Abstract
This essay sympathetically reviews Peter Baehr’s welcome protest against the “unmasking style” of rhetoric in sociological theory, while expressing reservations about the alternative(s) Baehr appears to recommend. I briefly explore recognition, as an alternative rhetorical style, seeking a standpoint from which it might be possible to respond to valid and sincerely felt moral commitments in the unmasking style, while also leaving open possibilities for reconciliation.
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Notes
Readers of this essay will see that it marks a personal beginning, not an end, for exploring contemporary social-theoretical possibilities in Hegelian philosophy and Biblical rhetoric. I ask forgiveness for the unfinished qualities this certainly lends to the essay. I am very grateful to Peter Baehr, Larry Nichols, and Richard Swedberg for motivating this exploration, and hope they will see fruitful possibilities in the essay. My primary reference in Hegel’s (2019) philosophy is the Phenomenology of Spirit. I draw on two older English translations (Baillie 1931; Miller 1977), together with a very recent one by Peter Fuss and John Dobbins (2019), and on the German edition by Hans-Friedrich Wessels and Heinrich Clairmont (1988). I also draw on commentaries by Frederick Beiser (2005), Emil Fackenheim (1967), Robert Stern (2002), and Allen Wood (1990). Wanting to see who might be writing on Hegel’s concept of recognition today, I discovered the work of Axel Honneth, a most welcome discovery, which led me back to sociology and to the work of Jeffrey Alexander, by way of a very thoughtful review, co-authored with María Pía Lara (1996).
By way of comparison, Randall Collins’ (1994, v-46) history of sociology does not lay as much emphasis on the French Revolution, but he does treat the Durkheimian tradition of French sociology as epitomizing self-consciously sociological and secular approaches to systematic study of the social world. By inference, then, the French Revolution is foundational in Collins’ historical narrative, as well, albeit as a culminating factor in a much longer line of historical development.
This is an admittedly loose interpretation that telescopes into the dynamics of recognition what are, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, several distinct phases of intellectual (Geistlich) development. For more precise and developed discussions, see Honneth 1995; Stern 2002, 71–85; Taylor 1975, 148–69.
The importance of listening (and hearing) is a theme that remains mostly implicit in Richard’s 2014 book. However, listening is a key feature of Peirce’s abductive procedure in solving the puzzle of his stolen property, with which Richard opens his book, and in Richard’s assessment of practical exercises for developing skills in theorizing. Hannah Arendt (1978, 110–19) fruitfully discusses the fact that our metaphors for theorizing tend almost always to be metaphors of seeing, due to the weight of the Greek philosophical tradition. She also notes that Biblical traditions tend to draw more on metaphors of hearing, and I am suggesting that we can draw implications from this for social theorizing.
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Ford, L.R. Recognizing Rhetoric in Sociological Theory: The Unmasking Style in Social Theory by Peter Baehr. Am Soc 51, 19–30 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-020-09433-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-020-09433-5