Book•
Debating Humanity: Towards a Philosophical Sociology
23 Feb 2017-
TL;DR: Debating Humanity as discussed by the authors explores sociological and philosophical efforts to delineate key features of humanity that identify us as members of the human species and defends a universalistic principle of humanity as vital to any adequate understanding of social life.
Abstract: Debating Humanity explores sociological and philosophical efforts to delineate key features of humanity that identify us as members of the human species. After challenging the normative contradictions of contemporary posthumanism, this book goes back to the foundational debate on humanism between Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger in the 1940s and then re-assesses the implicit and explicit anthropological arguments put forward by seven leading postwar theorists: self-transcendence (Hannah Arendt), adaptation (Talcott Parsons), responsibility (Hans Jonas), language (Jurgen Habermas), strong evaluations (Charles Taylor), reflexivity (Margaret Archer) and reproduction of life (Luc Boltanski). Genuinely interdisciplinary and boldly argued, Daniel Chernilo has crafted a novel philosophical sociology that defends a universalistic principle of humanity as vital to any adequate understanding of social life.
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01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: The Courage to Be has become a classic of twentieth-century religious and philosophical thought as mentioned in this paper and has been selected as one of the books of the century by the New York Public Library.
Abstract: Originally published more than fifty years ago, The Courage to Be has become a classic of twentieth-century religious and philosophical thought. The great Christian existentialist thinker Paul Tillich describes the dilemma of modern man and points a way to the conquest of the problem of anxiety. This edition includes a new introduction by Harvey Cox that situates the book within the theological conversation into which it first appeared and conveys its continued relevance in the current century. "The brilliance, the wealth of illustration, and the aptness of personal application ...make the reading of these chapters an exciting experience."--W. Norman Pittenger, New York Times Book Review "A lucid and arresting book."--Frances Witherspoon, New York Herald Tribune "Clear, uncluttered thinking and lucid writing mark Mr. Tillich's study as a distinguished and readable one."--American Scholar Selected as one of the Books of the Century by the New York Public Library
975 citations
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TL;DR: In his new preface E. O. Wilson reflects on how he came to write this book: how "The Insect Societies" led him to write "Sociobiology", and how the political and religious uproar that engulfed that book persuaded him to writing another book that would better explain the relevance of biology to the understanding of human behavior as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: View a collection of videos on Professor Wilson entitled "On the Relation of Science and the Humanities"In his new preface E. O. Wilson reflects on how he came to write this book: how "The Insect Societies" led him to write "Sociobiology," and how the political and religious uproar that engulfed that book persuaded him to write another book that would better explain the relevance of biology to the understanding of human behavior.
946 citations
TL;DR: The current volume is divided into four sections entitled: ''Transmitters, ''Transmitter Function, ''Receptor Modulation,'' and ''Signal Transduction'' as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In fact, the extraordinary productivity of Dr. Brodie's laboratory and its disciples was the subject of a recent book, Apprentice to Genius by Robert Kanigel. The current volume is divided into four sections entitled: \"Transmitters,\" \"Transmitter Function,\" \"Receptor Modulation,\" and \"Signal Transduction.\" The following articles are particularly noteworthy: Arvid Carlsson presents a challenging overview of the role played by brain dopamine systems in motor and mental functions. Tomas Hokfelt and others offer a comprehensive and helpful review of the localization of peptide neurotransmitters in monoaminergic and cholinergic neurons. Of note in the second section are reviews of the role of monoaminergic systems in satiety (by S. Garattini and others) and stress (by Roger Maickel). An article by S. Roy and others in the third section describes attempts partially to purify opiate receptors and prepare monoclonal antibodies to the receptor. K. Fuxe and colleagues describe \"receptor/ receptor interactions,\" the critical idea that neurotransmitter systems interact with one another, making it likely that psychotropic drugs influence brain function through effects on multiple types of neurotransmitter and receptor systems. Goran Sedvall and others describe their experience in the use of positron emission tomography to image neurotransmitter receptors in living human subjects. In the fourth section. Fridolin Sulser and Elaine Sanders-Bush offer a very thoughtful and up-to-date analysis of the probable mechanisms involved in the clinical actions of antidepressant treatments and experimental approaches. Erminio Costa presents some of the data obtained over the years, much from his own laboratory, underscoring the importance of the role played by the regulation of gene expression in adaptive changes in brain function. As would be expected, the quality and focus of the articles in this book are variable. Despite the considerable delay in publication of this volume, most of the articles remain up to date. The book would be useful to individuals in the field for its reviews and to individuals only peripherally associated with the field as a more general overview of current research in neuropharmacology.
