This book examines the political and moral challenges that face the vast majority of human beings who consider themselves to be members of a nation. It explores nationality through the difficulties and conflicts that have arisen throughout history, and discusses nations and nationalism from social, philosophical, and anthropological perspectives. In this fascinating Very Short Introduction, Steven Grosby looks at the nation in history, the territorial element in nationality, and the complex ways nationality has co-existed with religion, and shows the close (...) link between being human and the concept of nationalism. (shrink)

Plessner, Helmuth, The Limits of Community: A Critique of Social Radicalism (reviewed by Steven Grosby).

Edward Shils was a prominent American sociologist and social theorist who spent much of his career in Britain. He was the translator of Karl Mannheim and collaborator with Talcott Parsons. His own social theory concentrated on the relation of primary groups and intellectuals to the center of society, which he conceived of in terms of its charismatic character. Unlike Parsons, he was especially concerned with the conflicts between the social attachments of people, and especially with those involving the transcendental. These (...) conflicts were the basis of his account of intellectuals and their response to their own society. (shrink)

__Theory of Objective Mind__ is the first book of the important German social philosopher Hans Freyer to appear in English. The work of the neo-Hegelian Freyer, especially the much admired __Theory of Objective Mind__, had a notable influence on German thinkers to follow and on America's two greatest social theorists, Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils._ Freyer took what remained valid in G. F. Hegel's work and drew upon the subsequent insights of the early work of Edmund Husserl in an effort (...) to understand the nature of culture by clarifying methodologically the process of Verstehen, the relation between life and objectivated form and the formation of the historical world as described by Wilhelm Dilthey and especially Georg Simmel. _Theory of Objective Mind__ remains a thought-provoking source of insight into the nature of human cognition and action, and necessarily of culture itself. Indeed, its pressing relevance for social philosophy today is clear from its analysis of nationality as a form of objective mind. No less relevant are its valuable analyses of creativity, tradition, and revolution as philosophical problems. For all those who seek to understand culture not just historically or sociologically but above all philosophically, __Theory of Objective Mind__ is indispensable. (shrink)

These brief reflections extend the discussion of Louis H. Swartz review essay “Reflections on Shils, Sacred and Civil Ties, and Universities.” I note the influence Shils and Polanyi had upon one another and comment on issues related to Shils’s thought which Swartz raises in connection with material in three recent, posthumously published volumes of Shils’s writings.

In the aftermath of, and improvement upon, Toward a General Theory of Action, there is to be found a philosophical problem lurking in Polanyi’s and Shils’ writings on tradition: in what ways the principle of methodological individualism should be qualified so as better to understand human action.