Search results

Modernism and postmodernism may be thought of as either moments or movements. We argue for thinking of them as moments, essentially related to each other, rather than movements that literally have historical specificity. From this perspective what is modern and what is postmodern is always shifting, such that their nature is problematic, essentially contested and shifting. Rather than use contemporary examples to make these points, we prefer to refer to quite historical examples, because the modalities become much sharper and can be seen in clearer focus. Hence, we discuss Machiavelli and Caravaggio as precursors of the postmodern and Hobbes and Boyle as precursors of the modern. Obviously, there is an irony in our intent: given the claims to currency of the debates with which we frame the paper then reference to some classical sources serves to hose down debate and fix it in a sharper, cleaner form. While it will become evident that our sympathies are not with “modernism”, it should become equally clear that we hold much of the representation of “postmodernism” to be as much at error as we do the fixing of the modern in the frame of the empiricist, the positivist, and the scientific. For us, all these terms are equally problematic, and have been so ever since we began to first think we might be modern – whether in art, social science or science. We conclude by addressing why, in the present, these classical debates should have migrated to the study of organizations.

This chapter is a critical review of Amy Allen's book The Politics of Our Selves. It briefly reconstructs some of the book's impressive achievements: articulating a synthetic account of gendered subjectivity that accounts for both subjection and autonomy; imaginatively integrating poststructuralist and communicative theories; and, furthering important new interpretations of Butler, Foucault, and Habermas. It also raises critical concerns about Allen's project: her specific conception of autonomy and its justification; her suspicions of the notion of historical progress; her psychological explanation of the continuing power of pernicious norms of gendered subjectivity; the usefulness of psychoanalysis for critical social theory; and, the role of cultural, structural, and materialist explanations and political strategies.

Published below are the course reading list and student notes taken by F. Taylor Ostrander in Frank H. Knight’s course, Current Tendencies, Economics 303, at the University of Chicago during Winter term of the 1933–1934 academic year. The reading list is surprisingly casual and uneven in detail among items. The notes are assumed, as usual in these volumes, to be a reasonably accurate summary account of what Knight said.

The paper considers the phenomenon of Big Data through the work of Hannah Arendt on technology and on thinking. By exploring the nuance to Arendt’s critique of technology, and its relation to the social and political spheres of human activity, the paper presents a case for considering the richness of Arendt’s thought for approaching moral questions of Big Data. The paper argues that the nuances of Arendt’s writing contribute a sceptical, yet also hopeful lens to the moral potential of Big Data. The scepticism is due to the potential of big data to reduce humans to a calculable, and thus manipulatable entity. Such warnings are rife throughout Arendt’s oeuvre. The hope is found in the unique way that Arendt conceives of thinking, as having a conversation with oneself, unencumbered by ideological, or fixed accounts of how things are, in a manner which challenges preconceived notions of the self and world. If thinking can be aided by Big Data, then there is hope for Big Data to contribute to the project of natality that characterises Arendt’s understanding of social progress. Ultimately, the paper contends that Arendt’s definition of what constitutes thinking is the mediator to make sense of the morally ambivalence surrounding Big Data. By focussing on Arendt’s account of the moral value of thinking, the paper provides an evaluative framework for interrogating uses of Big Data.

This chapter is concerned with the professional integrity of researchers in social science. Social science researchers who undertake data collection and fieldwork, which involves spending time with those who have volunteered to be part of the research, have ethical responsibilities towards those who participate in their research. Particularly when research is publicly funded, they also have duties towards the social groups they study, and to wider society in which the findings of the research are of relevance. The position taken here is that social science researchers should be regarded as professionals who share common concerns and practices similar to the professionals working in health care.

Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit is, by the author’s own account, “a study in ‘pure theory’.” From pure theory, the scientific method’s “successive approximations” explain empirical phenomena. But Knight did not fully develop the boundary conditions for theory. In this chapter, the author elucidates the demarcation of pure theory in Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. For comparison and contrast, the author uses Mises’s Austrian aprioristic methodology praxeology and its strict distinction between theory and thymology. The author finds that Knight and Mises largely agree on the nature and importance of pure theory but differ on its meaning and use. The author’s findings suggest that Knight, while arguing for aprioristic pure theory, still places empirical observation first.

The modern social and political order is characterised by a range of disparate moralities which lead to a plethora of interpretations and competing perspectives as to what ought to be the appropriate ethical template for corporate social responsibility. The possibility of uniting these disparate threads into a unified whole is explored by addressing the complex philosophies of Immanuel Kant and his alleged successor, Hans Kelsen; paying particular attention to their contrasting views of the proper foundations of public consensus towards establishing an idealised moral community of corporate actors.

The research is library-based and suggests that philosophy (in this instance, Kant’s moral philosophy and Kelsen’s general theory of law and state, for example) is able to offer an alternative rational and morally grounded ethics of law and governance; pertinent to the effective governance of corporate behaviour and moral management practices.

Central concepts, characteristic of both the Kantian and Kelsenian philosophical methodologies, have the capacity to act as a positive influence on the development of effective CSR mechanisms for assuring greater accountability. In addition, it is suggested that by prescribing ethically appropriate corporate behaviour as a first consideration, such philosophical frameworks are capable of providing a powerful disincentive against corporate crime.

The paper is interdisciplinary and (in an era of mistrust, global financial impropriety and other corporate misdemeanours) explores the utility of a philosophical approach towards articulating the conditions for imposing a moral duty incumbent upon all corporate actors in addressing the practical and conceptual needs of their shareholders and wider society.

To determine where, when, how, and wherefore European social theory hit upon the formula of “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful,” and how its structural position as a skeleton for the theory of action has changed.

Genealogy, library research, and unusually good fortune were used to trace back the origin of what was to become a ubiquitous phrase, and to reconstruct the debates that made deploying the term seem important to writers.

The triad, although sometimes used accidentally in the renaissance, assumed a key structural place with a rise of Neo-Platonism in the eighteenth century associated with a new interest in providing a serious analysis of taste. It was a focus on taste that allowed the Beautiful to assume a position that was structurally homologous to those of the True and the Good, long understood as potential parallels. Although the first efforts were ones that attempted to emphasize the unification of the human spirit, the triad, once formulated, was attractive to faculties theorists more interested in decomposing the soul. They seized upon the triad as corresponding to an emerging sense of a tripartition of the soul. Finally, the members of the triad became re-understood as values, now as orthogonal dimensions.

This seems to be the first time the story of the development of the triad – one of the most ubiquitous architectonics in social thought – has been told.

Purpose – Appreciating the continuing relevance and contribution of Theodor W. Adorno's work requires acknowledgement of the difficulty to grasp his philosophy in a way that is consistent with that which is to be understood, as the necessary first step to achieving concordant understanding.

Design/methodology/approach – To assay an understanding of Adorno's quest for the object beyond the concept, it is best to undertake a journey through the complexity of his thinking, beginning with the book he wrote with Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment.

Findings – The difficulty to capture the substance of philosophy in a manner that allows for representation arises from the inherently processual character of philosophy, which is always both unfinished and without secure summation of report at any step along the way. Indeed, the difficulty is all the greater with respect to Adorno, in light of his postulate that philosophy “must strive, by means of the concept, to transcend the concept.”

Research limitations/implications – Adorno's obsession to overcome the compulsion of identity made him perceptive and blind at the same time. To liberate his insights from their reconciliatory-philosophical shroud, one would have to expose the concept of rationality to the same obsessive gaze under which false generalities dissolve in Adorno's philosophy.

Originality/value – The inherently processual character of Adorno's philosophy makes his writings especially germane to present conditions of modern society, as they highlight the importance of efforts to develop theories that are sufficiently sensitive to the dynamic character of modern society, including its inconsistencies and its contradictions.