A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography: The History of My Pursuit of a Few IdeasEdward Shils was one of the giants of sociological theory in the period after World War II. In this autobiography, written three years before his death in 1995 and never before published, Shils reflects on the remarkable range of his life's work and activities, including founding and editing the journal Minerva, being a central figure in the Congress of Cultural Freedom, serving as a founding member of the editorial board of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and being a member of the International Council on the Future of the University. Shils recognizes that a unity of concern runs through his many theoretical writings and activities. Early in his life the concern was expressed as understanding the character of consensus. During the last fifteen years of his life, he refined his understanding of consensus through investigation of the nature of "collective self-consciousness." That concern was the structure and character of the moral order of a society, and, in particular, liberal, democratic society. Accompanying the autobiography are two unpublished essays, "Society, Collective Self-Consciousness and Collective Self-Consciousnesses" and "Collective Self-Consciousness and Rational Choice," two areas of intellectual concern discussed in the autobiography. The book contains fascinating discussion of many of the people Shils knew throughout his illustrious career: Robert Park, Louis Wirth, Talcott Parsons, Karl Mannheim, Michael Polanyi, Audrey Richards, Karl Popper, Robert Merton, and many others. The volume represents Shils' final formulations on the character of society and its moral order. As such, it is a most important contribution both to the history of the social sciences in the twentieth century and to sociological theory. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 13 | |
Society Collective SelfConsciousness and Collective SelfConsciousnesses | 163 |
Collective SelfConsciousness and Rational Choice | 195 |
Index | 217 |
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A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography: The History of My Pursuit of a ... Edward Shils,Steven Elliott Grosby No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
academic acting subject actions Africa American attachment Audrey Richards belief Center and Periphery central collective self-consciousness civil society cognitive coherence collective consciousness collective self-con common Communists conflict consensus constitution course Durkheim Edward Shils essay existence Frank Knight George Homans German human idea ideology indi individual self-consciousness individual’s institutions intellectual interests Karl Mannheim later lective self-consciousness lectures Leites liberal liberal democratic Louis Wirth Mannheim manuscript Max Weber ment Michael Polanyi mind moral Movements of Knowledge ness never norms objectivated symbolic configurations objects one’s paper participation pattern persons phenomenon plurality political possession primary groups primordial Professor Parsons rational choice referents religious Reprinted in Center sacrality sacred Schelting scientific knowledge scientists sciousness seminar social sciences sociologist solidarity superego Talcott Parsons territory theory of rational things thought tion tive self-consciousness Torment of Secrecy tradition University of Chicago vidual views Wehrmacht wrote
Popular passages
Page 7 - Shils' thought. Shils had delivered in 1974 the TS Eliot Memorial Lectures at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Page 183 - The referent of territorial location defines who is to be included and who is to be excluded from the society.
Page 41 - Economics that he had resigned to become professor of education at the Institute of Education of the University of London— did not deal with the deeper questions of sociology.
Page 17 - Hans Freyer. Theory of Objective Mind. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Culture...
Page 17 - James Coleman, The Foundations of Social Theory, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Page 176 - Neither do they fall into such cliches of literary naturalism as "fang and claw," or "survival of the fittest." They do not suggest that man should live by "the law of the jungle" and become the superior predator; but they do remind man of the great fecundity and enduring pattern of that nature of which he is a part and which is a part of him. They remind him of the undeniable biological heritage which is a factor in his most intellectual pursuits. The full importance of man's biological heritage...
Page 165 - Maisonneuve et Larose. Shaw, David. 1975. "Hoax: A Risk That Haunts Newspapers. " Los Angeles Times (July 7). Shils, Edward and Morris Janowitz. 1975 (1948). "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II.
Page 4 - I thank him for reminding ¡me of what I should not have forgotten, that the Greek wort had adopted a Latin declension.
Page 148 - Bockenforde, a member of the German Constitutional Court and professor of public law at the University of Freiburg). This term (autumn 1992) I have been conducting a two-quarter seminar on "The Idea of Civil Society: Hegel, Tocqueville and Weber" to be continued in the spring of 1993.