The eighteenth-century Enlightenment saw the birth of an era
which sought legitimacy not from the past but from the future. No
longer would human beings invoke the authority of tradition;
instead, modern societies emerging in the West justified themselves
by their success at increasing, through the application of
scientific knowledge, human control over the world. Ever since this
notion of modernity was formulated it has provoked intense
debate.
In this wide-ranging historical introduction to social theory,
Alex Callinicos explores the controversies over modernity and
examines the connections between social theory and modern
philosophy, political economy and evolutionary biology. He offers
clear and accesssible treatments of the thought of Montesquieu,
Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, Hegel, Marx,
Tocqueville, Maistre, Gobineau, Darwin, Spencer, Kautsky,
Nietzsche, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Freud, Lukacs, Gramsci,
Heidegger, Keynes, Hayek, Parsons, the Frankfurt School,
Levi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault, Habermas and Bourdieu, and
concludes by surveying the state of contemporary social
thought.
A remarkably comprehensive and lucid primer, Social Theoryis
essential reading for students of politics, sociology and social
and political thought.
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