CHAPTER 1
Antecedents of Contemporary Social Theory
Social theory is becoming increasingly difficult to define. At one point in time we could say that social theory was a systematic effort to better understand the world in which we live by examining it through a particular lens or perspective. However, many contemporary social thinkers might find this simple notion quite outmoded. Given the philosophical thrust of current social thought, we can think of social theory as an attempt to better comprehend how and why we construct the social worldsin which we liveâor, perhaps, discover how and whv these worlds are constructed for us to live in.
Social theory has come a long way from the late nineteenth century when the world was considered to be a place characterized by reason and rules of natural law guiding its evolutionârules that could be discovered with the help of rational positivism and empirical science. But all of this has been challenged. Still, in some other respects, we haven't really moved very far from classical thinking at all. Many of us are still interested in why large groups of people in societies behave the way they behave and what leads them to do the things they do. These concerns were also those of the earliest social theoristsâthinkers who even preceded the classical sociologists like Marx, Weber, and Durkheim.
Contemporary Social Theoryis an attempt to survey new patterns of social thought and to contextualize new theory that is emerging from older ways of seeing the world. To begin, it is important to examine some of the antecedents of contemporary social theory How has contemporary theory changed from classical theory and why has it changed? What are some of the factors that have catalyzed the shift in the way social theorists look at the world?
Rupture with Enlightenment Thought
The European Enlightenment had a profound impact on the development of traditional social thought. Those classical social theorists who helped to build a foundation for contemporary social theory were powerfully influenced by Enlightenment philosophers.
The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement with specific founders and advocates. To locate these early influences, one needs to look to France and to the work of Voltaire (1694-1788), Montesquieu (1698-1755), Rousseau (17121778), and Diderot (1713-1784). All were Enlightenment thinkers who helped set an agenda for Enlightenment philosophy and discourse. They saw themselves as living in "the century of the enlightened." Their romance with reason and science laid the groundwork for modern sociopolitical discourse. Many of these thinkers also promoted the ideas that people had "natural rights" and that governments should protect these rights of individuals. In general, Enlightenment thought included the following elements:
- A belief that the universe is fundamentally rational and can be understood through empirical science and reason;
- An assumption that all of nature is knowable and that human experience and thought are the only avenues to this knowledge;
- A belief that knowledge serves to improve human life and that ignorance is the cause of human misery and immorality;
- An expectation that there is both epistemological and moral unity that integrates and governs the world; and
- The thought that there is but one universal, discoverable truth and it alone is the key to endless human progress.
Enlightenment thinkers constituted a small but highly influential group of European males who came from the emerging educated bourgeoisie and helped to bring into existence the continued decline of papal and aristocratic authority. The Enlightenment challenged the Catholic Church's authority as an arbiter of truth and theology as the central means of its discovery (Salerno 2004).
Early social theory, particularly the sociological theory of Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, was profoundly influenced by Enlightenment thought. Running through their work was a belief that modern science could address the challenges confronted by people and a belief that the world's mysteries could be understood through objective, detached analysis. At the same time, they were influenced by modern philosophical ideasâespecially the work of Immanuel Kant, G. W. Hegel, and Johann Fichte. Evident in their work is a sense of the importance of subjective knowing.
For George Hegel, one of the most important philosophers of the early nineteenth century, everything that exists is a product of the mind. And while we might perceive objects to be separate and independent of it, they are not. They are totally dependent on thought for their existence. Therefore, the mind is seen as the source of the objectified world. Not only did Hegel's work help catalyze existential thinking, it challenged some of the foundations of the Enlightenment itself.
But with the failure of the Enlightenment to live up to its promise, the continuation of wars, the institution of slavery in the colonies, the abuses of industrial capitalism, the starvation of millions, and disease rapidly spreading throughout the world, there was a disillusionment with its underlying assumptions and methods and a particular disenchantment with the promise of science. Though Karl Marx defended the advance of reason, by the twentieth century, Max Weber had some serious reservations about it. Modern philosophers like Nietzsche criticized Enlightenment thinking and challenged many of its principal assumptionsâparticularly the assumption in the ability of reason to make the world a better place.
