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Another sociology

The future of sociology from a critical theoretical perspective

Carleheden, Mikael

Published in:Dansk Sociologi

Publication date:1998

Document versionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of record

Citation for published version (APA):Carleheden, M. (1998). Another sociology: The future of sociology from a critical theoretical perspective. DanskSociologi, 9(special issue), 55-75.

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Another Sociology- the future of sociologyfrom a criticaltheoretical perspective

DANSK SOCIOLOGI special issue, 1998

During the second half of the 20th century, sociologyas a social technology in service of the welfare statehas been the predominant form, especially inScandinavia. The crisis of the welfare state has ledthis form of sociology into a crisis as well. Instead,I argue for a critical sociology contributing dianosticsof the social pathologies of the modern state. Such anapproach can find inspiration in classical sociology,but it is also important to realize that, today, we areliving in another modernity. A liberation from socialtechnology must thus include a liberation fromobjectivistic methods.

Mikael Carleheden

Mikael Carleheden is visiting research fellow at the Department of Political Science,Columbia University, New York.

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1. IntroductionIn Alvin Gouldner’s almost-classic stu-dy of academic sociology from 1970, TheComing Crisis of Western Sociology, wefind a section titled “A note on the futu-re of sociology” (Gouldner 1970:443ff).Gouldner predicts there - in view of thethen rising New Left and psychedelicculture - the decline of the overwhel-ming influence of Parsons’ functiona-lism on post-war American sociology,and the growing significance of Mar-xism. He also anticipates the importantrole of an expanding welfare state in thecoming crisis of Western sociology. Par-sonian functionalism cannot, he argues,adapt to the influences and require-ments of the welfare state. We shouldinstead expect the appearance of a kindof “Keynesian functionalism” and thusa growth of an instrumental orientationin sociology.

This growing instrumentalism,accelerated by the increasing roleof the state, finds its expressionin ‘theoryless’ theories, a kind ofmethodological empiricism inwhich there is a neglect of sub-stantive concepts and assump-tions concerning specifically hu-man behaviour and social relati-ons, and a corresponding empha-sis upon seemingly neutral me-thods, mathematical models, in-vestigational techniques, and re-search technologies of all kinds....Such a conceptually uncommit-ted and empty methodologicalempiricism is particularly welladapted to service the researchneeds of the Welfare state.(Gouldner 1970:444-445).

Gouldner describes sociologists of thiskind as “the market researchers of thewelfare state” (Gouldner 1970:445). In

Western Europe and especially Scandi-navia, however, this was in 1970 not thefuture of sociology, it was sociology. InGermany, Jürgen Habermas had alrea-dy in 1962 talked about sociology as be-ing instrumentalised as a “Hilfswissen-schaft im Dienste von Verwaltungen”(Habermas 1971:299). In Sweden, socio-logy had existed primarily as such a“Hilfswissenschaft” since the discipli-ne’s institutionalisation soon after theSecond World War (see, for example,Olsson 1997 and Thörnquist 1997).However, this kind of sociology is origi-nally American. As Zygmunt Baumanonce bluntly put it: “The two great bu-reaucracies in America - the Warfareand the Welfare bureaucracy - were be-hind the spectacular development ofempirical sociology” (Bauman 1992:143). Today, just before the end of thefirst whole century of sociology, it is notespecially controversial to claim that themost influential form of sociology du-ring the second half of this century hasbeen what we might call social techno-logy in service of the welfare state. Du-ring this time, sociology has to a greatextent been, in Ralf Dahrendorf’swords, ‘a bureaucratic discipline’ (Dah-rendorf 1996). Compared to that of soci-al technology, the influence of the theo-ries of both Parsons and Marx has beenlimited and temporary. This means thatit is wrong to talk about sociology - atleast until quite recently - as multipara-digmatic or fragmented. It might betrue for social theory, but theory is - atthe most - of secondary importance forsocial technology. Most kinds of sociolo-gies during the second half of the 20thcentury - sociology of work, sociologyof addiction, sociology of the family etc.- did have a common paradigm: socialtechnology in service of the welfare sta-te.

It is obvious that the point of depar-

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ture for talking about the future of ‘Wes-tern sociology’ today must be differentfrom that of Gouldner’s. From our per-spective, Gouldner gave too much im-portance to both Parsons and Marx. Se-condly, he could not see the coming cri-sis of the welfare state. Today there canbe no doubt that the welfare state is inserious trouble, and some even talkabout its end. This situation must ofcourse be a deadly threat to mainstreamsociology, which has founded its self-identity and legitimacy on its role as aservant to this state. It is thus not surpri-sing when we again not only hear talkabout the coming crisis of sociology, butalso about its ongoing ‘decomposition’(Horowitz 1993), ‘decline’ (Wagner1991; Dettling 1996) and ‘end’ (Sennett1994). My general claim in this articlewill be that such statements about thefuture of sociology are overreactions tothe present critical situation. If it is truethat the crisis of sociology today is clo-sely connected to the crisis of the welfa-re state, then it is not sociology in gene-ral that faces its end, but sociology associal technology. A quick look at classicsociology is enough to show us that so-ciology in general cannot be reduced to‘methodological empiricism’ and ‘theo-ryless theories’.

So if we are not witnessing the endof sociology, what can be said about itsfuture? I believe that there are four im-portant points to be made in connectionwith this question.

The first is that we are not necessari-ly - nor, I will even claim, are we proba-bly - seeing the end of the welfare state.What we are seeing is a crisis, that de-pends primarily on two developments.(a). The globalisation of market econo-my has led to an economic crisis in thenation-bound welfare state. This crisisdoes not necessarily imply the end ofthe welfare state, but rather its globali-

sation. (b). The welfare state also suffersfrom an escalating legitimation crisis.This state has always been embeddedin a paternalistic form of politics - so-called social engineering - which is clo-sely connected to sociology as socialtechnology. Such politics stand in oppo-sition to a new form of modernity - in-cluding, for instance, radicalised indivi-dualism - which has begun to appearin the late 20th century. As with the eco-nomic side of the crisis, the legitima-tion side might lead us to hasty predic-tions about the end of the welfare state.My claim will rather be that the overco-ming of the legitimation crisis presup-poses the democratisation of the welfa-re state, which excludes both politics associal engineering and social science associal technology.

The second point is that sociology -being in the process of losing its mostimportant foundation for identity for-mation, that is, the technocratic welfarestate - must once again look back onclassic sociology in order to develop anew cognitive identity and thus the con-ditions necessary to abandon the sin-king ship. I believe that from a criticaltheoretical perspective - I am primarilyrelying on the Habermas of Theorie deskommunikativen Handelns (TkH) and Ha-bermas’ successor in Frankfurt, AxelHonneth - it is possible to track downsuch an identity in classic sociology. Itsuggests that sociology should be thediagnostics of the social pathologies ofmodern society. This suggestion wouldenable us to develop a sociology whichis not institutionalised as a servant, butrather as a critic of the welfare state1. Iwill argue that such a critical sociologyfit for the 21st century must be able tofree itself from a Marxian philosophyof history, which classic critical theorynever managed to do, without wander-ing away to political theory and politi-

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cal philosophy to justify its existence,which Habermas tends to2.

