For many centuries, Julius Caesar was a name that evoked strong feelings among educated people. S... more For many centuries, Julius Caesar was a name that evoked strong feelings among educated people. Some of these responses were complimentary, but others came from the point of view of "political republicanism"—which envisaged Caesar as a historical symbol for some of the most dangerous tendencies a polity could experience. Caesar represented everything that republicans detested—corruption, demagogy, usurpation—and as such, provided an antimodel against which genuine political virtue could be measured. Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World examines the reception of Caesar in republican thought until the late eighteenth century and his transformation in the nineteenth, when he enjoyed a major rehabilitation in the literary culture and historiography of the day.
Critical of hereditary monarchy and emphasizing the collective political obligations citizens owed to their city or commonwealth, republican thinkers sought to cultivate institutions and mores best adapted to self-governing liberty. The republican idiom became an integral element in the discourse of the American revolutionaries and constitution builders during the eighteenth century, and of their counterparts in France.
In the nineteenth century, Caesar enjoyed a major rehabilitation; from being a pariah, he was elevated in the writings of people like Byron, De Quincey, Mommsen, Froude, and Nietzsche to the greatest statesman of his age. Simultaneously, Caesar's name continued to function as a term of polemic in the emergence of a new debate on what came to be called "Caesarism." While the metamorphosis of Caesar's reputation is studied here as a process in its own right, it is also meant to highlight the increasing enfeeblement of the republican tradition. The transformation of Caesar's image is a sure sign of changes within the wider present-day political culture and evidence of the emergence of new problems and challenges.
Drawing on history, political theory, and sociology, Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World uses the image of Caesar as a way of interpreting broader political and cultural tendencies. Peter Baehr discusses the significance of living not in a postmodern society, but in a postclassical one in which ideas of political obligation have become increasingly emaciated and in which the theoretical resources for the care of our public world have become correspondingly scarce. This volume is an important study that will be of value to sociologists, political theorists, and historians.
How do writers, marginalized by the authoritarian state in which they live, intervene in the poli... more How do writers, marginalized by the authoritarian state in which they live, intervene in the political process? They cannot do so directly because they are not politicians. Other modes of engagement are possible, however. A writer may take up arms and become a revolutionary. Or, as Max Weber did, he may try to influence politics by playing the role of constitutional advisor, or by seeking to shape the dominant language in which his contemporaries think. Weber sought to reconstitute the political and social vocabulary of his day.
Part I of Caesarism, Charisma and Fate examines a great writer's political passions and the linguistic creativity they generated. Specially, it is an analysis of the manner in which Weber reshaped the nineteenth century idea of "Caesarism," a term traditionally associated with the authoritarian populism of Napoleon III and Bismarck, and transmuted it into a concept that was either neutral or positive. The coup de grace of this alchemy was to make Caesarism reappear as charisma. In that transformation, a highly contentious political concept, suffused with disapproval and anxiety, was naturalized into an ideal type of universal value-free sociology.
Part II augments Weber's ideas for the modem age. A recurrent preoccupation of Weber's writings was human "fate," a condition that evokes the pathos of choice, the political meaning of death, and the formation of national solidarity. Peter Baehr, marrying Weber and Durkheim, fashions a new concept, "community of fate," for sociological theory. Communities of fate—such as the Warsaw Ghetto or Hong Kong dealing with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis—are embattled social sites in which people face the prospect of collective death. They cohere because of an intense and broadly shared focus of attention on a common plight. Weber's work helps us grasp the nature of such communities, the mechanisms that produce them, and, not least, their dramatic consequences.
This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of th... more This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of the twentieth century. It focuses on Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism was an entirely unprecedented regime and that the social sciences had integrally misconstrued it. A sociologist who is a critical admirer of Arendt, Baehr looks sympathetically at Arendt's objections to social science and shows that her complaints were in many respects justified.
Avoiding broad disciplinary endorsements or dismissals, Baehr reconstructs the theoretical and political stakes of Arendt's encounters with prominent social scientists such as David Riesman, Raymond Aron, and Jules Monnerot. In presenting the first systematic appraisal of Arendt's critique of the social sciences, Baehr examines what it means to see an event as unprecedented. Furthermore, he adapts Arendt and Aron's philosophies to shed light on modern Islamist terrorism and to ask whether it should be categorized alongside Stalinism and National Socialism as totalitarian.
Three categories-founders, classics, canons-have been vitally important in helping to frame socio... more Three categories-founders, classics, canons-have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's precarious identity, defining the discipline's sense of its past and the implications for its current activity. Today that identity is being challenged as never before. Within the academy, a number of positions-feminist, postmodernist, poststructuralist, postcolonial-converge in questioning the status of "the tradition." These currents, in turn, reflect wider social questioning about the meaning and uses of knowledge in technologically advanced societies.
In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr scrutinizes the nature of this challenge. He provides a model of the processes through which texts are elevated to classic status, and defends the continuing importance of sociology's traditions for a university education in the social sciences. The concept of "classic" is, as Baehr notes, a complex one. Essentially it assumes a scale of judgment that deems certain texts as exemplary in eminence. But what is the nature of this eminence? Baehr analyzes various responses to this question. Most notable are those that focus on the functions classics perform for the scholarly community that employs them; the rhetorical force classics are said to possess; and the processes of reception that result in classic status. The concept of classic is often equated with two other notions: "founders" and "canon." The former has a well-established pedigree within the discipline, but widespread usage of the latter in sociology is much more recent and polemical in tone. Baehr offers arguments against these two ways of interpreting, defending and attacking sociology's great texts and authors. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.
While questioning the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr's purpose is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning they have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or excoriate the liberal university tradition. In examining the tactics of this battle, this volume offers a model of how social theory can be critical rather than radical.
