One dimensional man

Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:

The Human Condition.

Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature
of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined
community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one
can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer,
in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring
the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the
notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind
of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by
definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us
describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.

On Imagined Communities

The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society

Time is divided by geologists according to marked shifts in Earth's state. Recent global environmental changes suggest that Earth may have entered a new human-dominated geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Here we review the historical genesis of the idea and assess anthropogenic signatures in the geological record against the formal requirements for the recognition of a new epoch. The evidence suggests that of the various proposed dates two do appear to conform to the criteria to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene: 1610 and 1964. The formal establishment of an Anthropocene Epoch would mark a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the Earth system.

Defining the Anthropocene

The equation between the concept of society and the nation-state in modernity is known as methodological nationalism in scholarly debates. In agreement with the thesis that methodological nationalism must be rejected and transcended, this article argues that we still lack an understanding of what methodological nationalism actually is and, because of that, we remain unable to answer the substantive problem methodological nationalism poses to social theory: how to understand the history, main features and legacy of the nation-state in modernity. The first section of the article reconstructs the origins of the critique of methodological nationalism in the 1970s and differentiates between its logical and historical versions. It then critically reviews the most salient critique of methodological nationalism in contemporary social theory, that of Ulrich Beck. The final part of the article assesses the thesis of social theory’s immanent methodological nationalism by demonstrating how social theory’s equivocatio...

Social theory's methodological nationalism : Myth and reality

Introduction Part 1: Understanding the Nation-State 1. The Critique of Methodological Nationalism: A Debate in Two Waves 2. A Claim to Universalism: Breaking the Equation between the Nation-State and Society Apart Part 2: Classical Social Theory 3. Karl Marx (1818-1883): The Rise of Capitalism and the Historical Elusiveness of the Nation-State 4. Max Weber (1864-1920): Politics and the Sociological Equivocations of the Nation-State 5. Emile Durkheim (1857-1917): Moral Universalism and the Normative Ambiguity of the Nation-State Part 3: Modernist Social Theory 6. Talcott Parsons (1902-1979): The Totalitarian Threat to the Nation-State 7. Raymond Aron (1905-1983), Barrington Moore (1913-2005) and Reinhardt Bendix (1916-1991): Industrialism and the Historicity of the Nation-State Part 4: Contemporary Social Theory 8. Michael Mann (1942- present) and Eric Hobsbawm (1919- present): Classes, Nations and Different Conceptions of the Nation-State 9. Manuel Castells (1942- present) and Globalization Theorists: The 'Definitive' Decline of the Nation-State 10. Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) and Jurgen Habermas (1929- present): World Society, Cosmopolitanism and the Nation-state. Closing Remarks

A Social Theory of the Nation-State: The Political Forms of Modernity Beyond Methodological Nationalism

This article seeks to further our understanding of what methodological nationalism is and to offer some insights towards its overcoming. The critical side of its argument explicates the paradoxical constitution of the current debate on methodological nationalism-namely, the fact that methodological nationalism is simultaneously regarded as wholly negative and all-pervasive in contemporary social science. I substantiate the idea of this paradox by revisiting some of the most successful attempts at the conceptualization of the nation-state that have sought to transcend methodological nationalism in four disciplines: sociology, nationalism studies, anthropology and social psychology. The positive side of my argument offers a distinction between different versions of methodological nationalism with the help of which it tries to address some of the problems found in the literature. Theoretically, methodological nationalism is associated with, and criticized for, its explanatory reductionism in which the rise and main features of the nation-state are used to explicate the rise and main features of modernity itself. Historically, the article reassesses the problem of its prevalence, that is, whether methodological nationalism is a key feature of the history of the social sciences. © The Author(s) 2011.

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The critique of methodological nationalism: theory and history

The problem of the differentiation of societies is at the core of the sociological imagination about the rise of modernity. In postwar sociology, T. Parsons developed the theory of generalized symbolic media in the mid-1960s to tackle, theoretically and historically, the issue of differentiation. According to him, the interchange media are defined as resources oriented to exchange processes between the subsystems of the social system. Starting with money, Parsons argues that the remaining media (power, influence, and value-commitments) have a set of characteristics defined as common properties for all media. After this first formulation, contemporary theorists such as Niklas Luhmann and Jurgen Habermas have developed and modified the Parsonian theory: Luhmann rejects the idea of interchange and proposes the use of communication; Habermas distinguishes between steering and communication media. In all three cases, the focus of the theory is on the characterization of the strongest dynamics of social co-ordination present in differentiated societies. A major result of these developments is the inclusion of new dimensions on which to conceive the properties of media, not only those of money but also language. Beyond differences, then, it is proposed that there is only one theory of generalized symbolic media which can be understood as a progressive research programme, in Lakatos’ terms. Finally, the hand-in-hand evolution between the theory of media and Habermas’ and Luhmann's re-conceptualizations on societal differentiation in contemporary societies will also be revealed.

The theorization of social co-ordinations in differentiated societies: the theory of generalized symbolic media in Parsons, Luhmann and Habermas.

The Anthropocene debate is one of the most ambitious scientific programmes of the past 15 or 20 years. Its main argument is that, from a geological point of view, humans are considered a major forc...

/pdf/the-question-of-the-human-in-the-anthropocene-debate-204qaduk6i.pdf

Daniel Chernilo

Papers

Social theory's methodological nationalism : Myth and reality

A Social Theory of the Nation-State: The Political Forms of Modernity Beyond Methodological Nationalism

The critique of methodological nationalism: theory and history

The theorization of social co-ordinations in differentiated societies: the theory of generalized symbolic media in Parsons, Luhmann and Habermas.

The question of the human in the Anthropocene debate