It is well known that Ernest Gellner made substantial use of his knowledge of the social sciences in philosophy. Here I discuss how he used it on the basis of a few examples taken from Gellner’s philosophical output. It is argued that he made a number of highly original “translations”, or re-interpretations, of philosophical theories and problems using his knowledge of the social sciences. While this method is endorsed, it is also argued that some of Gellner’s translations crossed the line (...) between the original and the idiosyncratic. (shrink)

In recent years, the intellectual tide has moved strongly against the kind of secular thinking that characterized Gellner’s work. Whether couched in terms of postcolonialism, multiculturalism, genealogy, global understanding, political theology, or the revival of normative, metaphysical and openly religious perspectives, today’s postsecular and even anti-secular mood in social theory seems to consign Gellner’s project to the dustbin of history: a stern but doomed attempt to shore up western liberal rationalism. Under some revisionary lights, it has even become pointless to (...) distinguish flexible secular thinking which still retains some firm ‘bottom lines’ from what is routinely portrayed as rampant ideological secularism. Unconvinced by key assumptions and motivations on this terrain, I reactivate Gellner’s essential concerns and propositions around secularity and secularism, feeding these into the current debates. Whilst Gellner’s stringent, unrivalled exposure of intellectual cant continues to be hugely valuable, and his sense of the utter historicity of social life and thought indispensable, Gellner’s critical positivism could not, by his own admission, produce a coherent cultural politics. (shrink)

Gellner relied extensively on the work of Ibn Khaldun to understand both the dynamics of social order in North Africa and Islam’s alleged resistance to secularization. However, what the two scholars also shared is their focus on the social origins and functions of group solidarity. For Ibn Khaldun the concept of asabiyyah was central in understanding the strength of long-term group loyalties. In his view, asabiyyah was a fundamental and elementary cohesive bond of human societies which originated in nomadic tribal (...) structures and retained significance in the early formation of complex states and empires. For Gellner, the shape and character of group solidarity is heavily dependent on the economic foundations of a particular social order: foragers require small group bonds for mere survival, the agrarian universe stratifies solidarity and utilizes cultural bonds to differentiate between the ruling aristocrats and the plough-tied serfs, whereas the industrial world generates solidarity from incessant economic growth and state-induced, cross-class, national identifications. Thus, for Gellner, solidarity remains the central force that keeps social orders together. This paper provides a critical analysis of the Khaldunian and Gellnerian models of group solidarity and offers an alternative interpretation that places the social impact of micro-solidarity in the long-term development of ideological and coercive forms of social organization. (shrink)

The article focuses on the historical resources of the China’s model. Understanding the model is one of necessary preconditions of an analysis of China’s dynamic rise and development in recent decades. First, the article analyses the concept of historical development of multiple civilisations and modernities. It then examines the characteristics of China’s old civilisation and the associated model. It ends by showing how the historical Silk Road lives on in an updated modernised global version.

Since the French Revolution the relationship between the Catholic church and modernity has always been very troublesome. First I will describe how the church saw its own position with regard to modernity and how its stance evolved. In a second stage, I will then focus on how modernity `framed' Catholicism: this I will refer to as the modernity and modernization of Catholicism. The insights obtained will be used in a third part in order to get a better understanding of the (...) present and future situation of the church. I will round off with some conclusions concerning Catholic intellectuals and Catholic intellectual traditions from 1800 onwards. (shrink)

Social anthropology flourished in the 20th century but ethnographic methods and intensifying ‘creative destruction’ in the elaboration of theory have combined to deflect attention away from earlier concerns with long-term historical change. The ‘theft of history’ that took place within anthropology refers to this loss, which is not to be confused with healthy interdisciplinary borrowing. With the demise of the evolutionist paradigm and intensifying global connectivity, anthropologists have struggled to find a new balance between empirical ethnographic description, the interpretation of (...) other social worlds, and theoretical explanation. It is not so much that the canon has continued to change but that many practitioners no longer acknowledge any canon. The difficulties are illustrated with a critical discussion of the Anglophone anthropological literature in a field that is novel for the discipline: socialism and its aftermath. The work of Jack Goody has a surprising relevance here; more generally, Goody’s oeuvre shows how ethnographic excellence and intellectual originality can be harnessed together to serve a longue durée comparative historical anthropology. (shrink)

Morals and politics occupy themselves, if not exclusively, then at any rate centrally, with questions of value. Politicians and moralists deplore the alleged decline of values while pressing supposedly new ones upon us. The fiercest sympathies and antipathies, whether between individuals or between societies, are those which stem either from a community or from a divergence of values. ‘So natural to mankind,’ said Mill, ‘is intolerance in whatever they really care about.’.

The philosophy of Ernest Gellner was much influenced by his studies in the social sciences. The philosophical problems he examined and the solutions he proposed originated there. To what extent does the legacy of Gellner influence the social sciences and current events and social transformations? More than a few of the essays in Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought find that while the questions he raised are fruitful, the answers he gave them do not pass the test of time. By (...) contradiction, John Hall, in Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography, finds that Gellner laid the grounds for understanding the origins and development of current events and social transformations. Gellner’s distinguished three spheres in modernity which eventually created a mosaic of nations in Europe - agraria, industria and nationalism. Most of Gellner’s critics found the creation a threat to enchantment; Hall found it disenchanting and cold yet an illuminating way to reach solutions to our contemporary problems. Assessing Gellner in the current context namely, global fluctuations and through the spectacles of these two books, I find that Gellner’s spheres in modernity are called to overlap exerting pressure on the mosaic of nations and, to a large extent, transforming it into an imagined seamless community of people in which our human rationality accommodates only a touch of reenchantment. I suppose that Gellner would agree. (shrink)

The philosophy of Ernest Gellner was much influenced by his studies in the social sciences. The philosophical problems he examined and the solutions he proposed originated there. To what extent does the legacy of Gellner influence the social sciences and current events and social transformations? More than a few of the essays in Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought find that while the questions he raised are fruitful, the answers he gave them do not pass the test of time. By (...) contradiction, John Hall, in Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography, finds that Gellner laid the grounds for understanding the origins and development of current events and social transformations. Gellner’s distinguished three spheres in modernity which eventually created a mosaic of nations in Europe - agraria, industria and nationalism. Most of Gellner’s critics found the creation a threat to enchantment; Hall found it disenchanting and cold yet an illuminating way to reach solutions to our contemporary problems. Assessing Gellner in the current context namely, global fluctuations and through the spectacles of these two books, I find that Gellner’s spheres in modernity are called to overlap exerting pressure on the mosaic of nations and, to a large extent, transforming it into an imagined seamless community of people in which our human rationality accommodates only a touch of reenchantment. I suppose that Gellner would agree. (shrink)

Moral relativism is a tragedy and cognitive relativism is a farce – so Gellner argues. First the tragedy: moral relativism is consistent and compelling given moral diversity and contention worldwide. Then the farce: cognitive relativism is self-contradictory and logically false; it is also absurd in view of hard science, which gets testable, cumulative, applicable results that yield high tech; and it is insidious – where logical consistency and empirical accuracy are a dead letter, mummery rules.