Abstract

The following essay is an attempt at constructing an articulation between sociological theory, classical and contemporary, and some currents in contemporary philosophy and literary criticism. The point of such an articulation is to find a ground for theorizing that is neither positivistic nor idealistic. Related to this endeavor is my conception of the social sciences as, among other things, a history of texts and textual criticism. Hence, my own methods are what might be called "textual". ;The ground that I find for theorizing is the American soil of what I call rhetorical pragmatism, a tradition that runs from Emerson, through William James, to Kenneth Burke and his many students. Because of the rather unconventional nature of my subject matter , I have given the essay a slightly unconventional form. Although taken as a whole the thesis does present a single argument, it is nonetheless broken down into four interlocking but relatively autonomous chapters on various figures in philosophy, literary theory, and social theory. I conclude with the claim that a certain kind of American theorizing is a powerful and useful tool for reading the facts of the social world