as a social relation that combines the prior presence of folk knowledge with a socioanalytic exchange between field and folk that includes positions of either defense, replacement or critique. A comparison of post-Wittgenstein Anglophone philosophy and post-sixties American sociology describes their (...) mutual confrontation with folk psychology as an “epistemological obstacle” that generates a remarkable concern with action as a position-taking on the folk relation. A reflexive objectivation of folk knowledge is therefore necessary for a revised understanding of action that correlates with the distinction of sociology’s knowledge capital and how it fares as an explanatory resource in competitive circumstances. The article concludes by leveraging the synced field effect even further to make a recommendation that sociologists can increase the distinction of their knowledge capital by producing discourse that can recognize, legitimate and officialize experiences that otherwise remain obscure, nameless or impossible within the bounded universe of folk psychology. (shrink)

This article introduces a new, performative framework for analysing intellectuals and intellectual interventions. It elaborates on the strengths of this theoretical perspective vis-à-vis rival approaches and develops this frame of reference by exploring key constituent concepts, including positioning, script and staging. The article then exemplifies the framework and demonstrates its applicability by exploring a public intellectual performance by Jean-Paul Sartre. To conclude, the article reflects on recent shifts in public intellectual performances, especially changes that are relatively durable and connected to (...) the rise of new media. (shrink)

The article responds to Richard Lauer’s (2019) “Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?” The article concurs that “social ontology matters” for the conduct of research and theory in social science. It argues, however, that neither of the interpretations of the status of social ontology offered by Lauer is satisfactory (either apriori philosophical realism or pragmatist anti-realism). The article argues for a naturalized, fallibilist, and realist interpretation of the claims of social ontology and presents the field of social ontology (...) as the most abstract edge of social-science theorizing, subject to broad empirical constraints. The approach taken is anti-foundationalist in both epistemology and metaphysics. Ontological theorizing is part of the extended scientific enterprise of understanding the social world. Claims about the nature of the social world are not different in kind from more specific sociological claims about social class or individual rationality, to be justified ultimately by the coherence and explanatory success of the theories they help to create. At the same time, it is justified to treat the claims of social ontology as provisionally true, which supports a realist interpretation of the findings of social ontology. (shrink)

Richard Rorty suggests that we should stop looking for something common to us all, for universal justifi cations and truth. Rorty argues that focusing on a single truth sooner or later serves those who claim that there is a proper, true model of living. In the end, they use violence and cause pain, as they are driven by the idea that everyone should accept their truth. In this article I shall argue that such reasoning is not justifi ed and whether (...) we are universalists or constructivists, our actions may be the same and cause pain. At the same time, having the same beliefs will not stop us from acting differently. What matters is how we use a particular concept in accordance with our interests and not the concept itself. I shall also argue that dialog can help to prevent violence and that while Rorty is right, there are also a number of problems with that proposition. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper is concerned with the reasons for the emergence and dominance of analytic philosophy in America. It closely examines the contents of, and changing editors at, The Philosophical Review, and provides a perspective on the contents of other leading philosophy journals. It suggests that analytic philosophy emerged prior to the 1950s in an environment characterized by a rich diversity of approaches to philosophy and that it came to dominate American philosophy at least in part due to its effective promotion (...) by The Philosophical Review’s editors. Our picture of mid-twentieth-century American philosophy is different from existing ones, including those according to which the prominence of analytic philosophy in America was basically a matter of the natural affinity between American philosophy and analytic philosophy and those according to which the political climate at the time was hostile towards non-analytic approaches. Furthermore, our reconstruction suggests a new perspective on the nature of 1950s analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Scholars have recognized that contentious political action typically draws on relatively stable scripts for the enactment of claims making. But if such repertoires of political practice are generally reproduced over time, why and how do new modes of practice emerge? Employing a pragmatist perspective on social action, this article argues that change in political repertoires can be usefully understood as a result of situated political innovation—i.e., of the creative recombination of existing practices, through experimentation over time, by interacting political agents (...) for whom old repertoires were proving inadequate to the changing context of action. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by applying it to explain the historical emergence of a new set of populist mobilizing practices in early twentieth-century Peru. The results have implications for the study of political action and historical change. (shrink)

This article discusses why the theme of exile, marginality and the role of outsiders occupied Judith N. Shklar and how it impacted on her teaching and writing. More specifically it draws on Shklar’s last Harvard lectures and essays in which she reflects systematically on the questions of obligation and exile. It maintains that the relatively late turn towards exile is neither accident nor retrospective construction. Throughout her adult life Judith Shklar argued from a position of ‘optimal marginality’ – what has (...) been called ‘exile from exile’ − that allowed her to situate and present herself simultaneously as an outsider and to present her political theory as a kind of pedagogic and maieutic discourse. This was a way of turning traumatic personal experiences into a creative academic performance marked by true intellectual curiosity. (shrink)

