Frederic Vandenberghe

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro | UFRJ · IFCS

L’inventeur du nom « sociologie », Auguste Comte, voyait en elle, on s’en souvient, la dernière venue, mais aussi la plus importante des sciences, celle qui allait pouvoir rendre compte de toutes les autres, de leurs conditions d’émergence, de leur sens et de leur importance relative. Elle devait être une méta-science, une science des sciences. Pro...

As a comment on the debate between Dave Elder-Vass and Leigh Price, I propose a dialogue between Bhaskar and Habermas. If we could introduce critical realism into critical theory, we might be able to strengthen its critique of positivism. Conversely, if we introduce critical theory into critical realism, we might be able to defend with more force j...

Along with a general introduction to Jeffrey Alexander’s sociology, in which I comment on some of the main lines taken by his sociological output over the years (social theory and metatheory, neofunctionalism, cultural sociology and the political sociology of civil society), I present here an unpublished interview with the author, conducted in Octo...

Resumo Ao investigar as origens neokantianas do estruturalismo e do culturalismo, este artigo analisa o desenvolvimento do pensamento de Cassirer, seguindo sua trajetória intelectual do conhecimento à cultura e da cultura à práxis. Este artigo está dividido em duas partes. Na primeira, o autor apresenta uma análise da concepção relacional do conhec...

Once again, we are going through “dark times.” The current juncture is critical. For those who associate themselves with critical social theory, broadly understood, there are two options: hypercritique or reconstruction. Either one darkens the picture, uses all possible theories at hand (Adorno, Bourdieu, Foucault, Luhmann) to sketch out a general...

Relational sociology is not a paradigm, but a thematic cluster of theories that take the relation as their central category. Within the cluster there are, basically, two approaches, a relational-structural one and a processual-interactionist one, that fly under the same flag, but are in tension with each other. The task of general relational theory...

William James's Varieties of Religious Experience is a classic psycho-philosophical study of the experience of the sacred and of its practical effects on the ordinary life of extraordinary persons. In a pragmatic variation of Kant's proof of god's existence, James uses personal accounts of converts to empirically demonstrate that there's “something...

Resumo A sociologia relacional não é um paradigma, mas um conjunto temático de teorias que tomam a relação como sua categoria central. Nesse conjunto há, basicamente, as abordagens estrutural-relacional e interacionista-processual, que navegam sob uma mesma bandeira, em tensão uma com a outra. A tarefa da teoria relacional geral é unificar essas du...

The philosophical assumptions that organize moral sociology as practical philosophy are the outcome of a secular quest to investigate the principles, norms and values behind the constitution of society. As a protracted response to the whole utilitarian-atomistic-individualistic tradition that systematically deemphasizes the constitutive role that m...

In this article, we propose a working alliance between the critical realist network and the anti-utilitarian movement in the social sciences. Joining forces, we need to overcome the reigning positivism, utilitarianism and axiological neutrality so as to open the way to a philosophically informed new classical social theory that continues the venera...

O artigo explora algumas das fundações metateóricas das ciências sociais. Contra e para além das abordagens estruturais, estruturalistas e situacionistas que acentuam a causação descendente das estruturas sobre a agência, ele traz o poder causal da cultura ao primeiro plano e forja uma articulação compreensiva entre cultura e ação. Baseando-se no r...

Embora boa parte da sociologia contemporânea tenha um caráter político e moralizante, a sociologia da moral como tal permanece pouco desenvolvida. Diferentemente da sociologia da religião, da sociologia do conhecimento ou da sociologia das artes, a sociologia da moral não possui uma verdadeira tradição, ainda que os pais fundadores da disciplina ti...

This article calls for a new theoretical synthesis that overcomes the fragmentation, specialization and professionalization within the social sciences. As an alternative to utilitarianism and the colonization of the social sciences by rational choice models, it proposes a new articulation of social theory, the Studies and moral, social and politica...

The concept of reification (Verdinglichung) is a central category of critical social theory. In the Hegelian-Marxist tradition, from Marx via Lukács to the Frankfurt School, it is used to denounce the alienation and dehumanizing impact of social systems under capitalism. Occasionally, it is also used to criticize the hypostasis of concepts and the...