The third point is - and here I partlydepend on sociologists like Beck, Gid-dens and Bauman - that the form of mo-dernity which was the subject of classicsociology is only one possible form ofmodernity. If we use substantial termsand refer to concrete societies, weshould not speak of modernity but ofmodernities. A fundamental trait of mo-dernity is that incentives to change arebuilt into its formal structure. This for-mal structure, however, cannot in itselfsupply the material of which concretemodern societies are made. Every mo-dern society or culture is therefore mo-dern in its own special way. Thus, if wewant to investigate current social patho-logies, we will be dealing with anothermodernity than social theory fromMarx to Parsons did. Radicalised globa-lisation and individualism, which Imentioned in the first point, are onlytwo aspects of the emergence of ‘ano-ther modernity’3.

Unlike the other three, the fourth andfinal point does not primarily concernour changing society and the role whichsociology can or should play there. Itconcerns theory of science, that is, thenormative logic of theory developmentand empirical research and the relation-ship of the two. In another sociology (a)there has to be another relationship be-tween theory and empirical researchand (b) the methods of empirical re-search must change.

(a) I agree with Niklas Luhmann thatthe one-sided concentration on empiri-cal methods in post-war sociology hasled to what he calls, with a strange mix-ture of German and English, a ‘Theorie-desaster’ (Luhmann 1990:410). SinceParsons there have not been any - to useLuhmann’s words again - ‘fachuniver-salen’ theories (Luhmann 1984:10)4 .

This is probably why many sociologyteachers have been standing more orless awkwardly silent before studentsasking the most elementary question ofthem all: What is sociology? I believethat a science with such a theoreticalweakness is only possible under thecondition of some external force hol-ding it together - in our case, the dem-ands of a technocratic welfare state5. So-ciology is thus today standing at a cross-road. Either it will manage to developsome convincing and consistent, albeitfallible, answers to the question “Whatis sociology?”, or sooner or later its cog-nitive decomposition will be followedby an institutional one - somethingwhich we already have seen signs of inthe USA (see Horowitz 1993 and Sen-nett 1994). This problem cannot be sol-ved without sociological theory deve-lopment - and I am talking about ‘grandtheory’6.

(b) The reifying methods of sociolo-gy as social technology fit a special - touse the early Habermas’ term - ‘interestof knowledge’, namely the institutiona-lised interest of the technocratic welfarestate to implement its plans7. Sociologyas the diagnostics of the pathologies ofmodern society needs of course to de-velop other research methods. Currentcritical theory has not very much to sayon this point (compare, however, Dry-zek 1995). We can find in the writingsof Habermas, however, an undevelopedidea of what might be called communi-cative research methods.

These four points all need to be wor-ked out carefully and at length. If thiscould be done successfully, the resultwould be a program for a future criticalsociology. Of course, I cannot do thathere in this article. I can only give somefurther arguments to support and ex-plain each of the four points. One lastpreparatory remark before I start: There

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is a mixture of predictions and prescrip-tions in my picture of the future of so-ciology. I am thus working in the sameway that critical theorists usually do.The distinction between predictions,which are founded on facts, and pre-scriptions, which are founded on nor-mative arguments of different kinds (lo-gical, moral, ethical, aesthetical), is onlymeaningful if it is understood as an ana-lytical distinction. In actual researchthere is never a question of pure factsor pure normativity. What characterisescritical theory is the idea of a kind ofdialectic between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’which precludes objectivism, relativismand utopianism. Normative argumentsare thus seen as situated in facticity,while factual situations are seen, to so-me degree, as both a result of normati-vely motivated action and somethingthat can be changed by such action - forinstance by critical sociology. Criticaltheorists are therefore looking for pos-sibilities in situations to solve problemsdeveloped in situations. So let us nowturn to the situation of sociology today8.

2. The crisis of the welfarestate and its consequences forsociologyIn introducing the first point I claimedthat the crisis of the welfare state is thecrisis of the (a) nation-bound and (b)paternalistic welfare state. I will say so-mething more about both of these sidesof the crisis.

(a) The concept of globalisation is inthe process of becoming the most-dis-cussed concept in social science today.Both Beck and Giddens regard globali-sation as one of the most importanttraits of late or - to use their new termi-nology - ‘second modernity’9. I will notdiscuss here the meaning of the conceptof globalisation, or its advantages anddisadvantages. What I want to say is

this: In line with the post-Marxist tradi-tion of thought, we should regard thewelfare state as the solution to the con-flict between labour and capital. Thewelfare state compensates and protects,outside the market economy, peoplewho have no means of production. Themarket economy can thus continue tooperate according to its immanent logic,without necessarily leading to miseryand want for the weak. As long as thissolution can be maintained, the mostimportant conflicts in society are no lon-ger economical, but political (see forinstance Habermas 1985b). At a pinch,the solution can still work as long asonly the production and the circulationof goods are globalised. When, how-ever, capital itself is globalised, whencapital liberates itself from a specificplace in space, then the means for thenation-bound state to protect and com-pensate the people without means ofproduction, through taxation and finan-cial politics in general, is drasticallyweakened. The welfare state is then incrisis.

In a globalised world we continue,however, to live under conditions of ca-pitalism. There are still people who pos-sess means of production and peoplewho do not. This division does notchange with globalisation, but rather, itreceives global significance. It followsthat if we today are witnessing the endof the welfare state, then we are alsowitnessing the return of the disintegra-ting conflict between labour and capital.This conflict is internal to every capitali-stic society, and thus, every capitalisticsociety has to find a solution to it. Now- and this is the conclusion I want toreach in this section - under conditionsof globalisation it is very hard to see anyother solution to this conflict than some-thing like the one - with all its shortco-mings, failures and mistakes - which we

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see slowly and hesitantly developing inEurope today, that is, the globalisation- or perhaps better the transnationalisa-tion - of the state. I believe that we arenot witnessing the end of the welfarestate but the beginning of its transnatio-nalisation.

But does it not follow from such anargument that we must - as soon as awelfare state has re-established itself ona transnational level - expect a revivalof sociology as social technology? Myanswer would be that this is one of threepossible developments10. Another pos-sibility is the decline of the welfare statewithout any new solution to the conflictbetween labour and capital. We couldcall such a situation postmodern, andit would lead to radical social disinte-gration. A third possible developmentwould be the emergence of a transnatio-nal, non-paternalistic welfare state.What speaks for this second form ofmodernity and against the develop-ment of a paternalistic state on a trans-national level is that already the natio-nal paternalistic welfare state (first mo-dernity) suffers from a legitimation cri-sis. The globalisation of the welfare statecannot in itself be a solution to this partof the crisis. We are here dealing withanother kind of welfare state crisis11.