The political liberalism of professors—an important occupational group and anomaly according to traditional theories of class politics—has long puzzled sociologists. This article sheds new light on the subject by employing a two-step analytic procedure. In the first step, we assess the explanatory power of the main hypotheses proposed over the last half century to account for professors’ liberal views. To do so, we examine hypothesized predictors of the political gap between professors and other Americans using General Social Survey data pooled (...) from 1974–2008. Results indicate that professors are more liberal than other Americans because a higher proportion possess advanced educational credentials, exhibit a disparity between their levels of education and income, identify as Jewish, non-religious, or non-theologically conservative Protestant, and express greater tolerance for controversial ideas. In the second step of our article, we develop a new theory of professors’ politics on the basis of these findings (though not directly testable with our data) that we think holds more explanatory promise than existing approaches and that sets an agenda for future research. (shrink)

In this article we assess the general claim that Durkheimian sociology has reactionary, fascist, or totalitarian affinities, and the specific claim that Marcel Déat’s Durkheimian background was a significant factor in his becoming a Nazi sympathizer. We do so by comparing the different trajectories of the interwar generation of young Durkheimians and find that only one, i.e. Déat, can be said to have become fascist. Indeed, what characterizes this generation of Durkheimians is the variety of the ways in which they (...) responded to the crises of the interwar years, both politically and scientifically. Nonetheless, most remained on the political left, and during the war many younger members of the Durkheimian group either fled the country or were involved in the French Resistance. As the only personal link between the Durkheimian group and fascism, Déat’s career is of particular interest. Instead of Déat’s being an orthodox Durkheimian, his successive engagements embody the intellectual fragmentation and heterodoxy characteristic of the interwar generation. We outline Déat’s career by foregrounding the conjunctural and dispositional factors that we believe point toward a more plausible explanation of Déat’s transformation than does an internalist history-of-ideas approach according to which his political evolution can be explained by reference to an underlying intellectual continuity. Déat’s fascism is better explained by the repeated frustration of his political and intellectual ambitions that ultimately led to a fateful accommodation with Nazi power than by any tendency inherent to Durkheimian sociology. (shrink)

The intellectual trajectories of social scientists Robert N. Bellah and Clifford Geertz are compared as a case study in the production of successful interdisciplinary work. Geertz and Bellah started from a similar position, in terms of scholarly habits, network centrality, and symbolic capital. However, while Geertz became an interdisciplinary star and left his mark in disciplines as diverse as history, sociology, and cultural studies, Bellah’s interdisciplinary appeal was more limited, while his ability to speak to the general public as a (...) public intellectual was unmatched by Geertz. We thus review Bellah’s and Geertz’s parallel careers using a multidimensional analytical model intended to complete current field-based and performative-pragmatist models of intellectual success, arguing that interdisciplinary success can be accounted for by a combination of local ecological factors, images of intellectual work, and texts showing a high degree of cross-disciplinary fluency. (shrink)

Rorty saw the course of philosophy in the twentieth century as an effort to part from two major philosophical trends, namely historicism and naturalism, only to inevitably return at the end of a tortuous path to these very same tendencies. If we can concede without major objections Rorty’s diagnosis of the trends in contemporary continental and analytical philosophy, which seem to reveal the exhaustion of modern philosophy, based as it has been on epistemology, we must, on the other hand, examine (...) carefully the three main questions that this diagnosis leaves open: How does Rorty reconcile continental idealist subjectivism with materialistic behaviorism? Is it really inevitable that philosophy blinded by Geist are unable to question prevalent beliefs? Finally, is the acceptance of a liberalism that is not able to give reasons for itself the most effective and pragmatic liberalism? In answering these questions, it may not be possible to avoid a non-dogmatic, but pragmatic, metaphysics: a vocabulary of vocabularies that allows Rorty to speak of the problems of justice in Plato and Rawls, of the soul in Aristotle and Descartes, of the dystopias in Moro and Orwell. On pragmatic terms, perhaps a modest version of a metaphysic’s “vocabulary” turns out to be as legitimate and practical as any other vocabulary. (shrink)

This article is one of the first sociological explorations of power struggles between intellectuals where matters of life and death are literally at stake. It counters the prevailing tendency within sociology to study intellectuals within confined academic institutions where power struggles are limited to matters of symbolic and institutional recognition. This study explores the conflict between collaborationist and Resistance intellectuals at the end of the Second World War in France, and it focuses in particular on the purge of collaborationist intellectuals (...) which culminated in several high profile trials. This article shows that the arguments and meta-arguments put forward in these trials led to broader intellectual debates outside the courtroom. These debates not only centred on the notion of the writer’s responsibility, but also dealt with anxieties about the disintegrative forces of modern society. Whereas collaborationist intellectuals portrayed their writing as either separate from politics or rescuing a defunct or degenerate nation, Resistance intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre were keen to portray collaborators as outsiders, both socially and sexually, lacking in social integration and subservient to a strong external force. The Resistance intellectuals saw the notion of individual responsibility not as antithetical but as integral to the remaking of the French nation, and this concept would become the cornerstone of the reshaping of the intellectual landscape in the post-war era in France. (shrink)

