(P/B) SOCIAL STRUCTURES AND FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (VOLUME I)

Παρουσίαση

This new work by the leading Marxian philosopher of our day is a milestone in human self-understanding. It focuses on the location where action emerges from freedom and necessity, the foundation of all social science.
Today, as never before, the investigation of the close relationship between social structure - defined by Marx as "arising from the life-process of definite individuals" - and the various forms of consciousness is particularly important. We can only perceive what is possible by first identifying the historical process that constrains consciousness itself, and therefore social action.
The relationship between social structure and forms of consciousness discussed in this volume is multifaceted and profoundly dialectical. It requires the presentation of a great wealth of historical material and the assessment of the relevant philosophical literature, from Descartes through Hegel and the Liberal tradition to the present, together with their connections with political economy and political theory. Istvan Meszaros moves beyond both abstract solutions to the surveyed methodological questions and one-sided structuralist evaluation of the important substantive issues, bringing the process of our understanding of social structure and consciousness to a level not previously attained.
Above all, in the spirit of the Marxian approach, even the most complicated problems are analyzed in relation to the major practical concerns of our time. The primary aim of this work is to outline the dialectical intelligibility of historical development toward a viable societal reproductve order. Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness is of the highest importance as both a political and philosophical work, illuminating the place from where we must act, today. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

INTRODUCTION
1. THE PROGRAMMATIC ORIENTATION TOWARD SCIENCE
"The Mastery of Man over Nature"
Behaviourists and Weberians
Mannheim's "Scientific Sociology of Culture"
The Structural Links of Science-Oriented Ideology
2. THE GENERAL TENDENCY TO FORMALISM
Formalism and Conflictuality
The Structural Affinity of Practical and Intellectual Inversions
Reconciliation of Irrational Forms
Formal/Reductive Homogenization and Universal Value-Equation
The Social Substance of Operational Rationality
The Concept of Nature as a Dehistoricized Formal Abstraction
"Formal Rationality" and Substantive Irrationality
3. THE STANDPOINT OF ISOLATED INDIVIDUALITY
Individualistic Conceptions of Conflict and Human Nature
The Elevation of Particularity to the Status of Universality
The Inversion of Objective Structural Relationships
4. NEGATIVE DETERMINATION OF PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL THEORY
Substance, Subjectivity, and Freedom
The Positive Aspect of Critical Negation
The Quantification of Quality and the Law of Measure
Second Order "Mediations of the Mediation" and the Triumph of Negativity
Reconciliatory Function of "Negativity as Self-Transcending Contradiction"
Negativity in Sartre and Marcuse: Dependency on the Ideologically Dominant Discourse
5. THE RISE AND FALL OF HISTORICAL TEMPORALITY
Historical Explanation in Ancient Greece and in the Middle Ages
"Divine Providence" in Bourgeois Philosophies of History
Vico's Conception of Civil Society and History
Organic Models as Substitutes for Historical Explanation
Vicissitudes of Historical Consciousness in the Twentieth Century
"There Is Neither Necessity nor Meaning"
"If Sense There Be, It Escapes Our Perception": From Ranke and Tocqueville to Sir Lewis Namier and Beyond
Social Antagonism and Historical Explanation
6. DUALISM AND DICHOTOMIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL THEORIES
The Hidden Premises of Dichotomous Systems
The Functional Imperative of Operational Exclusiveness
Ruling Values Disguised as Instrumental Complexes: The Illusions of Value-Free Functionality
Ideological Roots of Methodological Dualism
The Inward-Oriented Subject of Philosophical Discourse
From "Unreconciled Dualism" to Dualism of Reconciliation
Moralizing Apriorism in the Service of the "Commercial Spirit"
The Dominance of Counter-Value in Antinomous Value-Relations
The Supersession of Dichotomies: The Question of Social Agency
7. THE POSTULATES OF "UNITY" AND "UNIVERSALITY"
The Incorrigible Circularity and Ultimate Failure of Individualistic Mediation
"The Process of the Genus with the Individual":
The Reconciliatory Function of Anthropological Models
Fragmentation and "Longing for Unity"
"The Ideal General Will Should Also Be the Empirically General Will"
Unification through the Material Reproduction Process
8. METHOD IN A HISTORICAL EPOCH OF TRANSITION
The Marxian Reorientation of Method
From Hegel's "Science of Logic" to the Marxian View of Science
The Critique of Political Economy
Self-Critique as a Methodological Principle
Categorical Reflections of Social Antagonism and the Central Categories of Socialist Theory
Methodological Aspects of Mediation in an Epoch of Transition
INDEX