The Creativity of Action
Hans Joas
Language: English
Pages: 346
ISBN: 0226400441
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Joas argues for adding a third model of action to the two predominant models of rational and normative action--one that emphasizes the creative character of human action. This model encompasses the other two, allowing for a more comprehensive theory of action. Joas elaborates some implications of his model for theories of social movements and social change and for the status of action theory in sociology in the face of competition from theories advanced by Luhmann and Habermas.
The problem of action is of crucial importance in both sociology and philosophy, and this book--already widely debated in Germany--will add fresh impetus to the lively discussions current in the English-speaking world.
Contagious: Why Things Catch On
The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations
A Nation of Salesmen: The Tyranny of the Market and the Subversion of Culture
In Real Life: Love, Lies & Identity in the Digital Age
South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society
Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America
Subject to the proviso that economics be upheld unscathed as an abstract, analytical discipline, that is, that the theoretical core of the model of rational action be retained. Neither Levine nor Carnic, however, put this important idea to fruitful use for an interpretation of the classical sociological texts themselves. Yet only by doing precisely that can the redeemable core of the convergence thesis be extracted. Furthermore, they fail to take the discussion beyond its roots in the struggle.
Hegel. Feuerbach had brought to light the tacit assumptions that lay behind the presumption of a 'thinking self' and interpreted the self as a corporeal self, a self with needs, including the need to relate to othersY Marx finds a basis in Feuerbach's 'sensualistic' and 'altruistic' anthropology, yet criticizes it for not being sufficiently consistent. The Theses on Feuerbach, written in early 1845, that is, after the Paris manuscripts, criticize Feuerbach for understanding human sensuality not.
His philosophical system. If the movements of our bodies, as seen from within, are acts of the will, then we should assume that the same is true of the movements of animals; in that case their movements, too, would be not simply of a mechanical nature, but the result of will power. However, Schopenhauer does not stop there, but extends this idea beyond the animal kingdom and even beyond the world of all living creatures when he attributes not only the growth of plants but even the movement of.
The personality of the actor, the tension between utilitarian model of action and proposed positivist explanation is eased. Typical examples of this are theories which construe human wishes as the result of hereditary processes or determinant influences such as environment or 'milieu'. If, on the other hand, the goals of action are not believed to force their way into the action situations as if they were part of a foreign world, but instead a choice between goals is seen to arise in the.
Metaphysical work, written towards the end of his career, Sirnrnel views human freedom as lying precisely not in humankind's capacity for purposive action but rather in our capacity to break with purposiveness. Indeed, he defines humans as 'non-purposive' beings, as beings delivered from purpose. But it was Heidegger who provided the most radical demonstration of the impossibility of defining human life as a whole in terms of a chain of means and ends. After all, Heidegger argues, we do not rush.