Critical Realism, History, and Philosophy in the Social Sciences

Timothy Rutzou, George Steinmetz, Timothy Rutzou, George Steinmetz

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787566057
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Théorie sociale

Social science, history, and philosophy have often been neglect in thinking through their fundamentally intertwined relationship. The result is often an inattention to philosophy where social science and history is concerned, or a neglect of historicity and social analysis where philosophy is concerned. Meanwhile, the place of values in research is often uneasily passed over in silence. The inattention to, and loss of, the intersection between these different disciplines and their subject matters, leaves our investigations all the more impoverished as a result. In resolving these problems, it is not enough to strive for cooperation or integration, but to rethink of the nature of the disciplines themselves; their interests, purposes, and presuppositions.
In this volume, contributors explore different facets of these relationships, and move beyond the problematics erected by positivism often cast in terms of value-free or value-neutral science, that is, a science obsessed with empirical data, schematic classifications, and the pursuit of law-like forms. While positivism has been subject to critique, the influence and legacy of positivism remains. It remains in the way in which we often think about science; the line drawn between the sciences and the humanities; the norms researchers should follow; what a successful explanation looks like; and the ethical, normative, and political implications of scientific research.
Aimed at students and researchers of philosophy, history and the social sciences, this book is driven by a desire to revindicate questions concerning ontology and social ontology, to rethink the nature of explanation, and to resituate normativity and values within scientific, social scientific, and historical pursuits.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS? ONTOLOGY, NORMATIVITY, CRITICAL REALISM, AND QUEER THEORY

Timothy Rutzou

ABSTRACT

The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.

Keywords: Critical realism; causation; ontology; queer theory; Butler

INTRODUCTION

Questions concerning normativity have always plagued social science, but in recent years there has been a resurgent interest in the place of values, ethics, and morality in both sociology (e.g., Abend, 2008; Boltanski & Thevenot, 2006; Gorski, 2012, 2013a, 2013b; Hitlin & Vaissey, 2010; Lukes, 2008; Sayer, 2011; Smith, 2003; Tavory, 2011) and anthropology (Fassin, 2012, 2013, 2014; Keane, 2015; Laidlaw, 2002, 2014; Kavedzija & Walker, 2015, 2016). The discussion is wide ranging, encompassing questions such as how do concepts like happiness or flourishing figure as an idea or motivation in everyday life? How do people experience and pursue happiness? Is happiness a paramount value or aim in life? What role does happiness play in orienting peoples’ desires and life choices? What is a human being? What is a human good? Do human beings act morally? Do they do so because they obey socially defined rules? Routinized behavior? Inculcated values? Civic virtues? Rational imperatives? Utilitarian calculation? Will to power? While these questions have historically been the realm of philosophical or even theological discourse, this terrain of morality is increasingly becoming a problematic within social science as well. The result of these discussions has been the emergence of a form of social science concerned with understanding what philosophical and ethical lessons or implications can be learned, reconstructed, or gleaned through social scientific analysis; in particular, when it comes to questions of human nature, morals, and virtue.

Contributing to this broader discussion, this paper explores aspects and dimensions of this problematic by attempting to tease out the relationship between ontology and normativity in different forms and expressions of “human nature”. The article begins by exploring the two broad positions of social science vis-à-vis ontology and normativity: “naturalism” and “critique.” Providing an overview and survey of the contours of the debate, the various relationships between ontology, realism, and normativity are teased out. The realist and naturalist position is explored largely by reference to critical realism and critical ethical naturalism, while the critical position is explored through the work of Foucault and Butler. Under the rubric of comparison, I draw out the ontological underpinnings, assumptions, and implications of these positions: namely, what is presumed about the nature of objects, structures, and people within these discourses and what normative implications are entailed or implied by them. Does the underlying ontology of these positions advocate or entail normative prescripts? And if so, what and how? Using queer theory as a site of analysis, I argue that not only is queer theory not inherently situated against “the real” but is in fact deeply resonant with the ontology of critical realism and that critical realism is able to usefully inform and orient aspects of feminist and queer studies. And yet, this raises complicated questions about the nature of the relationship between ontology and normativity, and while critical realism has often situated itself on the side of naturalism, this is not inherent to a critical realist ontology. In short, on this occasion, I would like to defend ontology and normativity against some of the most significant and important charges brought against it without falling into the historic trappings of ontology.

