Abstract
This essay focuses on the predominantly negative receptions of Peter Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy in the philosophy of social science, argues how these involve a general misreading of the book and concludes with how the book can continue to be relevant for contemporary philosophy of social science and critical social inquiry. Resisting the canonical reception in the philosophy of social science, it follows the strands in the book that emphasize the inseparability of good social inquiry from philosophy as sharing in a specific type of ethical orientation. After a brief summarizing commentary of the book, the essay characterizes the various negative appropriations of ISS as either epistemological or ontological readings that read it as offering a general foundation of social inquiry that implies a general cultural relativism and conservatism about social change. The essay argues against these readings by following the strands in the book that focus on the irreducibly ethical character of philosophical and social inquiry, further supported by external sources. The essay then concludes with opening the work up to current debates in the philosophy of social science and critical social theory, thus arguing for the book’s continued relevance.
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Notes
- 1.
Epigraph of (Winch 1958/1990).
- 2.
- 3.
For a more exhaustive list, periodization as well as geographic characterization of the many different receptions of ISS, see chapter three of my “Rationality, Naturalism, and Critique in the Philosophy of Social Science” (Theunissen 2017).
- 4.
This chapter has been taking up in debates in the philosophy of science about reasons and causes that continues to this date. Winch criticizes a particular species of causal explanations in his time considered adequate for the explanation of meaningful human behavior. As Winch later states in his new introduction to the book, he does not want to deny reasons can be causes, nor that certain or more recent conceptions of explanation are impermissible in social inquiry. As I argue elsewhere, he is not in fact arguing for a strict demarcation between natural and social sciences along the lines of a Verstehen-Erklären distinction (Theunissen 2017).
- 5.
- 6.
See §§243–330 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. (Wittgenstein 1953).
- 7.
Winch supposed methodology has been compared to that of Geertz’s anthropological understanding of ‘culture as text’ (Geertz 1973) and to Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967). See (Lynch 2000), (Rawls 2011) and (Hutchinson et al. 2008) on the latter. However, as discussed in Sect. 3, we should resist appropriating the book for any particular methodology or school of thought taking into account the possibly significant differences between the interest and aims of anthropology, sociology and philosophy for understanding social life.
- 8.
- 9.
See for instance his respective writings on the university and the state, the relationship between nature and convention and Karl Popper (Winch 1957, 1959, 1974) that each in their own way address the limits of social scientific (instrumental) intervention aimed at satisfying individual needs while improving overall institutional life.
- 10.
Winch addresses this in the new Introduction (ISS, ix, xviii). However, he does in chap. 5 discuss the complicated process of concept formation in the interaction between ‘full’ meaningful behaviors and our natural reactions to others and our natural environments thereby warning against the overidentification of the social with the conceptual.
- 11.
Note the analogy with the general reception of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy for social and political inquiry. See Crary (2000) on this reception.
- 12.
The difference isn’t always that clear cut as it depends on one’s understanding of the relation between epistemology and ontology in the first place, and many readings emphasize both or see them as different sides of the same flawed coin.
- 13.
Not all epistemological readings read him as a strong linguistic idealist but frame him as defending a Kantian conceptual apriorism in linguistic guise. For instance, Louch maintains Winch holds on to an untenable distinction between conceptual and empirical investigations, that results in Winch defending philosophy as a master-science that reduces social inquiry to conceptual inquiry. See the exchange between Louch (1963, 1965) and Winch (1964). Also see Winch’s more specific view on the analytic-synthetic distinction (Winch 1953).
- 14.
Also see Jarvie (2011). Ian Jarvie (together with fellow Popperian Jospeh Agassi) played an important role in canonizing Winch as conservatist and relativist from the 1970 onward. However, most of the exchanges between Winch and Jarvie take place around Winch’s “Understanding a Primitive Society” and are therefore left out of consideration here. See (Jarvie 1970a, b, c) and (Winch 1970).
- 15.
See (Theunissen 2017) for a more comprehensive overview of the relevant textual evidence.
- 16.
For a clear elaboration of this point see Winch’s lectures notes on social science from the King’s College, specifically Durkheim’s definition of suicide for the explicit invocation of nonsense for the abstract epistemic requirement of social inquiry (Winch, 1991-1994).
- 17.
This is the point elaborated in “Understanding a Primitive Society” (Winch 1964).
- 18.
See Hertzberg (2009) for a discussion of some of these essays in relation to Winch’s moral and social philosophy.
- 19.
See (Risjord 2000) for a Neo-Winchean account along these lines.
- 20.
- 21.
A relatively current work in Critical Theory that might align well with Winch is Rahel Jaeggi’s Critique of Forms of Life (Jaeggi 2013). The question here is whether her account of ‘forms of life’ as instances of problem solving that ground and enact critique and social change are still not too formalistic and reductive for Winch’s conception of the ‘fragility of the ethico-cultural.’ Also see Alice Crary’s recent “Wittgenstein Does Critical Theory” on Winch and its relevance for current Critical Theory (Crary 2019).
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Theunissen, M. (2020). “Don’t Mention the Idea of a Social Science”: The Legacy of an Idea. In: Campbell, M., Reid, L. (eds) Ethics, Society and Politics: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter Winch. Nordic Wittgenstein Studies, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40742-1_16
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