Summary
Contents
Subject index
No national tradition of social theory has been more seductive to Anglo-American readers than the French.There has been a long-standing fascination with French ideas and debates. This extraordinarily accomplished book, written by one of Britain's leading commentators on social theory, provides a peerless account of the French tradition.The book: provides a systematic account of French social theory from the aftermath of the French Revolution (St Simon, Bazard and Comte) to the contemporary scene dominated by Kristeva, Deleuze, Bourdieu and Baudrillard; divides French social theory into three logically coherent cycles: 1800-80 (positivist); 1880-1940 (anthropological); 1940-2000 (Marxist); provides a detailed guide to the three phases of postwar French social theory - existential, structural and post-structural; and situates the discussions of individuals and schools in the relevant social and political contexts. The book is a masterpiece of erudition and scholarship but is written throughout in an engaging and informative style. It will be required reading for anyone interested in social theory and sociology.
Existential Theory
Existential Theory
French philosophy, which has formed us, scarcely knows more than epistemology. But for Husserl and the phenomenologists, the awareness that we have of things is not limited to a knowledge of them. (Sartre, [1939] 1947: 31)
There had been a growing interest in Marxism in the France of the Third Republic and French communism split away from the other socialists (taking the journal l'Humanité with it) in alignment with Bolshevism after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Mauss held that Lenin had been influenced by Durkheim (via Sorel), and, as we have seen, wrote a sociological ‘assessment’ of Bolshevism. Mauss's texts can be seen retrospectively to have recognised that there could have been a rapprochement between Durkheimian and Marxist theory, but the way that ...
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