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Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought (RLE Social Theory)

2020-08-26 Political Science
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Release : 2020-08-26
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 838/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought (RLE Social Theory) by : Frank Hearn

Download or read book Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought (RLE Social Theory) written by Frank Hearn. This book was released on 2020-08-26. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has reason, believed since the Enlightenment to be the ally of freedom in the search for a better, more humanly satisfying world, been reduced to a technical rationality that has actually impoverished the bases of human freedom? What might be the options and obligations for sociologists who wish to restore reason to its proper status? Working within the tradition of C. Wright Mills and Jurgen Habermas, Frank Hearn sets out to answer these questions. He surveys the treatment of the relation between reason and freedom in both the classical tradition (especially the writings of Saint-Simon, Comte, Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Freud) and an increasingly significant segment of social thought and criticism (and, for example, in the contrasting visions of Daniel Bell and Christopher Lasch.) He then analyses both the concrete social and historical forms of expression taken by what Mills calls 'rationality without reason' and their impact on individual autonomy and the freedoms associated with democratic politics. Finally, he develops Mills's and Habermas's claims that the cultivation of democratic publics and a critical social theory committed to a vibrant public life are indispensable to the protection and revitalization of the values of reason and freedom and of the practices they entail. This book updates and enriches Mills's influential argument by demonstrating its affinity with critical theory, by showing its contributions to a critical understanding of the classical tradition, and by showing its implications for contemporary social, political, and economic developments.

Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought

1985-01-01 Social Science
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Release : 1985-01-01
Genre : Social Science
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Book Rating : 959/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought by : Frank Hearn

Download or read book Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought written by Frank Hearn. This book was released on 1985-01-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Choice, Rationality and Social Theory (RLE Social Theory)

2014-08-21 Social Science
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Release : 2014-08-21
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 142/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Choice, Rationality and Social Theory (RLE Social Theory) by : Barry Hindess

Download or read book Choice, Rationality and Social Theory (RLE Social Theory) written by Barry Hindess. This book was released on 2014-08-21. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Choice, Rationality and Social Theory is a powerful rebuttal of the remarkably influential theories underlying 'rational choice analysis'. Rational choice analysis maintains that social life is principally to be explained as the outcome of rational choices on the part of individual actors. Adherents of this view include not only philosophers, political scientists and sociologists, but also prominent politicians in Western governments – notably of the United Kingdom and the United States. Rational choice analysis is said to be rigorous, capable of great technical sophistication, and able to generate powerful explanations on the basis of a few, relatively simple theoretical assumptions. Barry Hindess argues that the theory is seriously deficient, first, because there are important actors in the modern world other than human individuals, and second, because it says nothing about those processes of deliberation that play an important part in actors' decisions. The use of highly questionable assumptions about actors and their rationality has the effect of closing off important areas of intellectual inquiry and ignoring the reality of certain forms of thought and the social conditions on which they depend. These points are established through detailed examination of the concepts of the actor and of rationality – providing an overall argument that constitutes a serious challenge to any adherent of rational choice analysis.

Social Theory and Christian Thought (RLE Social Theory)

2014-08-07 Social Science
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Release : 2014-08-07
Genre : Social Science
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Book Rating : 09X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Social Theory and Christian Thought (RLE Social Theory) by : Werner Stark

Download or read book Social Theory and Christian Thought (RLE Social Theory) written by Werner Stark. This book was released on 2014-08-07. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost all the great religious thinkers of the past have developed a social as well as theological doctrine, but their sociology was as a rule merely implicit in their work or at best half formulated so that careful study and analysis is needed to bring it out. This is the task which Dr. Stark has set himself in the present essays. He has searched the writings of St. Augustine, Paschal, Newman and Kierkegaard for the sociological ideas they contain and shows that their social philosophies were varied, profound, fascinating and surprisingly definite. Dr. Stark seeks the theological conceptions present in, and basic to, the teachings of some outstanding secular sociologists, economists and philosophers, such as Adam Smith, Kant, Hegel, Marx, the Darwinians, Bergson Scheler and Meinecke and proves that their systems were built around a religious centre even though they themselves were at times unaware of it.

A Social Theory of Freedom

2016-03-17 Philosophy
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Release : 2016-03-17
Genre : Philosophy
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Book Rating : 95X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis A Social Theory of Freedom by : Mariam Thalos

Download or read book A Social Theory of Freedom written by Mariam Thalos. This book was released on 2016-03-17. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one.

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