There have been many readings of Mead's work, and this paper proposes yet another: Mead, theorist of the social act. It is argued that Mead's core theory of the social act has been neglected, and that without this theory, the concept of taking the attitude of the other is inexplicable and the contemporary relevance of the concept of the significant symbol is obfuscated. The paper traces the development of the social act out of Dewey's theory of the act. According to (...) Mead, Dewey's theory does not sufficiently account for consciousness. Grappling with this problematic leads Mead to several key ideas, which culminate in his theory of the social act. The social act and taking the attitude of the other are then illustrated by the analysis of a game of football. The interpretation presented has two novel aspects: first, symbolisation arises not simply through self taking the attitude of the other, but through the pairing of this attitude with the complementary attitude in self; second, self is able to take the attitude of the other to the extent that self has in actuality or in imagination previously been in the social position of the other. From this standpoint the key issue is how the attitude of self and other become integrated. New directions for empirical research, aimed at advancing this question are outlined. Finally, the paper shows how the social act can contribute to our contemporary concerns about the nature of the symbolic. (shrink)

This collection of Habermas's recent essays on philosophical topics continues the analysis begun in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. In a short introductory essay, he outlines the sources of twentieth-century philosophizing, its major themes, and the range of current debates. The remainder of the essays can be seen as his contribution to these debates.Habermas's essay on George Herbert Mead is a focal point of the book. In it he sketches a postmetaphysical, intersubjective approach to questions of individuation and subjectivity. In (...) other essays, he develops his distinctive, communications-theoretic approach to questions of meaning and validity. The book as a whole expands on his earlier efforts to define a middle ground between nostalgic revivals of metaphysical conceptions of reason and radical deconstructions of reason. Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt.The Essays: The Horizon of Modernity is Shifting. Metaphysics after Kant. Themes in Postmetaphysical Thinking. Toward a Critique of the Theory of Meaning. Peirce and Communication. The Unity of Reason in the Diversity of Its Voices. Individuation through Socialization: On George Herbert Mead's Theory of Subjectivity. Philosophy and Science as Literature? (shrink)

The Idea of History is the best-known book of the great Oxford philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood. It was originally published posthumously in 1946, having been mainly reconstructed from Collingwood's manuscripts, many of which are now lost. For this revised edition, Collingwood's most important lectures on the philosophy of history are published here for the first time. These texts have been prepared by Jan van der Dussen from manuscripts that have only recently become available. The lectures contain Collingwood's first (...) comprehensive statement of his philosophy of history; they are therefore essential for a full understanding of his thought, and in particular for a correct interpretation of The Idea of History itself. Van der Dussen contributes a substantial introduction in which he explains the background to this new edition and surveys the scholarship of the last fifty years. (shrink)

Exemplifying a fruitful fusion of French and German approaches to social theory, The Power of Dialogue transforms Jurgen Habermas's version of critical theory into a new "critical hermeneutics" that builds on both Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and Michel Foucault's studies of power and discourse. At the book's core is the question of how social power shapes and influences meaning and how the process of interpretation, while implicated in social forms of power, can nevertheless achieve reflective distance and a critique of (...) power. It offers an original perspective on such issues as the impact of prejudice and cultural background on scientific interpretation, the need to understand others without assimilating their otherness, and the "truth" of interpretation. (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus. Looking behind the self-consciousness of science, he discusses the tense relationship between truth and methodology. In examining the different experiences of truth, he aims to "present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its fullest extent.

In this book, Norbert Wiley offers a new interpretation of the nature of the self in society.

Details the intellectual development of George Herbert Mead as a thinker of great originality and as a practitioner of social reform.

Introduction.--Biographical notes.--General analysis of knowledge and the act.--Perceptual and manipulatory phases of the act.--Cosmology.--Value and the act.--Supplementary essays.

Humanity and the very notion of the human subject are under threat from postmodernist thinking which has declared not only the 'Death of God' but also the 'Death of Man'. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and (...) personal identity - all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity. This original and provocative new book from leading social theorist Margaret S. Archer builds on the themes explored in her previous books Culture and Agency (CUP 1988) and Realist Social Theory (CUP 1995). It will be required reading for academics and students of social theory, cultural theory, political theory, philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;The present thesis can be seen as an attempt to study and analyse the opposition between 'critical theory' or 'critical hermeneutics' of J. Habermas and the 'philosophical hermeneutics' of H-G. Gadamer. It juxtaposes and questions the project of knowledge as critique that Habermas proposes and the hermeneutic understanding which Gadamer claims to be present in any knowledge and 'truth'. The conflict culminates in their debate which firstly, concentrates on the way we (...) should face tradition. Could we trust it as a resource of truth or should we criticise it as a source of ideology? Secondly, at stake is the linguisticality of all understanding and the universal dimensions of the hermeneutic experience. Finally the legitimate use of psychoanalysis as a model of 'critical theory' and the transfer of its methodology and therapeutic results to a 'critical theory of society' is under question. ;I intend to follow closely Habermas's attempts to construct a 'critical social theory'. The main question will be how such a theory is possible and on what grounds it can provide a critique of ideology. One of my arguments will be that 'depth hermeneutics' can provide knowledge as critique but, besides its explanatory ability and its scientific character, it cannot move outside the involvement of hermeneutic understanding and the hermeneutic circle. Concerning Gadamer's philosophy I am going to examine and elucidate what takes place when we try to understand a text, tradition, the past, of the other person; these are processes which make us aware of the wide involvement of hermeneutic experience. Philosophical hermeneutics, I will maintain, introduces different conceptions of knowledge and 'truth' that go beyond the restricted norms of scientific disciplines. It promotes the notion of valid and true knowledge in the areas of the human sciences, in the arts and in tradition. The example of 'scientism', a positivist short-sighted belief which identifies knowledge with science, and which Habermas refutes, can serve to show the distance that separates it from hermeneutics. Starting from 'truth' as insight, I will attempt to bring to light further consequences that 'truth' has in Gadamer's theory and especially the way 'truth' affects us. (shrink)