This paper seeks to make two distinctive sets of contributions through a supplementary reinterpretation of Max Weber in the light of Charles Taylor’s expressivist-hermeneutical theory of human agency. First, it offers a reinterpretation of Weber’s work. Focussing on the concept of stance, the paper highlights that Weber’s theorising on values and their relation to cognition, action and identity is less underpinned by subjectivism, representationalism, emotivism and decisionism than is typically thought. Instead, Weber sets values within a non-naturalist dimension where agents find their bearings and are constituted as such. In this dimension, orientation to meaning takes place; identity, action and thought are constituted; and normative experiences (such as freedom, or responsibility) are made possible. Weber recognised that this non-naturalist dimension has variegated modes, but seemingly studied them in their purest and most logical form (the ‘ideal type’), hence his focus on explicit belief systems and world-images. Second, there is a prospective supplementation of Weber’s theory through Taylor’s notion of expression. For Taylor, we take a stance and orient ourselves expressively through the domain of strongly valued meanings. The notions of strong evaluation and articulation prove central to understanding embodied, symbolic and representational meaning-orientation in the non-naturalist dimensions of values. This supplementary reading places Weber as a central figure in current American, British and French debates about, respectively, the normative nature of human agency; the question of culture, meaning and their different forms and modes of operation; and the question of how to examine identity-formation.
In his “The Garden of the Forking Paths,” Argentinean storyteller Jorge Luis Borges devises an ever-growing maze of diverging and converging paths. While the underlying structure of these paths is the explicit object of his quest, the protagonist becomes increasingly aware that, in fact, his quest mirrors such big questions as the nature of space and time. We use this provocative image to kick off our much more modest quest on the current state of sociological theories of normativity that have become salient in the past three decades. What once seemed to be the specific object of critical theory, as it has constantly shown a special sensibility towards normative issues, is now a pressing theme in various theoretical traditions, and perhaps the very universe in which divergent sociological worlds concatenate with each other. We focus on three traditions that have made clear progress in explicitly analysing what is the normative: Neo-Durkheimianism, Neo-pragmatism, and Critical Realism. We identify their more salient aspects and reflect on their similarities and differences. We conclude that, to all three, normative ideals are congealed in social “facts” that cannot be explained, naturalistically or mechanistically, in causal terms. Equally, they all make apparent the autonomy of normative ideals in the structure of human agency by focusing on different aspects of it. Finally, we reflect on the different temporal dimension on which they focus: spaces of ritualism to past normative commitments (Neo-Durkheimians); spaces of reasons to present problematic events (Neo-pragmatism); and spaces of aspirations to imagined future states (Critical Realism).
The following discussion with philosopher and political scientist Wendy Brown seeks to apply her provocative and indispensable ideas to recent political events and problems, in particular focusing on her work in Undoing the Demos (2015) and returning briefly to consider Politics Out of History (2001) in today’s context. The questions were collectively authored and the interview itself was conducted by Sebastian Raza via Skype on 23 May 2017. We would like to thank Wendy Brown for the generous contribution of her time and for answering the questions so directly and clearly.
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