Free-Thought in the Social Sciences.J. A. Hobson

1926 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-155
Keyword(s):  
The Social ◽  
Free Thought

Humanism in Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Schröder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Secular Humanism ◽  
Group Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Free Thought ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
Secular Humanist

This chapter addresses secular humanism in Europe and the way it is “lived” by and within its major institutions and organizations. It examines how national and international secular humanist bodies founded after World War II took up, cultivated, and transformed free-religious, free-thought, ethical, atheist, and rationalist roots from nineteenth century Europe and adjusted them to changing social, cultural, and political environments. Giving examples from some selected national contexts, the development of a nonreligious Humanism in Europe exemplifies what Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt call “Multiple Secularities”: different local or national trajectories produced a variety of cultures of secularity and, thus, different understandings of secular humanism. Apart from this cultural historization, the chapter reconstructs two transnational, ideal types of secular humanism, the social practice type, and the secularist pressure group type. These types share similar worldviews and values, but have to be distinguished in terms of organizational forms, practices, and especially policy.

Free Thought in the Social Sciences.

Economica ◽  
1926 ◽  
pp. 219
Author(s):  
C. Delisle Burns ◽  
J. A. Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Free Thought

Free Thought in the Social Sciences.

1926 ◽  
Vol 36 (143) ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
D. H. Robertson ◽  
J. A. Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Free Thought

THE CULTURAL IMPACT OF SCIENCE IN FRANCE: ERNEST RENAN AND THE VIE DE JÉSUS

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN PITT
Keyword(s):  
Social Constraints ◽  
French History ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
Dead End ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Free Thought ◽  
The Republic ◽  
European Thought

The publication of Ernest Renan's La Vie de Jésus in 1863 is rightly regarded as a key moment in French history. The book served as an important symbol of science and free thought in the battles over the Republic and laïcité, and presented a thesis that characterized French scientific philosophy in the mid-nineteenth century. Jesus, for Renan, transcended his own culture, rejecting all social constraints in the pursuit of a unique ideal of the kingdom of God, becoming in the process the first true individualist in history. Critics ridiculed his arguments, but it was typical of the Romanticism of the French positivists. Renan's philosophy was rooted not in empiricism, but in an essentially pantheistic metaphysics, prizing the realization of God within oneself as the highest ethical achievement. This was an innovation of the highest importance in France, where a traditionalist, but post-Christian theism had marked social thought since the Revolution. Renan and his generation, notably Taine, dispensed with the traditionalist religious dualism that typified the social outlook of Tocqueville, Michelet, and their contemporaries. Far from articulating a materialist dead end in the history of ideas, their Romantic individualism was critical to later developments in European thought, including aestheticism and irrationalism.

Modernism and postmodernism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Marinopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Social Function ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Social Concern ◽  
The Social ◽  
External Accountability ◽  
Social Praxis ◽  
Free Thought

Foucault attempted to introduce an approach which essentially rejected the nature of rationality, modernity and dialectics. Foucault argued that if epistemology wishes to get rid of normative theory, which functions as a scientific straightjacket for free thought and uncoerced arguments, it has to discard dialectics. However, the idea explored in this chapter is that by the use of such a course of reflection, science abandons its claims for rational praxis as well. The normativity of theory provides praxis with inner constitution and external accountability criteria because normativity is not a hypothetical construction but is formed according to the social function of dialectics. Science needs dialectics in order to be accountable to society. Structures, experience and systems seem inadequate for science to render itself socially accountable. Therefore, social praxis appears as a partial scientific and social concern where the critique that theory articulates through dialectics is missing, rendering science un-critical and, thus, pre-modern. Foucault’s opposition to modernity’s theorizing on the part of his theoretical contemporaries, such as Habermas, lies in two fundamental points: a) his concept of reason; and b) his understanding of critique.

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