Overview

In this volume, Bernstein forsees and outlines the development of a social theory that is at once empirical, interpretive, and critical.

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9780812277425

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Reviews

""Anyone who wants to understand the profound changes that have overtaken the social disciplines in the course of the past decade ought to read Bernstein's book. He examines an extraordinarily wide range of theories with the most scrupulous care, in each case adding a series of extremely perceptive criticisms.""--Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books ""Richard Bernstein is uniquely gifted among our contemporaries to bring into focus the mutual relevance of highly disparate strands in modern social and political theory. We are not likely to have a better work in the field.""--Alasdair MacIntyre ""Valuable ... for identifying the requirements for all rational life.""--Religious Studies Review ""A masterful survey and exposition of a broad range of literature on the social sciences. This book ... shows Bernstein's extraordinary gift for interpretation. He takes author after author and deftly lays out the essentials of their arguments, relating them to others, and gradually developing a coherent picture of a whole realm of discourse... A contribution that is vitally needed.""--Political Theory

This academic study is a jump ahead of the usual polemical assessments of the state of theorizing about the social sciences. Over and over we have heard that the to social and political studies must be challenged by gumshoe empiricist approach sounder concepts of the value-fact duality. Bernstein, a Haverford philosophy professor, outlines three sorts of attempts to supersede value-neutrality and brute fact premises, appraises their successes, and concludes that their own practitioners need to go further in realizing the critical function of theory. The three are linguistic analysis and other branches of structuralism (Thomas Kihn's seminal The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is categorized here); phenomenology from Husserl to, in particular, the emigre Alfred Schutz; and the investigation of praxis, represented here by Frankfurt School specialist Jurgen Habermas. Bernstein judges them in some analytic detail, his sobriety sometimes almost tongue-in-cheek, as when he makes Schutz' elaborate distinction between purposes and past causal influences seem absurdly commonsensical, or when he wryly suggests that the Teutonic Habermas has ended up a mere pragmatist, denying that theory can actually shape practical judgment. But has Bernstein shown that, in running up against their own limitations, these thinkers are pointing toward further progress, as he claims, or is he documenting a new level of sterility? In any case, this is a suggestive, demanding resume, more restricted but more up-to-date than Alan Ryan's Philosophy of Social Science (1972). (Kirkus Reviews)

Anyone who wants to understand the profound changes that have overtaken the social disciplines in the course of the past decade ought to read Bernstein's book. He examines an extraordinarily wide range of theories with the most scrupulous care, in each case adding a series of extremely perceptive criticisms. -Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books Richard Bernstein is uniquely gifted among our contemporaries to bring into focus the mutual relevance of highly disparate strands in modern social and political theory. We are not likely to have a better work in the field. -Alasdair MacIntyre Valuable ... for identifying the requirements for all rational life. -Religious Studies Review A masterful survey and exposition of a broad range of literature on the social sciences. This book ... shows Bernstein's extraordinary gift for interpretation. He takes author after author and deftly lays out the essentials of their arguments, relating them to others, and gradually developing a coherent picture of a whole realm of discourse... A contribution that is vitally needed. -Political Theory

Anyone who wants to understand the profound changes that have overtaken the social disciplines in the course of the past decade ought to read Bernstein's book. He examines an extraordinarily wide range of theories with the most scrupulous care, in each case adding a series of extremely perceptive criticisms. -Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books Richard Bernstein is uniquely gifted among our contemporaries to bring into focus the mutual relevance of highly disparate strands in modern social and political theory. We are not likely to have a better work in the field. -Alasdair MacIntyre Valuable ... for identifying the requirements for all rational life. -Religious Studies Review A masterful survey and exposition of a broad range of literature on the social sciences. This book ... shows Bernstein's extraordinary gift for interpretation. He takes author after author and deftly lays out the essentials of their arguments, relating them to others, and gradually developing a coherent picture of a whole realm of discourse... A contribution that is vitally needed. -Political Theory

Author Information

Richard J. Bernstein is Vera List Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research.

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