The Social Philosophy of Gillian Rose

Brower Latz

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781498243896
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

Gillian Rose was one of the most important social philosophers of the twentieth century. This is the first book to present her social philosophy as a systematic whole. Based on new archive research and examining the full range of Rose's sources, it explains her theory of modern society, her unique version of ideology critique, and her views on law and mutual recognition. Brower Latz relates Rose's work to numerous debates in sociology and philosophy, such as the relation of theory to metatheory, emergence, and the relationship of sociology and philosophy. This book makes clear not only Rose's difficult texts but the entire structure of her thought, making her complete social theory accessible for the first time.

1

Rose’s Hegelianism

You do have to have a system.

—Harry Hill

1 Introduction

This chapter has two main tasks. First, it sets out the Hegelian basis of Rose’s social philosophy to show how it holds together the methodological, logical, descriptive, metaphysical and normative aspects of social theory. Second, it exposits absolute ethical life as an implied and imperfectly posited social totality. Rose’s Hegelian philosophy requires a totality as integral to any satisfactory account or explanation of society; this is the formal source of absolute ethical life. Its substantial source is that absolute ethical life both emerges from and critiques the diremptions of society’s bourgeois property form and the antinomies of social contract theory. It is, for Rose, key to the Absolute in Hegel: “Hegel’s philosophy has no social import if the absolute . . . cannot be thought.”14 This chapter advances three parts of my interpretation: the basis for the coherence of Rose’s social theory, one of the ways it can be used to critique society and social theory, and how both are part of the unity of her work as a whole and her trilogy in particular.

A principal question of the first task is whether Rose was right to claim Hegelian speculative philosophy offers not only a better approach to social theory than both the classical sociological and Frankfurt School traditions but “a wholly different mode of social analysis.”15 In Hegel Contra Sociology Rose critiqued both traditions for their transcendental or neo-Kantian structure and proposed a Hegelian speculative philosophy as an alternative way of doing social philosophy. Transcendental theories (including empirical sociology) are necessary but penultimate;16 their explanations must be taken up into a wider pattern of thought. This is a bold claim and a potential misunderstanding should be confronted immediately. Rose does not argue that transcendentally structured social theory has no worth or that its explanations fail. She argues instead that the logical foundation and the practice of social philosophy are best articulated by Hegelian speculative logic and that a more conscious appreciation of this would improve the practice of sociology to some extent. She said of Hegel Contra Sociology: “The first and longest chapter of my book is devoted to discussing the ‘neo-Kantian paradigm,’ in order to derive the conditions of intelligibility of sociological reason, not its ‘uncomprehendability.’ . . . My whole book is a defence and restatement of the view that Hegelian heights are . . . the most ‘sensational’ in offering a perspective on the recurrent issues of social theory.”17

Rose’s speculative logic, then, offers itself as a better articulation of what social theory does at its best than the self-understandings of neo-Kantian social theories, and accounts for sociological error derived from their self-misunderstanding. In other words, her theory sublates them; it preserves some elements and negates others.18 In this, she continued the Frankfurt School tradition.19 This goal and her admiration for the classical sociological tradition are articulated in a lecture at Sussex University in 1986 entitled “Does Marx Have a Method?”

The general statement of our rules always presupposes the results which are to be explained. They are an essential and deadly exercise. Sociological rationalism is this paradox. A scientism which knows that it is historically specific; that it is always both separate from and part of its object. And this seems to me equally true of all the great classic sociologists: Mannheim, Simmel, Tönnies, as well as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Lukács, and phenomenology. Sociology must be disciplined or methodological in order to be rational, but equally it must recognize its inherent tendency to lose its object if it becomes excessively instrumental. Hence it must constantly radicalise its methods. The particular claim of Marxism to be methodological and sociological is that it exposes the illusion that experience is immediate, in a way that is more comprehensive than its rivals, more inclusive. It sees the paradoxes of other theories as contradictions, which themselves have a social origin. Thus in an important sense, the varieties of sociologies are complementary not competing. Sociology does not impose abstract schemas, it provides an exposition of the abstract experience we are already living as immediate experience.20

Rose’s belief that different areas of social theory cannot be hermetically separated led her to favor the systematic ambitions of the founders of classical sociology above the fragmented status of much (then) current sociology. Rose’s argument concerns whether and how reason, truth, ethics and politics may be legitimately grounded, or whether some form of dogmatism (rationalism) or skepticism (nihilism) are inevitable: “This book, therefore, remains the core of the project to demonstrate a nonfoundational and radical Hegel, which overcomes the opposition between nihilism and rationalism.”21 Rose also argues against positivism in sociology, arguing for an essential moment of hermeneutic understanding (Verstehen) for understanding human society. Indeed, insofar as social theory has progressed since 1981, thereby avoiding some of Rose’s criticisms, it has tended to confirm her core thesis that the issue is the choice between neo-Kantian and Hegelian social theory. Insofar as theories like those of Giddens and Bourdieu succeed it is because they approximate to the Hegelian speculative rationality Rose sets out.22 Likewise many continuing sociological debates are set within German idealist terms, knowingly or not,23 often in ways that repeat the original debates, though sometimes with less sophistication.24

In order to answer the question about the success or failure of Rose’s alternative social philosophy I first situate Rose’s Hegelianism within the contemporary field of Hegelian studies, in relation to non-metaphysical approaches to Hegel (§2). These interpretations rose to prominence in English-language scholarship after 1989, almost a decade after Rose’s own Hegel book but they are nevertheless the most useful way of expositing her thinking. Then I explain the nature of the argument in Hegel Contra Sociology, and expound its criticisms of social theory by reference to the work of Richard Biernacki and Nigel Pleasants, who have independently made similar critiques to Rose against, respectively, social science (§3.2.1) and critical theory (§3.2.2). Having thus corroborated Rose’s complaints against social theory, I explain Rose’s version of Hegelian speculative philosophy (§4). Programmatically put, Rose’s speculative social theory involves a phenomenological exploration of ethics, society and politics (§4.1); a triune rather than dichotomous way of thinking (§4.2); and speculative propositions (§4.3). I then show Rose’s Hegelian philosophy in action as it critiques society and social theory (§5.1) and posits an implied social whole, absolute ethical life (§5.2). In the course of the chapter I elucidate Rose’s work by comparing it to ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Rose’s Hegelianism
• Chapter 2: Rose’s Frankfurt Inheritance
• Chapter 3: Jurisprudential Wisdom
• Chapter 4: The Broken Middle
• Conclusion
• Works Cited