(b) If we take as our point of depar-ture Weber’s well-known concept ‘legi-time Herrschaft’, power presupposeslegitimacy and legitimacy in turn pre-supposes validity (Weber 1980). In amodern society, validity has to emergeunder increasingly radicalised condi-tions of secularisation, pluralism, indi-vidualism and post-traditionalism. Ra-dicalised modernity forces us to recon-struct Weber’s theory of legitimacy.Such a reconstruction is one of Haber-mas’ most important sociological ac-complishments. He argues that if thepolitical power in a fully modernised

society is not radically democratised, itis going to suffer from a legitimation cri-sis (Habermas 1973, 1981, 1992; compa-re Carleheden 1996:168ff).

I will try to lend some support tothis argument from another angle thanHabermas’ own. In early modernity thelogic of science, technology and the ruleof law (and thus of the bureaucracy) do-minated politics in a similar way to theway the logic of religion did in premo-dern societies. With reference to We-ber’s famous study Die protestantischeEthik und der Geist des Kapitalismus it ispossible to claim that once capitalismwas institutionalised, faith in positivelaw, science and technology took overthe legitimating role that the Protestantethic had during the emergence of capi-talism. With the rise of the welfare state,the importance of this mixture of instru-mental reason and politics - that is, soci-al engineering - increased dramatically.It is in this context that sociology as soci-al technology emerged. One importantoutcome of social engineering is that themoral dimension of politics also beco-mes technicalised. Morality then takesthe form of utilitarianism12. In Swedenthere was, in 1997, an intense debateover one evident example of the negati-ve consequences of such politics.

In Sweden from 1935 to 1976 over60,000 persons - more than 90% of themwomen - were legally sterilised13. Agreat majority of the sterilisations wereexecuted by force (Runsic 1998). Mostwestern countries have, as far as I know,had sterilisation programs during somepart of the 20th century. But the once-celebrated Swedish welfare state - theso-called Swedish model - was probab-ly, with exception of Nazi Germany, themost effective also in this case. Eugenicsplayed a crucial role in these programs.In Swedish social democratic ideology- which totally dominated Swedish po-

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litics during the period we are talkingabout - the welfare state was called ‘thehome of the people’. The metaphor sug-gests that the state was understood asthe responsible father and the citizenshis children. In this good and safe home,every child was taken care of. Thismeant, however, that also the less heal-thy, successful and conscientious child-ren obtained a level of welfare whichenabled them to have and raise child-ren. This side effect of welfare politicswas seen as a threat to the future healthof the Swedish race. The ‘bad’ part ofthe population bred. This is the back-ground of the sterilisation program. Icannot go deeper into this example, butI see it as a clear example of how a utili-tarian social policy, relying on medicalscience and sociology as social techno-logy14, with the intention of creating agood society, created not welfare for all,but deprivation for some15.

The legitimacy of this kind of politicspresupposes faith in science, social tech-nology and law. My main point in thissection is that in the late 20th centurywe have been witnessing a disenchant-ment with not only science, but alsotechnology and positive law. (Castoria-dis 1995:62; Beck 1986:256)16. Politicianscan no longer just refer to scientific ex-pertise and reduce politics to a questionof technique. Different kinds of socialmovements, civil disobedience and thegeneral mistrust of politicians illustratethis new political situation. Democracyno longer means that we choose our re-presentatives every fourth year to dowhat they want, and otherwise simplyobey them. That would be what Beckcalls ‘democratic monarchy’ (Beck 1986:312). Radical democracy means partici-pation and influence of citizens.

Modernity is, to use Hans Blumen-berg’s term, ‘Kontingenzkultur’ (citedin Isenberg 1996) - that is, we have lost

every possibility to found anything withreference to something absolute. It isprecisely this that gives us, however, thedeepest meaning of democracy. Demo-cracy is, according to Castoriadis, ‘therule of self-reflection’ (Castoriadis 1995:80) and the self-creation of society outof nothingness. To found society on so-mething absolute means to found it onsomething outside of this social self-creation (Castoriadis 1995:176). Demo-cracy is the only legitimate form of thissocial, that is, co-operative self-creationof society. After the disenchantment offirst religion and then positive law,science and technique, truth cannotexist outside of the social, and validitythus depends on the participation ofcitizens in the act of societal self-crea-tion. All this puts much higher dem-ands on a ‘legitime Herrschaft’ thanWeber had imagined. Under conditionsof second modernity, legitimate powerpresupposes radical democracy. Thisrules out social engineering and thusalso sociology as social technology.

The conclusion of this first point isnow evident. If there is going to be afuture sociology, it has to detach itselffrom the idea of social technology. So-ciology has to radically and rapidly re-new itself. This renewal cannot go inany direction. Another sociology has tokeep pace with the development of se-cond modernity and not be draggingbehind17.

3. Sociology as diagnosticsof the social pathologies ofmodern societyIf a renewal of sociology is going to beworthwhile, there has to be somethingin the tradition of sociology that pointsbeyond social technology and can beused as point of departure. I agree withthose who claim that already classic so-ciology was to some extent technocratic.

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However, my argument in this sectiononly presupposes that classic sociologyas a whole, in contrast to sociology associal technology, cannot be reduced totechnocratic thinking. There are otherimportant ideas in classic sociology thatcan be used to renew contemporary so-ciology18. One of these ideas has recent-ly been made visible by Axel Honneth.

We have to start even further backthan classic sociology. We have to go toits roots in social philosophy. Accordingto Honneth, social philosophy must bedistinguished from both moral and po-litical philosophy. The imperative forsocial philosophy is “to find a determi-nation and discussion of those develop-mental processes of society that can beconceived as processes of decline (Fehl-entwicklungen), distortions, or even associal pathologies” (Honneth 1994:10,1996:370). It is clear that such a philoso-phy demands a normative standard,and if it is going to be distinct from mo-ral and political philosophy, that stan-dard has to be something other than jus-tice (the right). We need instead a theo-ry of the good (ethics), that is, of hu-man self-realisation19. Social philosophyinvestigates the social conditions of hu-man self-realisation. This is clearly an-other question than the one moral andpolitical philosophy is working with. Itis not about the meaning of and condi-tions for just relations between humans,but about the meaning of and the condi-tions for becoming a human being. Theconditions we are then talking about arenot biological or psychological condi-tions, but social conditions. It concernssocial life as a whole.

