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Truth and Social Science
From Hegel to Deconstruction
Courses:
Sociological Theory
Sociological Theory
June 1998 | 208 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
The noble aim of sociologists to "tell the truth" has sometimes involved ignoble assumptions about human beings. In this major discussion of truth in the social science, Ross Abbinnett traces the debate on truth from the "objectifying powers" of Kant through more than 200 years of critique and reformulation to the unraveling of truth by Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida.
Truth and Social Science gives students an exciting and accessible guide to the main sociological treatments of truth and can also be read as an account of the collapse of modernity and the rise of new forms of thought, which treat difference and ambivalence as positive values.
The book will be of interest to students of sociology, social theory, and philosophy.
Introduction
IDEALISM AND SOCIAL THOUGHT
THE RATIONAL AND THE SOCIAL
Kant and the Origins of Social Science
Hegel's Concept of Rational Life
Speculative Thought and Modernity
THE STRUCTURAL ORGANISATION OF TRUTH
Structure, Functions and Systems
Marx's Critique of Capital
The Powers of Totality
THE IDEALISM OF AUTONOMY
Weber and the Concept of Social Action
Habermas and the Ethics of Communication
POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND THE VIOLENCE OF TRUTH
Foucault and the Modern Domains of Power
Lyotard and the Community of Judgement
Violence, Rationality and Community
TRUTH AND MODERNITY
Marx and Weber
Community, Modernity and Speculative Judgement
Hegel, Derrida and the Metaphysics of Race
Bibliography
Index