149 citations
72 citations
TL;DR: The notion of the Anthropocene is not only a condition in which humans have become geologic agents, thus signalling a temporal shift in Earth history: it can be seen as a new object of knowledge and an order of governance.
Abstract: The growing body of literature on the idea of the Anthropocene has opened up serious questions that go to the heart of the social and human sciences. There has been as yet no satisfactory theoretical framework for the analysis of the Anthropocene debate in the social and human sciences. The notion of the Anthropocene is not only a condition in which humans have become geologic agents, thus signalling a temporal shift in Earth history: it can be seen as a new object of knowledge and an order of governance. A promising direction for theorizing in the social and human science is to approach the notion of the Anthropocene as exemplified in new knowledge practices that have implications for governance. It invokes new conceptions of time, agency, knowledge and governance. The Anthropocene has become a way in which the human world is re-imagined culturally and politically in terms of its relation with the Earth. It entails a cultural model, that is an interpretative category by which contemporary societies make sense of the world as embedded in the Earth, and articulate a new kind of historical self-understanding, by which an alternative order of governance is projected. This points in the direction of cosmopolitics – and thus of a ‘Cosmopolocene’ – rather than a geologization of the social or in the post-humanist philosophy, the end of the human condition as one marked by agency.
65 citations
Cites background from "Debating Humanity: Towards a Philos..."
...For other perspectives on this, see Archer (2008) and Chernilo (2017)....
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References
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01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: In this paper, Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom: Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented, never know.
Abstract: In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom: Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented, never know. Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence, millions of people living in rich and poor countries are still unfree. Even if they are not technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedom and remain imprisoned in one way or another by economic poverty, social deprivation, political tyranny or cultural authoritarianism. The main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its 'thousand charms' to the unfree citizens. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of social and economic arrangements and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. Social institutions like markets, political parties, legislatures, the judiciary, and the media contribute to development by enhancing individual freedom and are in turn sustained by social values. Values, institutions, development, and freedom are all closely interrelated, and Sen links them together in an elegant analytical framework. By asking "What is the relation between our collective economic wealth and our individual ability to live as we would like?" and by incorporating individual freedom as a social commitment into his analysis, Sen allows economics once again, as it did in the time of Adam Smith, to address the social basis of individual well-being and freedom.
19,080 citations
Book•
[...]
01 Jan 1927
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality, and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being.
Abstract: Translators' Preface. Author's Preface to the Seventh German Edition. Introduction. Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being. 1. The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being. 2. The Twofold Task of Working out the Question of Being. Method and Design of our Investigation. Part I:. The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality, and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being. 3. Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein. Exposition of the Task of a Preparatory Analysis of Dasein. Being-in-the-World in General as the Basic State of Dasein. The Worldhood of the World. Being-in-the-World as Being-with and Being-One's-Self. The 'they'. Being-in as Such. Care as the Being of Dasein. 4. Dasein and Temporality. Dasein's Possibility of Being-a-Whole, and Being-Towards-Death. Dasein's Attestation of an Authentic Potentiality-for-Being, and Resoluteness. Dasein's Authentic Potentiality-for-Being-a-Whole, and Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care. Temporality and Everydayness. Temporality and Historicality. Temporality and Within-Time-Ness as the Source of the Ordinary Conception of Time. Author's Notes. Glossary of German Terms. Index.
16,708 citations
Book•
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01 Jan 1951
TL;DR: In the history of sociological theory, Talcott Parsons holds a very special place. as discussed by the authors presents a major scientific and intellectual advance towards the theory of action first outlined in his earlier work.
Abstract: In the history of sociological theory, Talcott Parsons holds a very special place. His The Structure of Social Action (1937), was a pioneer work that has influenced many social scientists. The present work, The Social System, presents a major scientific and intellectual advance towards the theory of action first outlined in his earlier work.
9,046 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: This article argued that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology, which allowed the formidable expansion of the Western empires.
Abstract: What makes us modern? This is a classic question in philosophy as well as in political science. However it is often raised without including science and technology in its definition. The argument of this book is that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology. This division allows the formidable expansion of the Western empires. However it has become more and more difficult to maintain this distance between science and politics. Hence the postmodern predicament - the feeling that the modern stance is no longer acceptable but that there is no alternative. The solution, advances one of France's leading sociologists of science, is to realize that we have never been modern to begin with. The comparative anthropology this text provides reintroduces science to the fabric of daily life and aims to make us compatible both with our past and with other cultures wrongly called pre-modern.
8,858 citations