Theory of Action (Routledge Revivals)

Towards a New Synthesis Going Beyond Parsons

Richard Münch

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415615594
• eBook ISBN: 9781136820687
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Modern sociology owes its existence and the progress it has made to the integration of differing kinds of orientations. In this work, first published 1987, Professor Richard Münch sets out to reformulate the theory of action, a notion central to sociology and one to which all schools of thought within sociology have contributed. He gives an exposition of the voluntaristic theory of action as found in Talcott Parson's work, reconstructing and extending Parson's theory from the perspective of the present-day level of development. In this way he both integrates opposing orientations to action theory and presents the voluntaristic theory of action in a readable and teachable from.

1
The structure of the Kantian core*

Introductory remarks

Over the last half-century, Talcott Parsons produced a body of work which was enormous in its scope, depth and continuity. No sociologist in the past has been able to escape the influence of this work, and not only sociologists but other social scientists too will inevitably meet and have to consider his work in future. On this point sociologists of all persuasions are agreed. The work began with Parsons’s dissertation at Heidelberg on the concept of capitalism in the writings of Max Weber and Werner Sombart.¹ Several essays on Alfred Marshall and Vilfredo Pareto extended these early studies.² A first culmination point in this theoretical development was reached with The Structure of Social Action, a book which has become a classic in its own right through its constructive interpretation of the classic authors.³ The remaining stages of Parsons’s development are likewise marked by major publications, the last of which is the collection Action Theory and the Human Condition.⁴ It has become an obligation for every sociologist, not only those working directly on theoretical questions but also all those engaged in the various fields of practical applications, to take into consideration Parsons’s work—however complete or incomplete, correct or incorrect, it may turn out to be. Although firmly anchored in the sociological tradition, Parsons’s work has an inherent scope which lends it a significance for modern thought far beyond the confines of sociology. It is especially relevant to all sciences of human action.

Although Parsons’s sociology has become in this sense an institution, it is equally true that the conventional attitude toward his theory is one of critical aloofness. Sociologists do not like to be identified with his optimistic judgements on modern American Society, or with the label of ‘conservatism’ which Dahrendorf, C.Wright Mills, Gouldner, and many other critics have affixed to his sociology.⁵ In addition, the complicated model building in Parsons’s sociology causes many sociologists to keep their distance from it.⁶ To a critical and dialectical sociology, Parsons’s theory appears blind to the omnipresence of conflict and change, incapable of explaining them and conservative in its final effect. To a phenomenologically based sociology, the theory is far too abstract and formalistic. As seen by the critique provided by empiricist positivism its concepts cannot be made operational and its structure has only conceptional schemata (taxonomies) to offer, and no empirically testable propositions and hypotheses. The style of presentation, regarded as difficult of access, is a unanimously disliked feature of Parsons’s theory.⁷ Certainly only a few sociologists have taken the trouble to follow Parsons’s elaborate technical manipulations of his theory through his numerous works. Outside a narrow circle of disciples, the potential of his work has barely been tapped.⁸ Frequently, the argument that his theoretical apparatus can only produce reifications and so blocks any access to reality has been used to avoid having to undertake the difficult task of testing systematically the adequacy of the theory’s application to the world. One can use such systematic and thorough testing to exhibit the range and limits of a theory, but only if one is willing to go beyond wholesale criticisms.

The question how much explanatory power a theory as elaborated as that of Parsons possesses is not one which can be decided by general arguments or global judgements. After all, Parsons himself demonstrated more than sufficiently how rewarding such a testing of the explanatory power of his theory can be. Not the least part of this demonstration is the very range of his work, from general theory construction down to the analyses, frequently in occasional pieces, of concrete empirical-practical problems. What one comes to realize is that it is exactly this joining of opposites—of general theory development with empirical-practical analysis—which makes Parsons’s sociology so fruitful. It makes possible that interpenetration of theory and experience, of logic and practice, which is such a crucial prerequisite for the development of every modern science. In an autobiographical article published in 1970, Parsons points out this twofold character of his sociological work and emphasizes that his kind of theory building is neither logically deductive nor sheerly inductive, but rather resembles the continual process of the systematization of the law which one finds in Common Law jurisdictions:

‘In this process [i.e. Parsons’s theoretical development]… I have indeed reacted to quite a number of externally presented stimuli of the sort that I have characterized, especially requests to write on topics suggested by others. In a sufficient proportion of such cases, I hope I have reacted somewhat in the manner of a competent common-law appellate judge: namely, that I have considered the submitted topics and problems in relation to a theoretical scheme, which—though its premises were not defined with complete precision and henceforth assumed as fully given in a logically complete sense— has had considerable clarity, consistency, and continuity. In a sufficient proportion of cases, it seems to me that this kind of procedure has yielded empirical insight and rounding out, extension, and revision and generalization of the theoretical scheme. At certain points this has meant intensive concern with formally defined theoretical problems, but at other points primary concern with much more empirical issues. In any case this is essentially what I have meant by the phrase ‘building social system theory’ as used in the title of this essay. (“On building social system theory: A personal history”)’⁹

We could describe this procedure as a specific form of the interpenetration of two subsystems of the production of knowledge which are themselves subject to their own laws: the subsystem of theoretical research and the subsystem of practical problem solving. In saying this we apply the central concept of Parsons’s theory to his own sociological work. Only by developing such zones of interpenetration is it possible to synthesize the results of differentiated subsystems into a unified whole which would possess its own specific character and which would have more power to illuminate the world than either an undifferentiated unity or the sum of the particular subsystems themselves. Here it is theory without intuitions which remains empty, while intuitions without theory are blind.

The significance of this interpenetration of concept and intuition, of theory and experience, as a condition of modern science is nowhere made clearer than in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.¹⁰ Among philosophers, it is Kant above all who articulates the specific epistemological structure of modern scientific knowledge, and Talcott Parsons’s sociology is everywhere permeated with the structure of the philosophy of Kant. It is not only the aforementioned interpenetration of theory construction and empirical analysis in Parsons’s concrete sociological work which leads us to this conclusion. His general theory of action and his theory of social systems are themselves thoroughly Kantian. If we look at Parsons’s biography with this connection in mind, we notice that Parsons began to read Kant’s philosophy intensively while studying at Heidelberg in 1925–6. In his autobiographical essay of 1970, Parsons describes his experience:

‘In retrospect it seems to me that this experience was, even apart from the substantive importance of Kant for my problems, especially important training for my later work. It was reinforced by a seminar and oral exam on the same book under Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg in 1926. The importance lay in the fact that I undertook the detailed and repeated study of a great book, the product of a great mind, to a point of reaching a certain level of appreciation of the nature of its contribution, and not being satisfied with the myriad of current rather superficial comments about it. This experience stood me in good stead in working with the contributions of my own authors and coming to what I felt to be a high level of understanding of them in the face of many distorted interpretations current in the secondary literature, some of which were widely accepted.’¹¹

Although even a superficial study of Parsons reveals the influence of Kant’s epistemological conceptions, one can in fact go much farther and draw a precise parallel in structure and method between Parsons’s general theory of action and theory of social systems, and Kant’s own critical philosophy. This hypothesis gives us a way of reading Parsons which has up to now, been almost wholly neglected and this neglect constitutes a crucial deficiency in the reception accorded Parsons’s work.¹² Parsons’s sociology cannot possibly be understood apart from a consideration of Kant’s critical project.¹³ The philosophical perspective provided by Kant’s critiques is introduced here so that it can provide a framework for the interpretation of Parsons’s work as a whole. This will hopefully initiate a reconsideration of Parsons’s theory of action and its various concretizations, a reconsideration capable of opening up perspectives on Parsons’s work which will be free of the clichés that up to now have proved to be mostly obstacles to our understanding of it.

This thesis will first be established with regard to the structure of the theory of action as it is presented in The Structure of Social Action and in Parsons’s constructive integration of his classical sources (Durkheim, Weber, and Freud), in order to isolate that core of the theory of action which is systematically expanded, without major changes, in all Parsons’s further writings.

1.1 The interpretive perspective: Kant’s critical philosophy

In his last theoretical publication, ‘A Paradigm of the Human Condition’, Parsons, fresh from a renewed, intensive study of Kant, enlarges on the significance of Kant’s transcendental arguments for his own theory of action.¹⁴ The indications contained in this, his last theoretical discourse, provide us with a key to the proper understanding of his entire action theory and sociology. Parsons shows special interest in Kant’s dualistic construction of human knowledge, which can be viewed as a model for the general theory of action:

‘Kant clearly thought in terms of dual levels: the categories of understanding and the sense data of empirical knowledge; the “categorical imperative” and the “problems” of practical ethics; the canons of judgement and esthetic “experience”. There seems to be a striking parallel between his version of duality and the linguist’s “deep structures” and “surface structures”, the biologist’s “genotypes” and “phenotypes”, the cyberneticist’s “high on information” and “high on energy”, and indeed the sociologist’s “values”, or institutional patterns, and “interests”. We therefore suggest that the first term in each of these pairs be used to designate a metastructure, which is not as such a property of the phenomena (also Kant’s term) under consideration but is rather an a priori set of conditions without which the phenomena in question could not be conceived in an orderly manner.’¹⁵