THE RIDDLE OF NORMATIVITY

Normative and ethical frameworks have always been tied to accounts of the social world. By its nature, normative projects inherently presuppose certain ontological features about social reality, human beings, social structures, causation, and social relations that attempts to ground its ethical or political position. In many respects, this could not be otherwise: normativity always presupposes ontology. As Bachelard suggested, all theory “explicitly or tacitly, consciously or unconsciously, honestly or surreptitiously, deposits, projects or presupposes a reality on account of which our concepts make some kind of sense of the world” (Bachelard cited in Bhaskar, 2009[1986], p. 7). Any scientific or normative project presupposes certain features and phenomena of the social world which make it intelligible, however undeveloped and immature those ontologies may be. Ethics and normativity, concerned with an animating vision of social life, must implicitly rest on accounts of the social world, human nature, and in accordance with this, what is good for people. As Chomsky suggests, in being concerned with questions of normativity, we are concerned with questions concerning “the aspects of [our] nature that should be nurtured, encouraged and permitted to flourish for [our] benefit and that of others” (Chomsky, 2015, p. 91). While the language of human nature has become regarded with suspicion, if ontology is unavoidable, it seems as if it is impossible to avoid speaking about human nature, at some level. Even if ontology, including the concept of human nature that is operating behind our accounts of the social world is tacit or inchoate, it seems there is always something about human nature presupposed, even if it is only ever implicit or unconscious, and even if it is, at the end of the day, puerile, jejune, incoherent, or problematic (Chomsky, 2015, p. 91). If such presuppositions are unavoidable, and are inextricably related to normativity, the question is if and how we can go about evaluating these different accounts, and their possible ethical, moral, and normative implications.

NATURALISM VERSUS CRITIQUE

In pursuing an answer to this question, social science and philosophy have tended to oscillate between two attempts at a resolution: one “positive” and one “negative.” On the “positive” pole is the naturalist resolution, committed to deploying science and ontology directly in the service of the formation of ethics, values, and normativity by uncovering features of human nature and the social world that can directly inform the building of positive ethical, normative, and political projects. The naturalist position views values and ethics as being objectively and ontologically grounded, often situating itself against the vagaries of personal preference or cultural forms of life. Naturalism represents a form of realism and asserts the possibility of objective truth values for moral claims and the possibility of relatively objective criteria when it comes to matters of well-being or human flourishing. On the “negative” pole is critical social science which interrogates the value foundations and normativity of science, uncovering the social construction of the social world and of human nature. The critical stance, in general, operates against the naturalist position, deconstructing the naturalist ground by showing how its constructions and implications are, at the end of the day, far from natural. It is concerned with highlighting the manner in which terms like human nature are the products of history, culture, discourse, or power, and as a result, resist inscriptions of normativity. In the following pages, I want to outline the contours of these positions before proceeding to a possible means of resolving the conflict by way of the ontology of critical critical realism.¹

A GENEALOGY: THE CRADLE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE: NATURALISM AND REALISM

As an answer to the problem of normativity, naturalism directs us toward ontology and would suggest that values and ethics is necessarily grounded what it is to be human. At its core is a universalist impulse and, while it is conceded that naturalism may not be able to answer all the tough questions, it serves as a necessary base from which all normative projects of values and ethics should begin. Accordingly, the questions of normativity, ethics, and values proceeds from the discovery and articulation of the universal conditions of human existence: the permanent, phylogenetic and ontogenetic contexts of human life behind all historical forms (cf. Rorty, 1989, p. 26). Historically, this has often had recourse to various aspects of biology, natural kinds, species being, theories of evolution, psychology, and increasingly neurology to demonstrate that far from being contingent, our normative systems of values and ethics (ranging the full spectrum from objectivity to empathy to altruism to sociality) are grounded in innate human capacities and dispositions. This has in turn grounded a certain necessary, essential, telic, constitutive picture of what it is to be a human, which in turn gives us a vision on particular goods and goals which do not apply to one man once but to all human beings (cf. Rorty, 1989, p. 26). While there are many naturalist traditions which proceed in this manner, philosophically at least, Aristotle remains one of its most consistent flagbearers and points of reference.

