Frank Hearn - Reason and Freedom in Sociological Thought (RLE Social Theory)

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: SOCIAL THEORY

Volume 58

FRANK HEARN

First published in 1985

This edition first published in 2015
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1985 Frank Hearn

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ISBN: 978-0-415-72731-0 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76997-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-78406-2 (Volume 58)

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FRANK HEARN

Frank Hearn, 1985
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

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First published in 1985

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hearn, Frank.
Reason and freedom in sociological thought.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. SociologyPhilosophy. 2. Reason. 3. Liberty.
I. Title.
HM26.H43 1985 301.01 856071
ISBN 0043011942 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0043011950 (pbk. : alk. paper)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hearn, Frank
Reason and freedom in sociological thought.
1. Social sciences
I. Title
300.1 H91
ISBN 0043011942
ISBN 0043011950 (Pbk)

Set in 10 on 11 point Goudy by V & M Graphics Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks and printed in Great Britain by Billing and Sons Ltd, London and Worcester

My understanding of many of the issues, ideas, and themes examined in this book has been immeasurably enriched in the course of teaching sociological theory and modern Western thought to undergraduates at the State University of New York at Cortland over the past five years. In their insistence that I speak to them and to their concerns, these students have encouraged me to give my presentation a degree of clarity it otherwise would have lacked.

Four colleagues also deserve my thanks Gerry Surette, Dey Kennedy, Judy Best and Henry Steck. Working with them to prepare and teach an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on modern Western thought has been a valuable learning experience for me. No doubt, they will not entirely agree with many of my claims and interpretations, but they should know my discussion would be worse than it is had I not the benefit of their knowledge.

Mary Anne Mead, never hesitant to note where she found my argument wrongheaded or ineptly stated, typed the manuscript with exemplary skill and kindness. I thank her and, as well, the editors of three journals who gave me their permission to rework brief passages from some of my previously published work: The dialectical uses of ideal types, Theory and Society, vol. 2, no. 4, 1975; Rationality and bureaucracy, The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 19, Winter, 1978; and Adaptive narcissism and the crisis of legitimacy, Contemporary Crises, vol. 4, no. 2, 1980.

My greatest debt is to Priscilla and our two children, Michael and Caitlin. For all they do to keep my spirits high, my optimism strong, and my love of life robust, I dedicate this book to them.

In his influential and controversial The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills eloquently argued that the moral and intellectual responsibility of sociology is to defend, sustain, and cultivate the development of reason and freedom. Writing at the end of the 1950s, Mills insisted that prevailing circumstances make more urgent the need for sociologists, and social theorists in particular, to recognize and to commit themselves to this responsibility. Today, the values of reason and freedom are in jeopardy. With the development of modern society, reason has been reduced to a rationality without reason, and in this form promotes the deterioration of mind and culture and erodes the very foundations of freedom. The Enlightenment promise that the alliance of reason and freedom would bring a more just, decent, and human society, one governed by reflective, autonomous individuals, is betrayed in modern society.

A primary objective of this book is to update and enrich Millss argument. I do this in large part by interpreting his concern with the development of rationality without reason and the attack on freedom it sponsors in terms of the critique of instrumental reason formulated in the critical theory of Herbert Marcuse and Jrgen Habermas. A second aim is to use the theme of reason and freedom which Mills established to examine the key concerns of classical sociological theory, most especially the analyses and the arguments put forth by Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. A third purpose is to analyze the recent revitalization of interest in the relation of reason and freedom found in the increasingly significant segment of social thought and criticism represented by Daniel Bell, Harry Braverman, Christopher Lasch and Richard Sennett, among others. Through their work we are able to arrive at a clearer understanding of how freedom is threatened by the eclipse of the individual, the collapse of the public sphere, the bureaucratization of work, the corporatization of politics, and the commodification of social relations that result from the spread of rationality without reason. Against this background, Millss call for a renewed and strengthened commitment to the values of reason and freedom takes on a more immediate importance. In light of this call, an additional objective of this book is to suggest the bases of a social theory capable of making and maintaining a commitment to the values of reason and freedom in the midst of rationalizing forces that move toward the impoverishment of thought.

My treatment of these issues is divided into three parts. is designed to show the contemporary relevance of this theoretical project by demonstrating how the thematic an increase in rationalization does not make for an increase in freedom is realized concretely in society. The effort here is to display the present-day importance of the classical concern with reason and freedom, and to emphasize in effect that the tendency to regard discussions of such issues as reason and freedom as mere intellectual exercises carried out by academic philosophers unconcerned with real and pressing questions of the day is itself a sign of the impoverishment of thought brought by rationality without reason.