Honneth sees Rousseau (Discourse onthe Origin of Inequality) as the first so-cial philosopher. His most importantearly followers were Hegel, Marx andNietzsche. Social philosophy is thus areflection on modern society, a reflec-

tion on the possibilities of self-realisa-tion after the political, capitalistic andindustrial revolutions. Its central ques-tion is what consequences the legalisa-tion, commercialisation and industriali-sation of social relations have for thepossibility of human self-realisation. Inthis pre-sociological phase of social re-flection we find primarily two differentforms of normative foundation, basedon either philosophical anthropology ora philosophy of history. Both orienta-tions form the basis for a criticism ofmodern society as - at least from theperspective of human self-realisation -a process of decline. The general claimis that modernity in some sense is a hin-drance to human self-realisation or evenmakes it impossible.

According to Rousseau, the processof civilisation forces man to abandon hisnatural way of life. Honneth notices thatRousseau turns Hobbes upside down.It is the state of nature which allows hu-man self-realisation and the state of ci-vil society which prevents it. Alreadyin the works of Rousseau we find oneof the most important ideas of socialphilosophy, alienation. The conditionsof modernity alienate man from him-self, from his natural form of life. Theconsequence is both a ‘loss of freedom’and a ‘loss of virtues’ - examples of so-cial pathology.

In Hegel’s work, another social pa-thology is central, ‘loss of community’.According to Hegel, the developmentof modern subjective rights leads to so-cial isolation. This in turn prevents self-realisation, because he - in contrast toRousseau - sees non-instrumental socialrelations as conditions for a fully hu-man life (compare contemporary com-munitarianism). Hegel claims that somekind of social unity, which would con-nect atomistic bourgeois life, is needed.In Marx’s early work, self-determined

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work is the condition for self-realisa-tion. Capitalistic and industrial formsof division of labour prevent this. Theresult is alienation. In the later Marx,the idea of reification has replaced alie-nation. Reification has since become amore powerful concept than alienationbecause, unlike the latter, it is not boundto a romantic idea of work.

Nietzsche, in contrast to Marx, con-centrates on the cultural conditions ofmodernity. Modernity makes it impos-sible, he claims, to live according to va-lues which are conditions for self-reali-sation. He sees nihilism - ‘loss of mea-ning’ - as the most important form ofmodern pathology.

My intention is only to remind youof these social philosophers and theirwell-known ideas. The important pointfor my argument is that these ways ofthinking had a big influence on thefounding fathers of sociology. In a way,classic sociology can be described as so-cial philosophy transformed into scien-ce. The founding fathers of sociology,Honneth writes -

were without exception deeplyconvinced that modern societywas threatened by a moral impo-tence, which necessarily led tomassive disturbances in social re-production. With the institutio-nal transition from a traditionalto a modern social order, soclaimed the general diagnosis,the social value structure had lostthat ethical power of formationwhich had up until now allowedthe individual to interpret its lifeas meaningful relative to a socialaim. Sociology could now be con-ceived as an answer to the resul-ting pathology .... (Honneth 1996:380, 1994:29).

This statement is easy to support. Justthink about Weber’s theory of moderni-sation as rationalisation which leads toa general disenchantment of the world.Weber conceptualises modernity as aloss of both freedom and meaning andtalks about modernity as an iron cage.Think about Durkheim’s central con-cept of anomie. Think about Simmel’stalk about modernity as the ‘tragedy ofculture’. Think about Tönnies’ worriesabout what social bounds keep modernsociety together, etc. The influence ofRousseau, Hegel, Marx and Nietzscheon the founding fathers of sociology isalso a well-known story. I hope it isenough just to mention these centralconcepts of classic sociology to supportthe thesis that sociology was - at leastin part - a normative and critical scien-ce. I believe that it is precisely this partwhich made sociology an interestingand exciting science, that is, preciselythe part which is the first victim of so-ciology as social technology. Even moreimportantly, sociology as social techno-logy does not only neglect social patho-logies, it takes part in the production ofsuch pathologies20.

Classic sociology was different fromthe one which has dominated the se-cond half of the 20th century. It seemseven possible to find support for a criti-cal sociology in classic sociology. Oneof the main problems with such a socio-logy is, however, the validity of the nor-mative standards which are the pointof departure for the criticism. As I men-tioned earlier, pre-sociological socialphilosophy depended either on philoso-phical anthropology or a philosophy ofhistory. Both these forms seem today tobe undermined by the philosophical cri-ticism of metaphysics. It is, however, es-sential for an advocacy of sociology asdiagnostics of the social pathologies ofmodern society, that distinctions be-

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tween pathological and non-pathologi-cal life forms can be made in a non-arbi-trary way. Such a sociology must, in ot-her words, be able to answer the diffi-cult question of how it is at all possibleto defend normative standards of whata good or successful life is21. The classicsociologists never solved this problem,which explains why it was so importantfor them to try to develop ‘scientific’research methods, and why the norma-tive part of classic sociology was oftenimplicit or even concealed.

I agree with Honneth that the onlyway to solve this problem is to leavethe substantial approach of social philo-sophy behind and develop a formaltheory of the good (compare Carlehe-den 1996: chap. 8). However, in compa-rison with Aristotelian ethics, Rous-seau’s social philosophy is already a for-malisation. Rousseau did not speakabout the goals of human self-realisa-tion, but about the conditions for itspossibility. He did, however, use a nor-mative concept of nature similarly tothe way theories of natural rights do.Such references to human nature arejust as problematic as Hegelian ideasof an immanent logic in history, inwhich an anticipated end-state is usedas normative foundation. In the articleby Honneth which I have been referringto, he does not really help us much fur-ther than stating our problem veryclearly. He ends by saying that the ap-proach he has developed “depends onthe success with which the claims of aweak formalistic anthropology may bejustified in the future” (Honneth 1996:394, 1994:60). Let us see if Habermascan help us further.

Habermas criticises the early criticaltheory because, although its membersknew that a philosophy of history can-not be defended, they never worked outanother normative foundation for their

critique of modern society. Habermasclaims to have found such a foundationin the formal structures of linguisticcommunication. In the second volumeof TkH he explains the social pathologi-es of modern society as resulting fromdisturbances of the symbolic reproduc-tion of the lifeworld. Symbolic repro-duction depends, Habermas continues,on communicative action. Through thisform of speech act, meaning, social inte-gration and personal identity are pro-duced. Without it, human life cannot beupheld22. The general characteristic ofthe human being is its ability to commu-nicate. Communication is a universalcondition for human life. As for earlycritical theory reification is the most im-portant kind of social pathology for Ha-bermas. In his theory, reification meansthat communicative action is made im-possible. Reification is here translatedto the well-known thesis about the co-lonisation of the lifeworld by the system(see Carleheden 1996: chap. 2).

