Abstract
In Chapter 3, I sketched out very briefly the way in which I think realism should deal with the interrelated issues of interpretation, common sense, consensus (in the sense of progress in science) etc. In Chapters 4 and 5, I worked through these claims in more detail, presenting the main themes of hermeneutics and critical theory and trying to show that they can, after all, be incorporated within the realist naturalist position advanced in Chapter 1.
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References
Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 106, 331.
Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 174.
Derek Sayer, Marx’s Method 2nd edn (Brighton: Harvester, 1979), pp. 8 ff.
Capital, vol. 1, p. 127.
I. I. Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1973). First published in 1928.
See also J. Mepham and D.-H. Ruben (eds) Issues in Marxist Philosophy, vols 1–3, (Brighton: Harvester, 1979).
See, for example, Leszek Kolakowski, ‘Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth’, in Kolakowski, Marxism and Beyond (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969; Paladin, 1971); Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx (London: New Left Books, 1971); Nathan Rotenstreich, Basic Problems of Marx’s Philosophy (New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).
Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness (London: Merlin, 1971), p. 130.
Cf. Outhwaite, Concept Formation, pp. 85 f., 143 ff.
See Chapter 7 below.
On the other hand, Marx’s lack of precision in the area of metatheory has generated a good deal of unnecessary confusion.
Cf. Douglas House, ‘Durkheim and the Realist Philosophy of Social Science’, Sociological Analysis and Theory, vol. 5, no. 2, 1975, pp. 237–54.
Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952) ch. 5.
Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (London: Allen & Unwin, 1915).
Gillian Rose, Hegel Contra Sociology, p. 1.
Cf. Russell Keat and John Urry, Social Theory as Science, 2nd edn (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, 1982), pp. 84 f.; Ted Benton, The Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 100.
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, pp. 34 ff.
Keat and Urry, Social Theory as Science, p. 85.
Max Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1 (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), p. 19 (translation modified). He first uses the term ‘Wirklichkeitswissenschaft’ in Roscher and Knies (New York: Free Press, 1975), p. 55, though not yet in relation to sociology. Cf. Horst Baier, Von der Erkenntnistheorie zur Wirklichkeitswissenschaft (Habilitationsschrift: University of Münster, 1969), p. 141.
‘Objectivity in Social Science & Social Policy’ in Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press, 1949), p. 106.
Ibid., p. 94.
Ibid., p. 106.
Ibid., p. 94.
Economy and Society, vol. I, p. 4.
Cf. Baier, Von der Erkenntnistheorie..., pp. 194–202. See also, in particular, H. Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1902); Carl Menger, Problems of Economics and Sociology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963).
Quoted in Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography (New York: Wiley, 1975), p. 677.
Weber, ‘Objectivity’, p. 72. I have used the much better translation provided by Thomas Burger, Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1976).
‘The Logic of the Cultural Sciences’, in Max Weber’s, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, pp. 185 f. Translation modified.
Weber, Roscher and Knies, p. 190.
Weber, ‘Objectivity’, p. 112.
Ibid., p. 106.
Ibid., pp. 83 f.
Cf. Harold Bershady, Ideology and Social Knowledge (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).
Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, paperback edn, 1968, pp. 101 ff.).
Ibid., p. 730.
Cf. Thomas Burger, ‘Talcott Parsons, the Problem of Order in Sociology and the Program of an Analytical Sociology’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 83, no. 2, p. 324.
Ibid., pp. 330 f.
Ibid., p. 330.
Ibid., p. 332.
It is interesting to note that Althusser makes a similar claim about the relationship between sciences and their objects, and I think it could be argued that it has similarly unfortunate consequences for his very different substantive theorising about social reality.
Note that this principle has not always been adequately applied in realist theories. Rom Harré operates with a rather curious distinction between the domains of sociology and social psychology Social Being, p. 349, which Bhaskar has at times taken up (The Possibility of Naturalism, p. 45).
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© 1987 William Outhwaite
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Outhwaite, W. (1987). Critical Hermeneutics, Realism and the Sociological Tradition. In: New Philosophies of Social Science. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18946-5_7
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