Theorizing Modernity: Inescapability and Attainability in Social Theory

Front Cover
SAGE, Mar 20, 2001 - Social Science - 150 pages
This book argues that sociology has lost its ability to provide critical diagnoses of the present human condition because sociology has stopped considering the philosophical requirements of social enquiry. The book attempts to restore that ability by retrieving some of the key questions that sociologists tend to gloss over, inescapability and attainability. The book identifies five key questions in which issues of inescapability and attainability emerge. These are the questions of the certainty of our knowledge, the viability of our politics, the continuity of our selves, the accessibility of the past, and the transparency of the future. The book demonstrates how these questions are addressed in different forms and by different intellectua
 

Contents

The Certainty of Knowledge
15
The Viability of the Polity
36
The Continuity of Selfhood
60
The Accessibility of the Past
80
Modernity and Exile
103
Historicity Plurality Problématiques
128
Index
145
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2001)

Peter Wagner is Professor of Social and Political Theory in the Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Florence

Bibliographic information