Nikos Panayotopoulos

Bio: Nikos Panayotopoulos is an academic researcher from University of Crete. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 2 citations.

L'institution du libre-arbitre : critique sociale du jugement métaphysique

Abstract: Most contemporary political philosophies are underpinned by compatibilist metaphysics (which combines ontological determinism with practical free will). The present research is a sociological critique of its two major premises. The first premise defends the normative priority of democracy over philosophy: lay opinion enjoys full legitimacy to state what is feasible and what is not regarding principles of justice. The second premise is empirical and claims the universality of the belief in free will. The examination of this second premise begins with the acknowledgement of the limits of a moral sociology based on the mutual attribution of responsibility. From there, the program of a critical moral sociology is defined anew as aiming at the explanation of the social mechanisms that universalize the belief in free will and in responsibility. A quantitative study follows, comparing that belief as held by students in management with that of students in philosophy and with that of students in sociology. What emerges is that the contagion of some aspects of that belief is related to their social usefulness: part of that belief objectively stems from a dominant social position, yet it is subjectively perceived as its initial cause. It therefore appears that the injunction to moral responsibility attribution, as a mediator of legitimation of the established order, is much less the result of a "psychologizing neoliberal governmentality" than that of the functioning of any hierarchical social structure as a perpetual engine of production of inequalities. The true psychologization is that which, through the injunction to narcissistic display, increases an alleged need for social recognition, by disguising the demand that one conform to the dominant model as an invitation to being different from it, by turning an individual's narcissism into a most highly valued quality and, in the end, by strengthening the belief in the capacity of self-determination. Together, these two injunctions take part in the institution of free will.

The Sociological Challenge of Reflexivity in Bourdieusian Thought

Abstract: The main purpose of this chapter is to examine Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of reflexivity. The concept of reflexivity plays a pivotal role in Bourdieu’s attempt to develop a ‘critical sociology’ (sociologie critique), often referred to as ‘reflexive sociology’ in the Anglophone literature. Based on a thorough textual analysis of his key works, the chapter aims to demonstrate that the following twelve elements are particularly important to Bourdieu’s conception of reflexivity: (1) ‘science’, (2) ‘vigilance’, (3) ‘consciousness’, (4) ‘self-awareness’, (5) ‘critique’, (6) ‘self-objectification’, (7) ‘distance-taking’ (8) ‘rupture’, (9) ‘epistemology’, (10) ‘historicization’, (11) ‘understanding’ and (12) ‘emancipation’. Although the concept of reflexivity constitutes a useful methodological tool for the construction of critical epistemologies and for the pursuit of social research, it raises a number of significant questions. It is the task of the final section of this chapter to address several controversial issues that arise when one is faced with the challenge of evaluating the merits of Bourdieu’s account of reflexivity. In accordance with the structure of the foregoing inquiry, these issues are synthesized on the basis of ‘twelve theses on Bourdieu’s conception of reflexivity’.