Beyond Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: The Foundations for Ethical Political Humanist Social Science

A piece that I wrote for The Hampton Institution: A Working-Class Think Tank has been posted.

Here is a snapshot:

It is pertinent to recognize that social reality is not an aura of perceived characteristics, of which there lays no unifying substance that could account for coherence. There is an evident danger in oversimplifying things. The attempt of this paper is to promote an approach to social science that engages issues concerning social ontology; that is, epistemic positions in regards to the means by which to uncover underlying interconnecting structures that constitute the manifestation of certain types of social reality. In this sense, the very notion of society itself amounts to an immensely complex entity - the broad functioning of which cannot be captured by obscure models of positivistic simplification.

Pragmatism does not tell us about the existence of anything. By not grasping the essence of human behavior that exhibits interconnections, we as human beings are left mystified about the world in which we live in. As such, "the attempt to define some underlying reality beneath the ever-changing surface of human phenomena, to delineate the common psychobiological structure of man, to specify the common blueprint of the human animal." (Wolf, 1974 [1964]: 33) We must abandon our Hegelian selves; social scientists have a responsibility to illuminate the intersections of the latent and visible content of human endeavor such that intelligible conclusions of human social life can be holistically developed.

Read rest here

A Short Note on Social Theory and Enquiry

The epistemological practicality of social theory is to draw a unifying essence, a sensibility of coherence, to latent functions alleged to govern manifested social phenomena, so as to strive to apperceive a richer, fuller, more comprehensive view of the social world. It establishes the appropriate consciousness needed to untie the Gordian knot of social complexity, in order to surpass rudimentary postulates concerning the nature of human behavior. Ergo, this invokes perspicacity, which is concerned with elucidating the intrinsic underlying causal relationships that ultimately rest on tendentious conceptions of what is deemed socially significant—the Hegelian notion of truth submerged and contained within the confines of appeared ‘being’— and thus furnishes meaning and understandability. In this sense, social theorizing gives us a perception of what possibilities exist for social action, highlighting ethical and practical horizons.

Since theory always serves as an ideational framework to provide explanatory accounts of social phenomena, assumptions concerning the nature of social reality are fundamental. As such, aspects of conscientiousness precede empirical investigation; it is merely impossible to separate the knowing mind from the object inquiry. Theoretical lenses are structured by deeper philosophical commitments, and, as a result, they will produce different types of stories, narratives, and debates, which ultimately reflect these commitments.

For this reason, theoretical approaches are distinguished on the basis of social purpose; there is no such thing as theory in itself, divorced, as alluded to above, from social reality. Theory is intrinsically normative for it incorporates a set of prescriptions as to how humans should conduct themselves in society. Thus, what Joseph Schumpeter labeled as ‘pre-analytical visions’ dictate modes of examination and inquisition. Second-order questions of ontology concerning human agency, and its relationship to social structures, lies at the beginning of any project of social-scientific enquiry. The implication is that it is merely impossible to define a social problem without considering what exactly is to be determined as problematic. ‘Pre-analytical visions’ will lead to entirely different attitudes towards social settings, and will have pertinent implications for social-scientific assessments of the human condition.