It is thus evident that Honneth inmany ways relies on Habermas. His ar-gument is a continuation of critical theo-ry. However, in TkH, Habermas doesnot relate social pathology, as Honnethdoes, to human self-realisation in anydirect way23. After TkH, he furthermoreconcentrates his efforts on moral andpolitical philosophy, on political scienceand law. Eventually he does develop abeginning of a theory of self-realisation.Self-realisation is then seen as the crite-ria of the good (ethics) in contrast to theright (justice and morality). In this ap-proach, however, self-realisation stillisn’t connected with a theory of socialpathology. Self-realisation is either un-derstood existentially (the self-realisa-tion of a person) or politically (the self-realisation of a group or community ofsome kind)24. As a matter of fact, no-where in Habermas’ work can we find

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social philosophy in Honneth’s sense,that is, a combination of the conceptsof self-realisation and social pathology.The advantage of this combination is -as I see it - its ability to give sociology anormative point of departure of its own.Habermas’ theory of communication istoo general for our purposes. Let megive some arguments for this claim be-fore we go on.

In TkH, sociology plays a very im-portant role for the critical theory of so-ciety because in it we have, Habermasclaims, a social science which is inter-nally related to questions about rationa-lity and validity. The argument seemsto be, that if we can reflect on such que-stions within the framework of a scien-ce, then we can work out a theory ofnormative foundation without expo-sing ourselves to the criticism of meta-physics, which otherwise seems to un-dermine all forms of critical thinking.Normativity is, according to Habermas,inherent in key sociological concepts li-ke social action and social order. Thebasic theme of sociology is, he claims,social integration (TkH vol.1: 19, Eng.vol.1: 4). However, in the works afterTkH it becomes increasingly clear thatthe normative foundation of a modernsociety’s social integration is to beworked out by a theory of the right. Atheory of the good can only play a mi-nor role. In Faktizität und Geltung (FG),political science and jurisprudenceseem to have taken over the key rolethat sociology played in TkH25. I believethis is mistaken. I think it is true thatsociology cannot claim to be the meta-science of the social sciences, but neithercan political science or law. The goodand the right are equally importantconcepts for social science. The onecannot be reduced to the other. Both thelogic of justice and of human self-reali-sation pose fundamental demands on

society as a whole, and these two de-mands need not - and should not - standin contradiction of each other, as the de-bate between liberals and communita-rians might suggest26.

The problem with Habermas’ criti-cal theory from a sociological point ofview is that his concept of the good istoo weak. It cannot give sociology a nor-mative foundation of its own. I agreewith the general claim in his later theoryof self-realisation, that the proceduralpresuppositions of practical discourseabout both the good and the right aresimilary universal. The problem lies inhis way of distinguishing the good fromthe right. Like Rawls, Habermas arguesthat while human rights are characteri-sed by being generalisable, conceptionsof the good are thoroughly contextual.But if we do not develop a formal theo-ry of the general characteristics of thegood, self-realisation could be anything.This means that a practical discourseabout the good immediately must becaught up by relativism. We thus needa theory of human self-realisation. Justan application of discourse theory is notenough. The difference between a theo-ry of the right and a theory of the goodcannot be how far their normative con-ceptions can be generalised. It is rathera question of different kinds of normati-vity.

The perhaps somewhat surprisingconclusion of this quick look into thework of Habermas is that he does notreally give us the theoretical materialwe need to formulate a conception of acritical sociology. He formulates a gene-ral framework for a critical theory ofsociety, but he does not give sociology- as a distinct discipline - a clear andconsistent role within this general fra-mework. Social integration seems tohave become a subject matter for politi-cal science, law and political theory, and

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the concept of communicative action ordiscourse is too general for our purpo-ses. We are thus back where we leftHonneth. Luckily he, in a earlier bookcalled Kampf um Annerkenung, has gonea bit further than in the article I referredto previously.

Honneth’s purpose in this book isprecisely to work out “the universalsof a successful (gelungenen) life” (Hon-neth 1992:285). Such a theory, he writes,must be formal enough not to violatethe plurality of concrete forms of life.On the other hand, it must be able tooffer more than a theory of justice.

Honneth starts - with the help of He-gel and Mead (and tacitly, Habermas) -by making a distinction between self-preservation and recognition. Economicand political theories in the tradition ofMachiavelli and Hobbes always haveself-preservation as their fundamentalpoint of departure. Recognition, how-ever, has in its primary sense nothingto do with self-preservation. While self-preservation concerns physical survi-val, recognition takes place in the sym-bolic and social dimension of life; it isintersubjective. This means also thatHonneth takes Hegel’s part againstRousseau. With his general critique ofcivilisation, Rousseau argues that hu-man self-realisation is a monologicalself-relationship. Hegel and Mead seeinstead a special kind of non-instrumen-tal social relation as fundamental to be-coming a human being. Self-realisationpresupposes intersubjective recogni-tion. Human beings are social beings,which explains why ‘loss of communi-ty’ and ‘anomie’ must be seen as socialpathologies. I believe that with this as-sertion something other is said thanwhat can be said with the help of mo-ral and political theory, that is, with con-cepts like freedom, autonomy, respectand justice. We are dealing with two dif-

ferent kinds of normativity. Human be-ings need recognition just as much asjustice.

Honneth does not, however, confinehimself to a general concept of recogni-tion. He differentiates between threeforms of recognition which a good lifepresupposes: Love, rights and solidari-ty27. In the first case recognition is ex-pressed through emotional devotion(Zuwendung), in the second casethrough cognitive respect and in thethird case through social esteem (Wert-schätzung) (Honneth 1992:211). Theseforms of recognition corresponds fur-ther to three forms of disrespect (Miß-achtung). Such distinctions could beused as points of departure for workingout the different tasks and fields of acritical sociology. Another way wouldbe to take the different models of socialpathologies in classic sociology - aliena-tion, reification, anomie, loss of mea-ning, loss of freedom and loss of com-munity etc. - as points of departure. Icannot, however, go further into thismatter here.

To conclude this point, the conceptof ‘intersubjective recognition’ seems tobe what we have been looking for. It isthe core of a weak formalistic anthropo-logy that can be defended against therelativist critique of universals, becauseit is - as Habermas’ concept of commu-nication is - not just philosophical, butcan rely on social theories (like Mead’s),and it is formal enough to allow for aplurality of life forms. In addition, it ismore substantial than the theory of dis-course and distinct from a theory of ju-stice. It gives us thus a normative foun-dation for sociology as diagnostics ofthe pathologies of modern society.

4. Another modernityMy third point is that it is wrong tospeak of the modern society in the sin-

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gular. This mistake is made on both si-des of the modernity-postmodernitydebate. The mistake lies in identifyingthe first concrete form of modernitywith modernity in general. Contempo-rary society cannot be understood inthis way, because it is neither a simplecontinuation of first modernity nor so-mething quite different. Sociologyshould instead be a study of moderniti-es. This is a more concrete task than justwriting the history of the emergence ofmodernity’s general features. Further-more, we wouldn’t be forced to under-stand modernity as something in theprocess of freeing itself from all pre-mo-dern elements. Such an understandingmight allow us to speak of modernities,but only in the sense of more and lesspure stages. It implies that the historyof modernity is going to end in one glo-bal form of pure modernity. Instead so-ciology as a study of modernities sug-gests that modernity is going to produ-ce different kinds of modern societies,for instance a second Western form ofmodernity. This form is not purer thatthe classic Western form or, for instance,some Eastern form of modernity - it isonly different (compare Taylor 1995: xi-xii). Let me give some examples to sup-port this claim.