Since Elizabeth Anscombe’s seminar paper “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958), Aristotelian virtue ethics has made a remarkable return within moral philosophy, and with the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1981) and the influence of Martha Nussbaum’s work (Nussbaum, 1993, 2006), Aristotle has become a central figure in modern moral and political philosophy. For Aristotle, questions of value and ethics are grounded in questions of nature and internal goods. In order to ask whether something has value or should be valued, it is necessary to ask the ontological question: “what is it?” before turning our attention to normativity and ethics “what is its good?”. Questions of normativity in Aristotle are ultimately subordinated to, and grounded in questions of human nature, ethics with human goods, while questions and of politics are structured around the appropriate organization of society to realize those goods. Similar maneuver can also be found in Marx and Durkheim, albeit in slightly different ways. As realists and naturalists each held that while human flourishing can take different forms, and while individuals vary in their capacities and dispositions, these are often accidental differences and there are underlying and inescapable aspects of human nature which must be taken into account. Both Marx and Durkheim assumed, in their own right, certain objective measures of the human good and the manner in which certain societies and social arrangements are more conducive to the realization of human goods than others (cf. Gorski, 2013b).

In Marx’s early writing, questions of human nature and human good are explicit, although often articulated in conjunction with an analysis of alienation (Fromm, 1994, 2004; Marx, 1977a; Mészáros, 1970). For Marx, the end of man consists in the capacity to reshape nature and reproduce human society according to our own interests and well-being, namely, the expression, realization, and satisfaction of human capacities and needs. Under current historical conditions, namely, bourgeois civil society and capitalism, human beings live in a state of alienation through the organization of society around the appropriation and exploitation of labor in which human capacities are directed to serve ends which are not their own, enslaving rather than freeing individuals and collectives. The result is that, human beings are alienated from the products of our own industry, alienated from one another within a hierarchical society, and they see and experience their own powerlessness and the reality of their inhuman existence, that is, they are alienated from their own nature and aware of it (Mészáros, 1970, p. 96). In Marx, the concept of human nature (species being) goes hand in hand with an account of alienation (alienation from our nature) and is predicated on the readily observable stunting and deformation of real human capacities, tendencies, and needs. Indeed, the essence of alienation in Marx is a process of disempowerment which robs individuals and collectives the possibility of their human flourishing and the full realization and expression of their nature. As Mészáros argues, the entire normative and political project of Marx can be understood as a reversal of this process, in which the alienation of life from happiness comes to an end (Mészáros, 1970). Famously, this culminates in Marx’s utopian vision premised on the goal of material, political, and economic equality in service of the realization of human capacities and human nature in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all (Marx, 1977b; cf. Gorski, 2013b, p. 552).

Likewise, for Durkheim, the normative aspects and implications of social are tied to accounts of human nature (Durkheim, 1971, 2002). Although it is less explicit than it is in Marx it is still clearly present. For Durkheim, the good society is one that is able to achieve a sort of social health, harmony, or golden mean between moral regulation and social integration (Gorski, 2013b, p. 552). For Durkheim, sociology is a moral science, not only assuming that political liberty and civic solidarity are essential aspects of justice and human flourishing, but that sociology underwrites and acts in service of this end. As Gorski notes, it is not incidental that the first footnote in the Division of Labour in Society was to the Nicomachean Ethics (Durkheim, 1984; Gorski, 2012). Indeed, Durkheim’s central concern, much like Aristotle’s, is of collective well-being: the health, harmony, and flourishing of the individual and society, and the individual within society, in which disconnection from the moral order becomes the principle form of ill. Indeed, the most telling, and perhaps strongest declaration of this program, appears in The Rules of Sociological Method:

For societies, as for individuals, health is good and desirable; sickness, on the other hand, is bad and must be avoided. If therefore we find an objective criterion, inherent in the facts themselves, to allow us to distinguish scientifically health from sickness in the various orders of social phenomena, science will be in a position to throw light on practical matters while remaining true to its own method. (Durkheim, 1982, cited in Gorski, 2012, p. 91)

Durkheim’s methods and Durkheim’s social realism are not simply good or useful epistemological or scientific practices;...