Frithjof Nungesser

Marcel Mauss: »Der obligatorische Ausdruck von Gefühlen (australische orale Bestattungsrituale)« und weitere Schriften

Wie im Werk seines Onkels Emile Durkheim spielen Emotionen auch in den Arbeiten von Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) von Beginn an eine bedeutende Rolle. Emotionen sind auf den ersten Blick selten der vornehmliche Untersuchungsgegenstand. Jedoch wird die affektiv-emotionale Dimension des Sozialen in verschiedenen Studien auf je unterschiedliche Weise als ein wesentlicher Erklarungsfaktor sozialer und kultureller Phanomene eingefuhrt.

The Evolution of Pragmatism

The pragmatist theory of history, action, and sociality can be understood as the result of a specific interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which has nothing in common with teleological, reductionist, or social Darwinist evolutionary models. This historical claim will be developed in three steps. First, I will show why Darwin’s theory was so attractive to the classical pragmatists and how their conception of history was affected by their reading of Darwin. Second, I will illustrate how the pragmatist understanding of individual action was influenced by contemporary discussions in evolutionary theory, physiology, and psychology. Third, I will discuss pragmatism’s “cultural naturalism” (John Dewey), according to which a new, autonomous level of sociocultural change emerges as a result of the process of biological evolution. The reconstruction of pragmatist evolutionary thought not only aims to achieve a better historical understanding of pragmatism but also implies a systematic and theoretical claim . As will be argued in the last section of this paper, the timeliness and continuing relevance of pragmatism is largely due to the fact that it took shape in a transdisciplinary context and remained an “empirically responsible” theory (Erkki Kilpinen). Currently, various innovative developments within psychology, the cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, and ethology are connected with the core insights of pragmatism, thereby supporting the argument that pragmatism is still evolving.