In the first point I mentioned globali-sation. In many ways, globalisation isonly a continuation of trends in classicmodernity. It is for instance by no meansa break with capitalism. However, oneof the main characteristics of a societyin the period of classic modernity wasthat it could more or less be equatedwith a nation state society. Today, glo-balisation has gone so far that it in manyways stands in opposition to the nationstate. With continued globalisation, weshould expect that societies with bor-ders other than national ones are goingto be more important to modern peop-

le’s lives than nation state societies 28 .Such societies are thus different fromsocieties of classic modernity, but theycan still very well build on typically mo-dern qualities such as individualism,pluralism, secularisation etc. Individua-lisation can also be used to support myargument. An individualistic self-un-derstanding - which for instance wasexpressed in the American and Frenchrevolutions - was one of the most im-portant features of classic modernity.But just as in the case of globalisation,things start to happen when individua-lism becomes radicalised. We are dea-ling with changes in degree which at acertain level become changes in kind.One side of this is the legitimation crisisI talked about in the first point. The ra-dicalised individualistic self-understan-ding threatens not only the paternalis-tic and technocratic welfare state, butalso representative democracy as weknow it. Another side of this radicalisedindividualism is the consequences it hasfor the paternalistic family (Beck 1986).Beck has argued that while the familyin many ways was the smallest unit ofclassic modernity, we are now enteringa period where the family is replacedby the individual. This developmentcan easily be confirmed by looking atincreasing divorce rates and the increa-sing number of people living alone.Other examples of the development ofanother modernity are post-industrialcapitalism, multiculturalism, the chan-ge from more instrumental to moreaesthetical forms of life (Schulze 1992),the disappearance of class as a kind of‘Gemeinschaft’ (Beck 1986).

Now, it would not be surprising ifthe writings of classic social philoso-phers and sociologists are bound to agreat degree to the specific case of clas-sic modernity. Obviously, the kind ofwork Marx was criticising when he

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wrote about alienation is different fromthe kind we find in a post-industrial so-ciety. Clearly Weber had very little expe-rience of the possibilities of radical de-mocracy when he wrote about moderni-ty as an iron cage. Hegel or Durkheimcould not reflect on the declining impor-tance of nation, class or family whenthey wrote about loss of community,anomie and social integration. Weberdid not know about the increasing pos-sibilities for aesthetic forms of life as aresponse to secularisation and loss ofmeaning etc. When another sociologyuses the concept of social pathology andtakes as its point of departure classicsociology, it will have to take into ac-count how the development of anothermodernity changes the content and theconditions of social pathologies in con-temporary society.

5. In search of non-reifyingempirical methodsCritical theorists have over and overagain pointed out that the empirical me-thods of mainstream sociology are clo-sely connected to an objectivistic worldview and well suited to a technocraticsociety (see for instance Adorno et al.1972). Thus a critical sociology has todevelop another methodology, whichwill also overcome the idea of a dualis-tic relationship between theoretical andempirical research29. This is the back-ground for the last point I want to make.

To be able to outline another metho-dology we have to be very careful, be-cause the objectivism of ‘scientific’ em-pirical research is as old as the disciplineitself. There are few non-objectivist at-tempts in the sociological tradition tofall back on30. This results from the un-fortunate idea that the social sciencesshould copy the methods of the naturalsciences in order to gain the status of a‘real’ science. Our problem, however,

goes even deeper. The objectivistic un-derstanding of knowledge in generalhas dominated epistemology and thetheory of science ever since Descartes.This is true to such a degree that criticsof objectivism often see themselves for-ced to do away with methodology andepistemology altogether31. One reasonfor this is that epistemology seems tobe inevitably intertwined with a dualis-tic understanding of the relationship be-tween the scientist and the world whichhe or she is seeking knowledge about.The relation is thus construed as a sub-ject-object relation. Objectification of theworld and its inhabitants becomes inthis view a precondition of knowledge.Today - after the pioneering work ofHeidegger and the later Wittgenstein -it is quite clear that epistemology in thissense is not just a theory of knowledge,but that it implies a whole world view- a deceptive one. Charles Taylor men-tions three often-criticised notions rela-ted to epistemology (Taylor 1995:7):

1. The possibility of a free and ratio-nal subject outside of both the na-tural and the social world.

2. An instrumental relation betweensubject and object.

3. An atomistic understanding of so-ciety.

The first notion follows from the con-ception of knowledge as representation,that is, the idea that knowledge is thesubject’s inner pictures of an outer rea-lity. Here we once again encounter theearly modern idea that science shouldand could take over the position thatGod had in the pre-modern world, thatis, a position from above, from whereit is possible to observe the world assomething disparate and external. Thecritics of epistemology have, however,convincingly argued that the scientist

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is rather a product of the same worldthat he or she is studying. Rather thanhe or she being here and the world the-re, the scientist is a ‘being-in-the-world’,to use Heidegger’s terminology.

The second notion follows from thefirst. A subject outside the world canonly relate to it in an instrumental way,that is, treat it as a physical object. Thisincludes the subject’s relation to its ownbody and to every other subject.

The third notion is this epistemologi-cal world view applied to social theo-ry32. The last two notions explain whythis kind of epistemology fits a techno-cratic society so well. I cannot here,however, go further into the by-now,even without including critical theory,overwhelming criticism of these notions- from Heidegger’s concept of ‘being-in-the-world’ and the later Wittgen-stein’s concept of ‘language-game’ toKuhn’s paradigm theory of science andpostmodern criticism of the autono-mous subject. The notions have beendisputed on an anthropological, moral,political, sociological, historical and lo-gical level. Let me instead try to say so-mething about the theoretical condi-tions of another methodology.

The fact that scientists no longer canbe seen as gods, but as human beingsliving in a natural and social world,means - at least in the case of socialscience - that they lose their privilegedposition in relation to their objects ofresearch. It may seem strange that Ineed to emphasise this, but in view ofthe history of methodology it is not. So-cial scientists are not another kind ofpeople and scientific methods are notmagic flutes. Their knowledge and theirmethods do not differ in kind from theknowledge of other people and their‘methods’. Normal people can in factacquire knowledge and reflect uponthemselves without scientific methods

and a grade in statistics or formal logic.Scientists are influenced, just as are nor-mal people, by the fact that they are si-tuated in a specific social and historiccontext with specific values and beliefs.If they were not, they would not be ableto know anything at all.