Marxist Theory and Analysis
While Karl Marx subscribed to most of the Enlightenment's principles, he was highly critical of the bourgeoisie that helped launch this undertaking. It was his firm belief that the bourgeoisie and their heralded nation-states had promoted the advancement and protection of market capitalism as a so-called "rational" means of "developing" society. For him this form of economic system that had been set into place was nothing more than another form of feudalism for the workers who were exploited in the process of generating profits for the owners of the means of production. He refuted Adam Smith's belief that the system was God's will, one divined by an "invisible hand"âand the commonly held belief that capitalism was an expression of natural laws. Marx, who had faith in the Enlightenment's promise of reason, saw it as being distorted by philosophers and theologians alike. Marx contended that society had to changeâperhaps even through revolutionâif it were ever to progress. Capitalism was a class system, not too dissimilar from those that existed throughout history, wherein it was nurtured and developed by powerful elites who protected and advanced their own rapacious self-interest.
Much of Marx's theory dealt with class struggle in light of enormous inequalities in the world generated not by the aristocracy but through the development of the structure of the capitalistic system and the substructures it both produced and supportedâincluding the state. For Marx, material culture was a direct consequence of capitalism, which promoted an ideology that conditioned people to believe in its redemptive power. For him, capitalism was not only supported by religion, but also became a religion in itselfâa system of belief or an ideology that kept society from advancing to a point of greater equality and individual selfactualization. While he saw value and potential in early industrial capitalism, he believed it had become corrupt and reactionary and could not effectively advance the causes of equality and justice, principles that influenced the Enlightenment. Where a few would grow materially rich, now the majority of the world's population would become increasingly poor.
Marx critiqued not only the material devastation of the workers who kept this system alive, but also the existential emptiness and dehumanization that accompanied capital's advance: the commodification of life and the devastation of nature. He was fascinated by the sophisticated techniques used by the bourgeoisie to control and distort reality for their own interests. He was interested in issues of global exploitation and the social and political oppression that went along with it in the name of nationalism. His ideas were to have a profound impact on the lives of billions of people. They would inspire revolutions around the world, particularly in the most underdeveloped nations. But they would also inspire new theoretical paradigms dealing with themes of oppression and exploitation.
The legacy of Marx has informed much contemporary social thought. His impact can be found both in structuralist and poststructuralist theory. The structuralist Marx is considered the more mature Marx; it is the Enlightenment Marx that deals with the deterministic structures imposed on society by capitalism and its related systems of exploitation and the political economy. The poststructuralist Marx relates to Marx's earlier work, but most particularly the ideas expressed in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.Here, the phenomenological Marx speaks to us in psychological and humanistic terms. It is here where he addresses such issues as alienation, commodification, and false consciousness and their impact on both material and psychic life.
The structuralism in Marxism is not merely the implication that the structure of the economic system determines everything else, such as the form of family the political system, or the values of our culture; it even suggests that capitalism shapes our personalities and how we treat one another as means to ends. While Marx was somewhat deterministic, he more readily saw structures as influencing factors and not ones that negated human autonomy and agency The individual was seen as capable of transcending these powerfully influential structures and creating revolutionary social change.
Friedrich Nietzsche and the Break with Reason
Perhaps one of the most vehement critics of western Enlightenment was Friedrich Nietzsche. As a thinker and social philosopher, he challenged the entire course of western civilization. Nietzsche despised socialism as much as he despised industrial capitalism. He saw both as wedded to the western notion of reason that was corrupt and degenerate.
Nietzsche is most known for his aphorism: "God is dead!" By this he meant that with the advance of science and reason, God has been killed and is no longer the arbiter of truth. The only truth is that which individuals create for themselves and others. Meaning is no longer associated with God but is a human creation. Nietzsche also recognized the relativity of truth and the fiction of its universality. In his view each individual's perspective creates truth for that person; those who have the more powerful wills create worlds others live in. Those who allow others to create a world for them get only what they deserve.