O artigo oferece uma análise programática de algumas das principais teorias da modernização, da globalização e da individualização na modernidade tardia, conectando essa análise à sociologia da juventude. O texto se divide em quatro partes: a primeira provê um panorama dos debates sobre a modernidade, distinguindo várias posições no seio destes (cl...

Last Tribute to the Strategic Optimism of Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) This article attempts to retrace the trajectory of German sociologist Ulrich Beck in all of its profundity and complexity, he whose precious contribution largely exceeds Risk Society, the most well-known of his books (namely in France).

Death of a Master Thinker: Roy Bhaskar (1944-2014) This article pays homage to British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, who is recognised as one of the major contemporary epistemologists of social sciences and founder of critical realism, a theoretical movement little known in France.

What's Critical About Critical Realism?: Essays in Reconstructive Social Theory draws together 4 major articles that are situated at the intersection of philosophy and sociology. Preceded by a general presentation of Bhaskar´s work, critical realism is used to reconstruct the generative structuralism of Pierre Bourdieu, warn about the dangers of bi...

Este artículo retoma la gran pregunta del orden social en una perspectiva histórica y epistemológica. En una primera instancia, el autor analiza la emergencia de la sociedad en cuanto formación relativamente autónoma. A partir de una lectura crítica de las epistemologías históricas de L. Dumont y M. Gauchet, relaciona a la sociología con las teoría...

The article provides an overview of Jürgen Habermas’s intellectual work of the last five decades. Through an analysis of the recent republication of the philosophical essays in a boxed set of five volumes, it shows the relevance of the ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy for the discursive foundation of the human sciences. Following the development of...

This article brings the state back in as a strategic player of globalization. Whereas Marxists lament the withering of the state, neoliberals welcome the triumph of the market. Inspired by Habermas's proposal for a constitutionalization of international law, the author introduces social movements into his cosmopolitan vision of a multi-level system...

Resumo Este artigo propõe uma análise crítica das teses pós-humanistas. Lendo teorias que estão direta ou indiretamente associadas ao pós-humanismo, tais como as de Leroi-Gourhan, Deleuze e Simondon, o autor apresenta uma história sobre a complexidade organizada, a mediação tecnológica e a alienação humana. O artigo é dividido em três partes. Explo...

This article presents a systematic reconstruction of Georg Simmel’s sociology of religion. Following the development of his sociology of religion, it successively analyses religion as a form of interaction, as a symbolic form and as a personal form. The main argument is that all of Simmel’s writings are metaphysical and that religion is only one fo...

Introdução: o pluralismo e a teoria social É com imensa satisfação que apresentamos este dossiê, o qual reúne alguns dos trabalhos de participantes que integraram os Seminários Temáticos de Teoria Social dos Encontros Anuais da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais (Anpocs), entre os anos de ST tiveram como objetivo di...

Contemporary capitalism is in effect, if not in intent, Deleuzian. As a network of networks, it is rhizomatic, flexible, chaosmotic, evolving, expanding. In the negativist spirit that characterizes the work of the Frankfurt School, this article shows via an analysis of the goverment of the self, the commodification of culture and the modification o...

The article proposes a critical investigation of Max Scheler's epistemology of love. It opens with an investigation of his analysis of the constitutive role of emotions in the disclosure of reality and, moving from his epistemology of nature to his theory of intersubjectivity, it continues the analysis with an investigation of the role emotional id...

A Philosophical History of German Sociology presents a systematic reconstruction of critical theory, from the founding fathers of sociology (Marx, Simmel, Weber) via Lukács to the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas). Through an in depth analysis of the theories of alienation, rationalisation and reification, it investigates the metatheo...

Let it be a network of voices … A network of voices that not only speak, but also struggle and resist for humanity.

English After presenting French readers with the main ideas of Roy Bhaskar's critical realism and of Margaret Archer's morphogenetic theory, the article sets out a complex and stratified ontology for sociology that makes it possible to displace, if not surpass, the former opposition between individualism and collectivism, while avoiding the twin st...

