So why am I giving a damn about social fallacies? There are several answers to this question. One reason is that I think it is interesting, but that's no surprise since I did invest a decent chunk of time out of my life to studying this stuff.
Another reason, one of which will already be obvious to those of you who have studied Hume, is that I am warming up. The language used in the previous post is clearly something I have pinched from Hume, I am just applying it to a different set of problems. However I think this is an important reason and my motive here is not just to get Humean thoughts firing in my own skull. If you are taking part in this blog then I am also hoping that you will get into the skeptical swing of things when it comes to thinking about society. If we are at least attempting to get on the same page in this regard then maybe it will help prevent us from getting bogged down in pedantic arguments about this or that particularity of social existence. Don't get me wrong, these arguments are fine and something that I often enjoy taking part in. But they may detract from the big picture when it comes to achieving what I want with this blog.
And "what I want with this blog" brings me to another reason for starting this conversation. In my thesis I have a lot to say about social sciences. One of the things I want to say is that sociology is an unavoidably Kantian pursuit. As such I think a good understanding of Kant's philosophy will not only help us to sort out some of the mess that has occured in sociology but also make us much better sociologists while we are at it. The reason I use the phrase, "I want to say" this is that I can't say it yet. This is one of the points that I want to clarify, perhaps via venting some ideas (and hopefully brainstorming with others) on this blog. Once I can say this, my intuition is also suggesting to me that we will be able to follow the same path with a lot of other social sciences and perhaps clear up a lot of confusion that has occured in other sticky fields as well. However this is no small task. It takes ages to be a decent Kantian philosopher and there will also be a stack of issues that will be needed to be dealt with in order to proove the unavoidable reliance on Kant's philosophy by sociology.
SO this then (hopefully!) would be the first major statement from my thesis to appear on the blog: engaging in sociology requires and unavoidable reliance on Kant's philosophy.
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3 comments:
Hey Pete!
Should I bust out some Kant on the unsuspecting SOCS kiddies I'm supposed to tutor this semester?
Probably not unless they are in for some SERIOUS philosophy study. I don't think that there have been too many links drawn between Kant and sociology just yet. There is one guy named Roy Bhaskar who is (from what I hear) almost single handedly spear heading the Critical Realist movement in sociology. Bhaskar's stuff is good for a sociologist but not so good for a philosopher.
I think the best source of psuedo-Kantian-esque sociology is from a couple of German guys, Georg Simmel and Max Weber. These guys are also ranked among the classical sociologists but tend to get overlooked by most people in favour of Marx. Which brings me to another statement from my thesis, Marx is uselss, just read Weber and Simmel . But more on this later...
Actuall Marx isn't really that useless. He does make some good points. It's just that from my experience reading Weber and Simmel can teach you all that Marx had to say and more.
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