Another consequence of the critiqueof epistemology points in the same di-rection. Along with the idea of know-ledge as representation, we have to lea-ve the correspondence theory of truthbehind (Habermas 1997). It is impossib-le to compare inner pictures or conceptswith an outer world. Such a comparisonwould presuppose some kind of purecontact with this world which is notmediated through inner pictures orconcepts. This is as unconvincing as theidea that the outer world, through per-ception, causes true inner pictures ofthis world, as long as the observationis made in the right way. It is moreconvincing to argue that every contactwith an outer world must be mediatedor interpreted through language.Knowledge of something presupposesthat this something can be placed in asymbolic universe or - to use Wittgen-stein’s terminology - become a part ofa language game33. Such a language ga-me could for instance be a social theory,which shows why theory is crucial toempirical research. Wittgenstein, how-ever, goes further. He understands lan-guage in a performative way, whichleads him to see a language game as aform of life. Language is a way of actingand living that includes, of course, per-formative knowledge34 . Thus, livingand acting people always already haveknowledge, which is not different inkind from scientific knowledge. Objec-tivistic science is, in a way, just anotherlanguage game. It implies, however, atechnocratic form of life.

We can use the theory of language

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game as a theory of knowledge. It saysthat to know something is to place thissomething in an already existing sym-bolic universe. Of course new knowled-ge can change this universe to some ex-tent, but some pre-existing symbolicuniverse is a necessary precondition forknowledge. To place something in asymbolic universe is to interpret it. Hu-man beings - that is, both scientists andnormal people - are, to use Taylor’sphrase, ‘interpreting animals’ (Taylor1985:45ff).

We are now prepared to take a lookat the methodological considerationswhich are to be found in Habermas’writings 35. The term ‘social’ means a re-lationship between at least two humanbeings. Habermas’ theory of communi-cative action says that this relation can-not be understood in its primary senseas a subject-object relation. In accordan-ce with what has just been argued, ifwe understand the scientist as a humanbeing, social science also has to be un-derstood as a social relation. Habermascan accordingly use his findings in so-cial theory to develop a methodology.The relation between the scientist andthe inhabitants of the social world thathe or she is examining cannot primarilybe a subject-object relationship. It is ona fundamental level, like all other so-cial relations, a subject-subject relation,an intersubjective relation. The reasonfor this lies in the logic of understand-ing. To be able to understand the mean-ing of another subject’s actions (includ-ing speech acts), we have to have ac-cess to this person’s symbolic universe,a universe which to a great extent isshared with other people living in thesame society.

Now in the case of sociology this isnot so hard as it sounds, because socio-logists mostly study their own society,that is, a language game/form of life

(or lifeworld) which the sociologistsand their objects of research already toa great extent share. In comparison tosocial anthropologists, sociologists inthis respect have an easier task. In prin-ciple, however, they have to solve thesame problem (a problem scientistsshare with normal people), the problemof mutual understanding. Access to an-other person’s symbolic universe pre-supposes a process of reaching mutualunderstanding (‘Verständigung’). Sucha understanding is not possible if wetreat our objects of research as pure ob-jects. The process of mutual understan-ding presupposes that we meet the oth-er as another subject, that is, as a per-son with intentions of his/her own. Toexplain this in detail would take toomuch time, unfortunately. The crucialclaim to make here is Habermas’ argu-ment for a necessary connection be-tween meaning and validity. We cannotunderstand meaning, he asserts, with-out taking a position on the rightnessof certain validity claims which are in-volved in every speech act (primarilyclaims about truth and normative right-ness). Thus a social scientist cannot treatthe claims inherent in the speech actsof the inhabitants of the social worldhe or she is studying as mere facts, solong as he or she wants to understandthem. A process of reaching mutual un-derstanding can only begin if the per-sons involved take positions towardsthe validity claims of one another. Thisis only possible if scientists abandon -at least for a while - their lonely posi-tions as observers and take the positionsof participants.

If a process of reaching mutual un-derstanding does not precede the con-struction of social facts, this construc-tion is only going to be the result of thescientist’s personal symbolic universe,that is, it is going to be subjective. In

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this case the scientist lacks access to thesymbolic dimension of the social worldhe or she is studying. The meaning heor she attributes to the actions of theinhabitants of this world can thereforeonly be the scientist’s own subjectivemeaning. This is what happens in thecase of objectivistic science. In using ob-jectivistic methods, social scientists for-ce the objectivistic world view impliedby these methods on the society theyare studying. Objectivism thus turnsout to be a form of subjectivism.

The question which emerges at thisstage is whether or not there is any dif-ference between the scientist and thenormal person at all. The answer is thata scientist cannot be a participant all thetime. This is of course also true for thenormal person. We must all be able totake the position of a third person obser-ving other people interact. The socialscientist, however, specialises in suchobservation. The social scientist is an ex-pert at observing some specific part ofthe social world. He or she collects ob-servations in a systematic way and triesto find connections between them withthe help of social theory. A scientist isan expert at producing specialisedknowledge, similar to the way someonemay be an expert at doing business onthe stock market, playing football or re-pairing old cars. Habermas tries to cap-ture the special form of the social scien-tist’s expertise with the phrase ‘virtualparticipant’. In contrast to normal peop-le, the social scientist does not “pursueany aims of his own within the observedcontext” (TkH Vol.1:168, Eng. Vol.1: 14).For normal people, knowledge is firstand foremost the ‘instruments’ of livingand acting. Even a critical sociologistcan be distinguished from normal peop-le through his or her theoretical attitudetowards knowledge.

I cannot here develop these prepara-

tory remarks about the preconditionsfor non-reifying methods further. Per-haps we could call them communicati-ve research methods. The problem withsuch methods is that they could be cri-ticised for hermeneutic idealism similarto the way Habermas criticises interpre-tative sociology in general (TkH vol.2:182ff, Eng. vol.2:119ff). It is at this pointthat he introduces systems theory. Peop-le’s actions cannot always be explainedby their intentions and motives, noteven after a process of mutual under-standing. Society is not only lifeworld.But Habermas makes these points onlyon a social-theoretical level. Which arethe consequences for methodology?Habermas does not ask himself thisquestion36. It is obvious that externalforces - and we do not have to under-stand them in a system-theoretical way- do play an important role in society. Itis also obvious that such external for-ces might be responsible for social pa-thologies. Such is the claim of Haber-mas’ theory of colonisation. The ques-tion then is how sociology can graspthese forces in empirical research andhow methods for this are to be relatedto communicative methods. This ques-tion I have to leave open without evena single preparatory remark.

Noter1. I am not primarily talking about a critiqueof the welfare state as such, but rather a criti-que of what the welfare state does and how itworks. The welfare state should, however, on-ly be seen as one, although one of the mostimportant, possible objects of critique. Anoth-er important object is of course the market andits consequences for social life.

