Current philosophy

Author: Merton
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Many of Mead's arguments are not outdated evolutionary theories or behaviorism; they should be understood within a broader context of political and social thought. We will discover the special significance of this small book by Mead. Through the discussion of the "present" problem, Mead provides a possible path for social theory to re-examine this tension. His attempts, particularly the understanding of natural socialization, the in-depth analysis of the two meanings of sociality, not only help re-examine the "modern" meaning of modern science but also attempt to re-examine some important aspects of nature relative to freedom from the perspective often overlooked by modern social theory. ----> It is recommended to approach modernity through social theory, and one cannot avoid the fundamental problem of freedom that modernity faces. To think about the problem of freedom, an important starting point is the opposition between freedom and nature. However, the emergence of modern social theory, from the genealogy of intellectual history, whether in the so-called "spiritual science" whose connotation has shrunk or in the so-called "moral science" rooted in "spiritual reconstruction," is already under the background of the internalization of freedom, seemingly unable to restore the fundamental dilemma and rich connotations of this concept when it first confronted the concept of nature. In the process of using the "social" concept to dissolve the opposition between nature and freedom in political philosophy, modern social theory has formed a kind of far "social" theory of nature. Perhaps in this sense, social theory is a kind of extreme modernity theory. However, precisely because it has strayed from the concept of "nature," social theory, while attempting to heal the crisis of modernity, has lost the ability to understand the basic tension behind the "crisis" of modernity. From this background, we will discover the special significance of this small book by Mead. Through the discussion of the "present" problem, Mead provides a possible path for social theory to re-examine this tension. His attempts, particularly the understanding of natural socialization, the in-depth analysis of the two meanings of sociality, not only help re-examine the "modern" meaning of modern science but also attempt to re-examine some important aspects of nature relative to freedom from the perspective often overlooked by modern social theory.