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In comparison to Husserl and Heidegger, Max Scheler's philosophy of time as first presented here, is considerably wider in scope. Using posthumous manuscripts, Frings shows that Scheler conceived the origin of time in the self-activating center of individual and universal life as threefold "absolute" time of a four-dimensional expanse. This serves as a basis for establishing the phenomenon of objective time in multiple steps of constitutionality, including the physical field theory and theory of relativity. For Scheler, objective time, even though anchored in absolute time, deserves "maximum attention" in a technological society. Frings focuses here with Scheler on time experience of values and among social groups, time experiences in the mind-set of capitalism, in politics and morals, in population dynamics, and time experiences in the process of aging, all of which were signposts in Scheler's thought before his early demise.
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
This book analyzes Talcott Parsons' largest-scale effort to overcome the relativism and subjectivism of the social sciences. Harold J. Bershady sets forth Parsons' version of the characteristics desirable for social knowledge, showing that Parsons deems the relativistic and subjectivistic arguments as powerful challenges to the validity of social knowledge. Bershady maintains that all Parsons' intellectual labors exhibit a deep and abiding concern for social knowledge. From his first major work in the 1930s to his later writings on social evolution, Parsons' theoretical aim has been to provide an unassailable answer to the question, "how is social knowledge possible?"Ideological criticisms of Parsons' work, Bershady argues, not only miss his awareness of ideological influences upon social thought, but also miss the logical and epistemological strands of his thinking. This book sheds light on the persistent importance of the work of a major theoretical sociologist of the twentieth century. It also brings into the open and discusses issues of deepest concern to the philosophy and methodology of all of the social sciences.
Modern sociology owes its existence and the progress it has made to the integration of differing kinds of orientations. In this work, first published 1987, Professor Richard Münch sets out to reformulate the theory of action, a notion central to sociology and one to which all schools of thought within sociology have contributed. He gives an exposition of the voluntaristic theory of action as found in Talcott Parson's work, reconstructing and extending Parson's theory from the perspective of the present-day level of development. In this way he both integrates opposing orientations to action theory and presents the voluntaristic theory of action in a readable and teachable from.
Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems is one of the most ambitious attempts to create a coherent account of global modernity. Primarily interested in the fundamental structures of modern society, however, Luhmann himself paid relatively little attention to regional variations. The aim of this book is to seek out modernity in one particular location: The United States of America. Gathering essays from a group of cultural and literary scholars, sociologists, and philosophers, Addressing Modernity reassesses the claims of American exceptionalism by setting them in the context of Luhmann’s conception of modernity, and explores how social systems theory can generate new perspectives on what has often been described as the first thoroughly modern nation. As a study of American society and culture from a Luhmannian vantage point, the book is of interest to scholars from both American Studies and social systems theory in general.
Talcott Parsons was the leading theorist in American sociology—and perhaps in world sociology—from the 1940s to the 1970s. He created the dominant school of thought that made "Parsonian" a standard description of a theoretical attempt to unify social science, as reflected in the fact that his contributions to the discipline cover a range of issues, including medicine, the family, religion, law, the economy, race relations, and politics—to name but a few. This volume brings together leading scholars working in the field of "Parsonian Studies" to explore the background of Parsons’s work, the content of his oeuvre, and his subsequent influence. Thematically organized, it covers Parsonsâ...
A beautifully written, trenchant, and moving memoir, When Marx Mattered follows Harold J. Bershady's odyssey from childhood through his coming of intellectual age. The wounds and pleasures of his childhood include fear of Nazis, poverty, the joys and constraints of Jewishness, his caring family and love of music, and the confusion surrounding World War II. In this book, Bershady describes his teenage encounter with Marxism and how it provided some understanding of the world and hope for peace. Bershady gives us a serious portrayal of the evolution of scholarly judgment, but also a social history of the second half of the twentieth century, refracted through the author's own experiences in wh...
This book brings together a sensitive understanding of love and an unusually careful, even painstaking, analysis of the enormous but often neglected role of morality and the virtues in love. Martin's discussions of such virtues as caring, courage, fidelity, and honesty are superb, the examples well-chosen, the argument personal but nevertheless rigorous, the prose accessible and enjoyable to read.