This article sets out the basic principles of a new theory of intellectual interventions centred round the notion of positioning. Intellectual interventions are seen as ways in which intellectuals locate themselves in the socio-political and intellectual field, thereby also positioning others. The existing contributions to the study of intellectuals often take the self-concepts or dispositions of intellectuals to be fixed, and they tend to focus on the causes and motivations behind intellectual interventions. Challenging this perspective, the theory proposed substitutes a (...) vocabulary of effects for the existing vocabulary of intentions and causes: rather than speculating on the sociological determinants or purposes that underlie an intellectual intervention, this theory explores its effects for the symbolic and institutional recognition of the author(s) and for the diffusion of the ideas propagated. (shrink)

In this paper is considered the linguistic approach to the problem of the relationship between a human being and reality. If in the Christian tradition language was given by God and God endowed human beings with the ability to name objects, then in the 17th century German speaking philosophers, following Descartes’ turn to the ego, had changed this thought. Since Herder and Humboldt language has been considered not as a representation of reality, but as a representation of a human mind. (...) These thinkers were the first who revealed the inseparable interdependence of human thinking and language, the influence of language on the socio- cultural lifeworld of human beings, and the role of language in the development of the world-view. (shrink)

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) developed a distinctive and controversial brand of pragmatism that expressed itself along two main axes. One is negative—a critical diagnosis of what Rorty takes to be defining projects of modern philosophy. The other is positive—an attempt to show what intellectual culture might look like, once we free ourselves from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge in which the traditional problems of epistemology and metaphysics (and indeed, in Rorty's view, the self-conception of modern philosophy) are rooted. The (...) centerpiece of Rorty's critique is the provocative account offered in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979, hereafter PMN). In this book, and in the closely related essays collected in Consequences of Pragmatism (1982, hereafter CP), Rorty's principal target is the philosophical idea of knowledge as representation, as a mental mirroring of a mind-external world. Providing a contrasting image of philosophy, Rorty has sought to integrate and apply the milestone achievements of Dewey, Hegel and Darwin in a pragmatist synthesis of historicism and naturalism. Characterizations and illustrations of a post-epistemological intellectual culture, present in both PMN (part III) and CP (xxxvii-xliv), are more richly developed in later works, such as Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989, hereafter CIS), in the popular essays and articles collected in Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), and in the four volumes of philosophical papers, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991, hereafter ORT); Essays on Heidegger and Others (1991, hereafter EHO); Truth and Progress (1998, hereafter TP); and Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007, hereafter PCP). In these writings, ranging over an unusually wide intellectual territory, Rorty offers a highly integrated, multifaceted view of thought, culture, and politics, a view that has made him one of the most widely discussed philosophers in our time. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is to reconstruct, critically evaluate, and apply the pluralism of Paul Feyerabend. I conclude by suggesting future points of contact between Feyerabend’s pluralism and topics of interest in contemporary philosophy of science. I begin, in Chapter 1, by reconstructing Feyerabend’s critical philosophy. I show how his published works from 1948 until 1970 show a remarkably consistent argumentative strategy which becomes more refined and general as Feyerabend’s thought matures. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend develops a persuasive (...) case against rationalism, or the thesis that there exist normative and exclusive rules of scientific rationality. In Chapter 2, I reconstruct Feyerabend’s pluralism and detail its relationship to his humanitarianism and epistemological anarchism. I understand Feyerabend’s pluralism as the combination of the principles of proliferation and tenacity. I show the evolution and justification of these principles from Feyerabend’s early papers until the late 1970s. In Chapter 3, I defend Feyerabend’s pluralism from its most prominent criticisms. I then clarify that Feyerabend’s pluralism amounts to a conception of the logic of theory pursuit and modify his view using insights from C.S. Peirce, Pierre Duhem, and Michael Polanyi. From Peirce, I show how economic, sociological, and value-laden features of theory pursuit may be used to constrain proliferation and tenacity. From Duhem and Polanyi, I try to show the proper role of tacit knowledge within a Feyerabendian framework. Finally, I show what implications Feyerabend’s pluralism has for models of distributing funds within scientific communities. I contend that it provides a more promising model that the ‘well-ordered science’ proposal advanced by numerous philosophers and social scientists. Specifically, I aim to understand what taking Feyerabend’s pluralism seriously entails for principles of balancing funding allocation decisions and the role of peer-review in evaluating the potential success of research proposals. I conclude by suggesting future lines of research for further analyzing and applying Feyerabend’s pluralism. (shrink)