Philip Walsh

The Human Condition as social ontology: Hannah Arendt on society, action and knowledge

Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from ‘society’, and political theory from the social sciences. This conventional view has had the effect of distracting attention from many of Arendt’s most important insights concerning the constitution of ‘society’ and the significance of the social sciences. In this article, I argue that Hannah Arendt’s distinctions between labor, work and action, as these are discussed in The Human Condition and elsewhere, are best understood as a set of claims about the fundamental structures of human societies. Understanding Arendt in this way introduces interesting parallels between Arendt’s work and both classical and contemporary sociology. From this I draw a number of conclusions concerning Arendt’s conception of ‘society’, and extend these insights into two contemporary debates within contemporary theoretical sociology: the need for a differentiated ontology of the social world, and the changing role that novel forms of knowledge play in contemporary society as major sources of social change and order.

Is a Post-philosophical Sociology Possible? Insights from Norbert Elias’s Sociology of Knowledge

This article investigates the status of Norbert Elias’s conception of the sociology of knowledge as the means to provide a new epistemological security for sociology. The author of the article argues that this translates into an effective critique of the underlaboring model of the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences, which is consistent with Elias’s attempt to consolidate his own sociological theory. Nevertheless, the author argues that Elias’s sociology of knowledge runs into problems in its attempt to evade the problem of relativism in explanation, and in its conception of human agency.

Herbert Marcuse and contemporary social theory: Beyond the consumer society

Herbert Marcuses vision of liberation from the ‘affluent society’ constitutes one of the most significant interventions into public life of any philosopher in the last half of the 20th century. Yet his major works are little read today in philosophy departments in North America, where, if first-generation Frankfurt School critical theory is on the menu, it is usually represented by the work of Theodor W. Adorno. Within North American and, to a lesser extent, European sociology, on the other hand, Marcuse is still generally acknowledged as an important influence, although the extent and nature of his legacy remains unclear. This article examines the relevance and applicability of some of Marcuses theories to recent developments within sociology, and especially to the growing and influential critical literature within the sociology of consumption, in which ideas that originate in first-generation Frankfurt School theory are clearly operative, but rarely acknowledged.1 The scope of the paper is restricted to three of Marcuses most influential theoretical claims: (1) An underlying ‘performance principle’ has become a primary determining factor in shaping the economic, social and cultural systems of advanced industrial societies. (2) Resistance to the general developmental tendencies of these societies is being contained and weakened through a process of ‘repressive desublimation’; and (3) The human activity of play, understood as a distinct field of free (i.e., unalienated) human activity, is threatened by the ascendancy of instrumental rationality. These claims are evaluated in terms of their applicability to the problem of self-experience and the threat to individuality that is a principal feature of contemporary consumer capitalism.

On Post-Philosophical Sociology A Reply to Richard Kilminster

This article responds to Richard Kilminster’s critique of my earlier article published in Philosophy of the Social Sciences (2014), which raised questions about the status and limits of Norbert Elias’s sociology of knowledge. The article takes issue with Kilminster’s claim that the earlier piece identified “fatal” flaws in Elias’s approach and aimed at re-asserting philosophical authority over the social sciences. It is argued that, on the contrary, the earlier article was broadly sympathetic to Elias’s visions of both the sociology of knowledge and of the social sciences more generally. However, some of the concepts that Elias regarded as central to these, especially the key notion of “social processes,” are highly problematic, and others have been superseded by more recent developments. This article also defends the need for “under-laboring” within the social sciences, arguing that it does not carry the kinds of connotations that Kilminster imagines.

Norbert Elias and Hannah Arendt on Philosophy, Sociology, and Science

Norbert Elias and Hannah Arendt are both major twentieth-century thinkers, lionized for their striking and powerfully original visions. Yet rarely are they treated together or their perspectives compared. The foremost reason for this is doubtless the sharply divergent ways in which they both conceived of the value and significance of sociology. Elias was, throughout his life, an indefatigable defender of the discipline, seeking to promote its autonomy and to critique traditional philosophy from a sociological perspective. Arendt’s early allegiance to Existenz philosophy drew her to heavily criticize what she perceived to be the pretensions of sociology, and although in her later years she became more sharply critical of philosophy, she always retained an intense, even vituperative, dislike of sociology.1

Knowledge and the constitution of society: Dead ends and ways forward in the sociology of knowledge:

This paper discusses the roots of knowledge society theory – an emerging paradigm within theoretical sociology – in classical sociology of knowledge, and draws some conclusions about the former’s validity, relevance and shortcomings. The paper first presents a framework for understanding the development of classical sociology of knowledge, and positions knowledge society theory within this tradition by connecting it to the earlier theory of post-industrial society. It is argued that, while knowledge society theory has much to recommend it in terms of its effectiveness in challenging existing orthodoxies about the relationship between society and knowledge, it has not sufficiently differentiated itself from the theory of post-industrial society and falls prey to some of the problems that it has itself raised against this theory. This problem can, however, be mitigated by connecting knowledge society theory with some of the positive theoretical developments that are beginning to emerge from the agency–structure debate.