2. I am using the term ‘critical theory’ as a moregeneral term than ‘critical sociology’. The for-mer term is synonymous with ‘the Frankfurtschool’ and is a perspective which can be usedin the social sciences and the humanities ingeneral.

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3. ‘Another modernity’, and not ‘New moder-nity’, is the correct English translation of thesubtitle to Beck’s book Risikogesellschaft (1986).

4. The only exception, besides Luhmann’s ownsystems theory, is Habermas’ theory of com-municative action.

5. Such a hypothesis could explain why Ame-rican sociology today seems to be in a weakerposition than European sociology (see Horo-witz (1993) and Sennett (1994)). The welfarestate is, after all, more developed in Europethan in the USA.

6. An answer to the question “What is socio-logy?” does of course not exclude theoreticalpluralism. Theoretical pluralism presupposesrather several competing answers to this ques-tion.

7. It is possible to say a lot about the speciallogic of this implementation without using themystifying language of Luhmann’s systemstheory. I believe Habermas goes too far in Luh-mann’s direction, but I cannot develop that he-re.

8. There are several contemporary attempts todevelop a ‘post-empiricist’ or ‘post-positivist’sociology, which do not take their point of de-parture in critical theory. For an account, seefor instance Bryant (1995) or Pleasants (1997).I cannot explicitly challenge these alternativesto my own attempt here.

9. See the recently started Suhrkamp book se-ries edited by Beck called ‘Edition Zweite Mo-derne’.

10. There are already today undeniable signsof a technocratic approach in European re-search politics.

11. This is what makes me more optimisticthan Dahrendorf (1997), who believes that glo-balisation is going to make the 21st centuryan ‘authoritarian century’.

12. This corresponds to Gouldner’s term‘Keynsian functionalism’. The aim of social en-gineering is the survival of society as a whole.

13. A majority of the sterilisations were exe-cuted before 1955 (Runcis 1998).

14. Two of the most important Swedish socialdemocratic ‘legislators’ - to use Bauman’s con-cept (1987) - Alva and Gunnar Myrdal - did alot of their most important work before so-ciology was institutionalised in Sweden. Theywere, however, to a great extent inspired byAmerican sociology and even sometimes cal-

led themselves sociologists. Gunnar Myrdal(1954:191ff) named his political program “atechnology of economies”. See Nilsson (1994).

15. Swedish media was, in 1997, full of inter-views with mostly elderly women who tear-fully tell stories about how their lives were de-stroyed because of sterilisation, and how theyuntil now had told almost nobody about thetrue cause of their childlessness because theywere ashamed of it. These repeated storiesabout shame show how strong the technocra-tic welfare state ideology once was.

16. These two authors do not mention positi-ve law. I see faith in positive law as at least asimportant for an understanding of cmassicmodernity as faith in science and technology.We can use Weber’s theory of legitimacy to ar-gue for this.

17. However, such a renewal might not neces-sarily imply a complete disconnection of socialresearch and politics. Giddens suggests in-stead a new model, which he calls dialogical:“A dialogical model introduces the notion thatthe most effective forms of connection be-tween social research and policy-making areforged through an extended process of com-munication between researchers, policy-ma-kers and those affected by whatever issues areunder consideration.” (Giddens 1987:44). Seealso Bryant (1995: chap. 5).

18. In criticising an earlier version of this artic-le, Bauman writes: “To encompass the logicof all sociology (...) one needs to take enlighten-ment and not service as a frame. I believe thatthe story would look then much less disconti-nuous ...” (personal correspondence, January30, 1998). This criticism made me change someearlier formulations.

19. Concerning the distinction between theright and the good, see Rawls (1993) or Ha-bermas (1991, 1992).

20. Compare Wagner (1991:14), who writes:“While the classic social sciences tried to unco-ver the institutional structures which threate-ned to discipline the individual and undermi-ne his autonomy, the modern social sciencesreified exactly these structures and becametherefore rather one more bar in the ‘iron cageof modernity’ instead of becoming the instru-ment to break this cage open.”

21. It is problematic enough to claim univer-sal validity for concepts of what is morallyright.

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22. We are here actually dealing with a weakformal anthropology. In TkH (vol.2:561f, Eng.vol.2:383), even Habermas sometimes talksabout “anthropologically deep-seated struc-tures” with reference to communicative ac-tion.

23. Habermas does in TkH use the concept ofauthenticity a few times, but there he relatesit to aesthetics. This approach is already aban-doned in Habermas (1985a). Compare Carle-heden (1996:231ff).

24. The first way is developed in Habermas(1991:100ff), the second in Habermas (1992).

25. The role of sociology in FG seems primarilyto be a correction of purely normative approa-ches (like Rawls’), that is, the role of a ‘objecti-vistic disenchanter’ (like Luhmann).

26. It seems to me that while Habermas - likeliberals - tends to let the concept of the rightoverrule the concept of the good, Honneth -like communitarians - tends to let the conceptof the good overrule the concept of the right. Iam critical of both the approaches.

27. Instead of seeing the good and the right astwo different and equally important normati-ve concepts, Honneth thus in a communitarianmanner understands the right as a part of thegood. In Carleheden (1996:234ff), I argue thateven from the perspective of self-realisation,we need to develop a concept of morality thatin a way supports a concept of the right, whichis developed from the perspective of justice.In contrast to Honneth, however, I believe thatsuch an idea of the moral aspect of the goodcan only support - not replace - a Kantian, de-ontological theory of the right.

28. It is often observed that globalisation doesnot exclude decentralisation. There seem to bebetter possibilities for regional and local com-munities in a globalised world than in a na-tion state.

29. This dualistic idea we find just as much in‘qualitative’ as in ‘quantitative’ empirical re-search.

30. Compare, however, the so-called interpre-tative sociology.

31. Compare post-positivistic relativism andpostmodern contextualism (Rorty), but alsofor instance Gadamer (1986) who argues thatwe have to choose between truth and methodor Taylor (1995), who talks about ‘overcomingepistemology’.

32. Hobbes’ social theory is the first clearexample.

33. This concept should be understood in con-trast to a physical universe. We should remem-ber that Wittgenstein emphasises that such auniverse cannot be private.

34. Habermas uses Husserl’s term ‘lifeworld’in a similar sense.

35. Habermas himself rejects his methodolo-gically and epistemologically oriented theo-ries before TkH (see Habermas 1982:10). Sincethen, however, he has had little to say aboutmethodological questions. We have onlysection 4 of the introduction to TkH (vol.1:152ff, Eng. vol.1:102ff) and an article includedin Habermas (1983:29ff), which to some extentonly repeats the arguments in TkH, to rely on.

36. He does have things to say about this inhis earlier period of thinking (Habermas 1968,1982:313ff). But this was when he used Freud’stheory as a model for the social sciences, andthese ideas cannot easily be used in connectionwith his later period.

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