This article presents an outline of Rgis Debray's mediology. Situated at the crossroads of philosophy, theology, anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, political sciences, semiotics, media and cultural studies, mediology is a relatively autonomous discipline that analyses the totality of the processes of mediation that intervene between cul...

This article uncovers and investigates the vision of the world behind Max Weber's sociology of law. Taking a stand against Weber's epistemological nominalism, ethical relativism and political decisionism, the author critically analyses Weber's vision of science as a vocation and shows that his defense of axiological neutrality is not axiologically...

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In an ironic rejoinder to the postmodern politics of nature, I will adopt an anthropological perspective on culture, which is conspicuous by its absence in the latest wave of science studies, and reformulate the distinction between nature and culture as a reflexive distinction within culture that emerges with modernity. In order to countering the h...

Cet article propose un commentaire de l'ouvrage de Michel Freitag (en collaboration avec Yves Bonny) L'oubli de la societe : pour une theorie critique de la modernite. Cet ouvrage est presente comme une oeuvre ambitieuse dans le sens humaniste et encyclopediste, ne proposant rien moins qu'une phenomenologie de l'esprit de l'histoire des societes, d...

Les pages personnelles, ces sites elabores par de simples particuliers usagers ordinaires d'Internet autour de leurs centres d'interets, hobbies, passions, constituent l'une des ressources memes du reseau. Nous les abordons ici en tant que bricolages esthetico-identitaires, delimitant ce que nous nommerons une self culture ou culture sur mesure et...

This article tacks back towards the idealist side of the argument, in a spirited defence of critical humanism against the radical symmetry of ANT. Vandenberghe argues that the critique of reification and the ethics of emancipation require us to go beyond the `flat ontology' of ANT and its intermediate level of sociotechnical networks towards a more...

Starting with an overview of possible solutions to the problem of social order, the author presents a non-acritical reconstruction of Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology of intersubjectivity as a sympathetic alternative to Habermas's theory of communicative action. By means of a detailed analysis of the concept of empathy (Einfühlung), he...

In their substantive introduction, the editors first revisit two classical sites of controversy which have offered frameworks for theorizing the interplay between materiality and sociality: reification and fetishism. Obviously, these critical vocabularies emerge as crucial sites of perplexity as soon as the ontological boundary between subjects and...

Reading the Communist Manifesto against the contemporary background of massive unemployment, the author argues that Marx's theory of work is no longer adequate to tackle the problem of 'workers without work' and suggests that it has to be reformulated in such a way that its normative intuitions and its critical impulses can be maintained. In the fi...

Investigating the neo-Kantian origins of structuralism and culturalism, this article analyses the development of Cassirer's thought by following his intellectual progression from knowledge to culture, and from culture to praxis. The article is in two parts. In the first part, the author presents an analysis of Cassirer's relational conception of kn...

Reflective Authenticity: Rethinking the Project of Modernity, Alessandro Ferrara, London: Routledge, 1998, £14.99, 187 pp. (ISBN: 0-715-13062-X) - - Volume 35 Issue 1 - HARRY KUNNEMAN, FRÉDÉRIC VANDENBERGHE

Max Weber and George Simmel are considered as ideal-typical founders of sociology. Whereas Simmel pleaded for a large conception of sociology, which would include the epistemological and metaphysical issues as well, Max Weber explicitly excluded philosophical questions from the domain of sociology. A philosophical reading of Max Weber’s sociology,...

An internal reconstruction and an immanent critique of Bourdieu's generative structuralism is presented. Rather than starting with the concept of “habitus,” as is usually done, the article tries to systematically reconstruct Bourdieu's theory by an analysis of the relational logic that permeates his whole work. Tracing the debt Bourdieu's approach...

Frédéric Vandenberghe, Social Reification and Methodological Choice Analysis of the way Marx, Simmel, Weber, Lukacs and Habermas use the notion of rzification is instructive in developing a critique of the pseudo-natural and alienating autonomization of social systems that escape human control. In the philosophy of the social sciences, the notion o...