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is best understood as a reply to Hume’s empiricism and to the scepticism which results from that empiricism.¹⁶ Proceeding according to the tenets of a rigorous empiricism, Hume concluded that the knowledge expressed in the propositions of the natural sciences reduced ultimately to nothing more than collections of sense perceptions.¹⁷ These sense perceptions, moreover, occur singly and, contrary to the claims of the causal laws of natural science, have no intrinsic connection with each other. There is no bridge from atomized singular perceptions to the general laws of science. According to Hume, habit alone leads us to believe in the necessity of the causal connection between two events which are always experienced as occurring in the same temporal order. Hume’s point is precisely that this is mere belief, not knowledge.¹⁸

The attempt to construct a completely consistent empiricism had led Hume to doubt the possibility of scientific knowledge. Kant, on the other hand, began from a completely different conception of the nature of science. For him the validity of scientific knowledge was a given, a fact. His question was: How can we explain how such knowledge is possible?¹⁹ His explanation took the form of a ‘transcendental argument’, by means of which he demonstrated that the possibility of scientific knowledge having universal validity for all men depends on the existence of certain preconditions. An important component of Kant’s argument here is the distinction between the specific capacities of a priori categories and of empirical sense experience. It is impossible fully to understand the nature of scientific knowledge by reference either to the order embodied in its abstract principles or to its empirical content alone. For Kant, modern scientific knowledge is explicable neither as a habitual generalization from empirical experience, as in Hume’s empiricism, nor as a series of deductions from the first principles of reason, as in the rationalism of someone like Descartes, but only as the mutual interaction of theory and experience. Experience that can become the touchstone of universal laws is itself only made possible by a table of categories and a set of general theoretical principles, which analytically order our sense perceptions. And it is only in so far as we constantly refer sense perceptions to these categories and principles that we are entitled to say of them that they express empirical and not merely logical regularities. Theoretical abstraction and empirical concretion are united in the statements of these laws.

This connection of opposites—the abstract and the empirical—is a specific historical occurrence whose product is modern Western science. The prototype of this interpenetration of theory and experience is the rational experiment, developed in a historical situation in which conditions were especially favourable to the interpenetration of spheres normally kept separate. These conditions were provided primarily by the scientific associations of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the English scientistic movement of the seventeenth century. These associations united intellectuals with practical men of varying backgrounds— artists, engineers, artisans, merchants, politicians. Their collaboration produced what is by us today considered a matter of course: the interpenetration of theory and experience, of logic and practice, in modern science. Thus there were united for the first time functions performed previously by wholly separate social groups.²⁰

Just as the Critique of Pure Reason is directed against empiricism in epistemology, Kant’s Critique of Judgement is an attack on all attempts to construct a theory of aesthetic judgement by generalization from the collection of given individual judgements. A theory of judgement can claim universal validity only if it establishes a connection between a priori categories of judgement (such as the category of ‘purposiveness as such’) and the sensations of pleasure experienced by individuals as they contemplate works of art or the processes of nature.²¹ And the same logic, the logic of the transcendental argument, structures Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. The latter work is particularly significant for us, because in it we can discern the main outlines of Parsons’s theory of action.

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argues against any attempt to found moral principles on the subjective considerations of utility of individual actors. That is, he rejects all utilitarian moral theories.²² Just as we cannot account for the objective necessity of causal laws by reference solely to the content of sense perceptions, so we cannot derive the necessity of a moral law valid for all men at all times from the desires—or the calculations of utility—of individuals. Private calculations of utility may yield different results for different individuals, or for the same individual at different times. The criterion of a moral law, however, is that it is binding for all men at all times. We cannot explain the obligatory force of the moral law as the sum of all calculations of utility, because these calculations would yield extremely variable results, and we would have made no progress toward a concept of true obligation:

‘The principle of happiness can indeed give maxims, but never maxims which are competent to be laws...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Translation editor’s note
• Preface
• Introduction: The rational reconstruction of the theory of action
• 1 The structure of the Kantian core*
• 2 The continuity of the development
• 3 From positivism and idealism to the voluntaristic theory of action*
• Concluding considerations: ‘Dialetically’ replacing positivism and idealism with the voluntaristic theory of action
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Subject Index