Nietzsche viewed universal truth as conceived by the Enlightenment thinkers as an illusion. It was an artifact from theology's search for divine understanding. Given the differences in the world, there can never be one truth. Thus, the Enlightenment was itself a fraud. There can never beâand will never beâa world without oppression and dogmatism. There will never be the equality, harmony, and cooperation as envisioned by Marx. The world is built on the accrual of power and nothing more. It is power that determines truth. This is what Neitzsche believed the Enlightenment thinkers were after, power through a monopoly on truth. Therefore, Nietzsche advanced the notion that truth and power are one and the same.
Nietzsche believed that art was more compelling than science and that the body was the true source of all wisdom. It is from the body (not the mind) that any sense of reality emerges. He praised the passion of art and its ability to create the universe, to change and reshape the world through theater, music, drama, and poetry. His ideas would not only inspire the existentialismof Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre but would also go on to influence Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and a host of others whose work has been labeled poststructural or postmodern. Many contemporary social theorists look to Nietzsche as a source of theoretical inspiration.
Psychoanalytic Thought and the Power of the Unconscious
Few theorists can ever claim the magnitude of influence that Sigmund Freud had on the way educated people saw the social worldâparticularly in the twentieth century His ideas not only revolutionized social science, but also had a major impact on art and literature. While he contributed significantly to the burgeoning field of psychology he had a major impact on philosophy and social theory too.
Freud's impact on modern thought is often compared to that of Nietzsche, with whom he shared some significant similarities as well as major differences; however, his most important contribution to contemporary social thought was his understanding of the power of the unconscious to shape peoples' lives. And while the unconscious mind was not his invention alone, he elaborated on its structure, function, and the early influences that helped form it.
The belief that people were consciously engaged in the world around them was foundational to Enlightenment thought. While Freud did not dismiss this idea, he put forth the notion that the unconsciousâa reservoir of repressed unacceptable or unpleasant feelings, wishes, thoughts, urges, and memories residing outside our conscious awarenessâinfluences our behavior and our experience of the world. The power of the unconscious to alter the world for us and make a particular sense of it was a new way of understanding human perception and behavior.
Freud divided psychic life between primary and secondary processes. Primary represented the preconscious mind; secondary the faculties of egoistic reason. He associated the unconscious with primary process and the conscious mind with secondary processes. It was Freud's contention that the conscious lives of people represent only a fraction of who people are and what they are feeling The unconscious houses not only innate biological drives such as sex and aggression, but also experiences, memories, and feelings that did not or could not find conscious expression from infancy onward.
In 1899, Freud published his now classic Tlie Interpretation of Dreamsin which he suggested that dreams were "the royal road" to one's unconscious. They could be analyzed for their symbolic meaning and could yield to the analyst things that had been hidden away or repressed. Dreams would allow Freud a means of better understanding the problems his patients were confronting. He also saw the psychoanalytic technique enabling a better understanding of the meanings of art.
Psychoanalysis became a set of methods used by Freud and his followers to help unearth the meaning of things hidden away in the dark recesses of the patient's unconscious. It represented a means of reading that which was concealed from both the patient's consciousness and from the therapist. Psychoanalytic methods became important to the notion in contemporary theory that meaning is not as obvious as it might appear. The person doesn't always understand why she or he does something. Hidden away in language and symbols are unconscious motivations and drives. All human actions and products need to be read as well as interpreted.
Psychoanalytic theory became a powerful mode of social analysis. It is central to semiotics, French structuralism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, poststructuralism, Derrida's deconstructionism, and postmodern theory The work of Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler are heavily indebted to Freud, as are French feminist theorists ranging from Simone de Beauvoir to Julia Kristeva. Social theorists like Anthony Giddens, JĂźrgen Habermas, and Zygmunt Bauman dip frequently into psychoanalysis in their attempts to personalize structural changes taking place in society While this text has avoided an extensive discussion of psychoanalytic theory, such work today remains vital and constantly nourishes and is nourished by social theory
The Rise of Critical Theory as a Mode of Cultural Analysis
Marx's ideas eventually were combined with those of Nietzsche and Freud to produce innovative social and cultural critiques. In Germany, the Frankfurt school (a group of r...
