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Drawing upon both classical insights and more recent writings,
Hearn provides a compelling account of social breakdown in the
United States. The book examines the conditions most responsible
for the deterioration of social institutions, notably the family,
and of communitarian interdependencies, such as those that support
neighborhoods. More specifically, Hearn analyzes the defining
forces of liberal modernity--among them, especially, the market
economy (favored by the political right) and the democratic welfare
state (endorsed by the political left)--whose steady expansion has
diminished the social contexts that nurture trust, mutuality, and a
robust sense of both personal responsibility and social obligation.
The originality of Hearn's book lies in the solutions he proposes,
which differ from those rooted in what Hearn calls "the languages
of modernity." Hearn advocates modes that would serve instead to
renew solidarity and reclaim social virtue, a repertory of
strategies that would answer Emile Durkheim's call for the creation
of moral individualism. He assesses various approaches to
revitalizing the social settings, the social institutions, and
communitarian structures within which people become moral
individuals capable of care about and taking responsibility for the
fates of others.
Readers of this book are invited to draw their own conclusions by
relying in larger part on themselves as parents, neighbors,
community members, and citizen-participants in a civil society in
restoration. As the "American Journal of Sociology" notes, "the
book succeeds in its goals, and it deserves to be widely read."
"Frank Hearn" was professor of sociology at the State University of
New York, College of Cortland, and the author of "Reason and
Freedom in Sociological Thought" and "The Transformation of
Industrial Organization."
How has reason, believed since the Enlightenment to be the ally of
freedom in the search for a better, more humanly satisfying world,
been reduced to a technical rationality that has actually
impoverished the bases of human freedom? What might be the options
and obligations for sociologists who wish to restore reason to its
proper status? Working within the tradition of C. Wright Mills and
Jurgen Habermas, Frank Hearn sets out to answer these questions. He
surveys the treatment of the relation between reason and freedom in
both the classical tradition (especially the writings of
Saint-Simon, Comte, Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Freud) and an
increasingly significant segment of social thought and criticism
(and, for example, in the contrasting visions of Daniel Bell and
Christopher Lasch.) He then analyses both the concrete social and
historical forms of expression taken by what Mills calls
'rationality without reason' and their impact on individual
autonomy and the freedoms associated with democratic politics.
Finally, he develops Mills's and Habermas's claims that the
cultivation of democratic publics and a critical social theory
committed to a vibrant public life are indispensable to the
protection and revitalization of the values of reason and freedom
and of the practices they entail. This book updates and enriches
Mills's influential argument by demonstrating its affinity with
critical theory, by showing its contributions to a critical
understanding of the classical tradition, and by showing its
implications for contemporary social, political, and economic
developments.
How has reason, believed since the Enlightenment to be the ally of
freedom in the search for a better, more humanly satisfying world,
been reduced to a technical rationality that has actually
impoverished the bases of human freedom? What might be the options
and obligations for sociologists who wish to restore reason to its
proper status? Working within the tradition of C. Wright Mills and
Jurgen Habermas, Frank Hearn sets out to answer these questions. He
surveys the treatment of the relation between reason and freedom in
both the classical tradition (especially the writings of
Saint-Simon, Comte, Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Freud) and an
increasingly significant segment of social thought and criticism
(and, for example, in the contrasting visions of Daniel Bell and
Christopher Lasch.) He then analyses both the concrete social and
historical forms of expression taken by what Mills calls
'rationality without reason' and their impact on individual
autonomy and the freedoms associated with democratic politics.
Finally, he develops Mills's and Habermas's claims that the
cultivation of democratic publics and a critical social theory
committed to a vibrant public life are indispensable to the
protection and revitalization of the values of reason and freedom
and of the practices they entail. This book updates and enriches
Mills's influential argument by demonstrating its affinity with
critical theory, by showing its contributions to a critical
understanding of the classical tradition, and by showing its
implications for contemporary social, political, and economic
developments.
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