Stephen Turner's brief history of American sociology culminates in a description of its current s... more Stephen Turner's brief history of American sociology culminates in a description of its current state and prospects. The collapse of the behavioral science ideal, and the aversion to big theory, Turner argues, suggests that sociology is ever more approximating what it was in its early reformist days: a partisan endeavor, oriented to social justice, guided by and legitimized by fact-producing techniques of broadly sociological provenance. The demographic ascendancy of women in the discipline, Turner continues, is likely to accentuate this development and will parallel, rather than transform, the caste-like exclusivity of the top twenty sociology departments and the AJS/ASR nexus. This article examines Turner's analogy of previous partisan expertise with its contemporary manifestations. It argues that the analogy is misleading, and that the "post-normal" sociology Turner sketches is of doubtful expertise precisely because of its antipathy to serious critical thought and open enquiry.
By the time that Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism was
published in 1951, one totali... more By the time that Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951, one totalitarian regime lay in ruins while another – Soviet Communism – stood newly reenergized. Stalin’s prestige, burnished by victory, had never been greater. The cold war was re-dividing the world. And, in the United States, the fear of Communism was a pervasive feature of the political landscape. The revelation that the State Department and other government ministries, in the 1930s and beyond, had been penetrated by American Communists, prompted public outrage against the miscreants. It aroused corresponding curiosity about those who had once embraced the Marxist creed but who now publicly renounced it. One such person was Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) – Communist spy, Communist defector, and key witness in the perjury trial of Alger Hiss. Into this imbroglio stepped Hannah Arendt. She was by turns suspicious and dismissive. Who were the ex-Communists? Why had they broken with Communism? How thorough or deep-rooted was their abrogation? On her account, Chambers and others like him had no understanding of democratic politics and of what it means to be a quotidian political actor. She also denounced ‘ex-Communist’ informing as analogous to the exposure practices of totalitarian regimes. This article evaluates the cogency of her analysis. It devotes particular attention to a problematic distinction Arendt draws between ‘ex-Communists’ and ‘former’ Communists. And it seeks to answer a question that Arendt left opaque: when, if ever, is informing against fellow citizens justified in a constitutional republic?
Since the French Revolution, intellectual and popular cultures of the West have been characterize... more Since the French Revolution, intellectual and popular cultures of the West have been characterized by tropes of “unmasking,” a kind of exposure that purports to show mendacity and domination operating unseen beneath the surface of human affairs. Karl Mannheim was a particularly astute commentator on this phenomenon. His Ideology and Utopia (1929) and cognate writings offer an account of unmasking that is detailed, contextual, nuanced and critical. While he grants that unmasking was a condition of sociology’s emergence, Mannheim argues that it has outlived its usefulness for purposes of explanatory understanding. He further decries the destructive impact of unmasking on political discourse: an openly debunking attitude poisons the well of principled dialogue by claiming one’s interlocutor to be either a charlatan or a dupe of history. Critics such as Hannah Arendt and her mentor Karl Jaspers went further, condemning unmasking as execrable in principle and depicting sociology and psychology as major casualties of its rhetorical excesses – Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge included. This article describes Mannheim’s analysis of unmasking, the rhetorical moves he employed to move beyond the unmasking mode, and objections to his project of Jaspers and Arendt. Mannheim’s reception is muted today while Arendt’s is on a steadily rising curve of appreciation. But a reconstruction of Mannheim’s ideas on unmasking reveals an author who, at the time Arendt sparred with him, demonstrated a far greater comprehension than she did of the history and stakes of a topos that pervades modern thinking.
This article examines Robert Nisbet’s claim that the first totalitarian experiment of the twentie... more This article examines Robert Nisbet’s claim that the first totalitarian experiment of the twentieth century occurred not in the Soviet Union or in Nazi Germany, but in the United States during the First World War. Totalitarianism appeared in the form of mass propaganda, surveillance and repression. It was accompanied by a messianic desire of Woodrow Wilson and his team to transform America into a “national community.” By 1920, American totalitarianism was effectively at an end but, claimed Nisbet, it left a legacy of centralization that, over successive Democratic and Republican administrations, has stripped the Republic’s citizens of social authority and independence; the political trumped the social. Nisbet’s depiction of American totalitarianism is contrasted with Hannah Arendt’s argument that totalitarianism, thus far in history, is restricted to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Raymond Aron (1905–1983) assumed many guises over a long and fruitful career:
journalist, polemi... more Raymond Aron (1905–1983) assumed many guises over a long and fruitful career: journalist, polemicist, philosopher of history, counselor to political leaders and officials, theorist of nuclear deterrence and international relations. He was also France’s most notable sociologist. While Aron had especially close ties with Britain, a result of his days in active exile there during the Second World War, he was widely appreciated in the United States too. His book Main Currents in Sociological Thought was hailed a masterpiece; more generally, Aron’s books were extensively reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review (in earlier days, it hosted a review section), Contemporary Sociology, and Social Forces. And he was admired and cited by sociologists of the stature of Daniel Bell, Edward Shils, and David Riesman. Yet despite appearing well poised to become a major force in international sociology, analogous to his younger collaborator, Pierre Bourdieu, Aron has almost vanished from the sociological landscape. This article explains why, offering in the process some observations on the conditions—conceptual and motivational—of reputational longevity in sociological theory and showing how Aron failed to meet them. Special attention is devoted to a confusing equivocation in Aron’s description of sociology and to the cultural basis of his ambivalence toward the discipline.
Over a long and prodigiously fertile academic career, Peter Berger’s vision of sociology has cons... more Over a long and prodigiously fertile academic career, Peter Berger’s vision of sociology has consistently emphasized its debunking and unmasking properties. Such properties, Berger contends, are evidence of sociology’s humanistic promise. Following a brief description of his early transition from The Precarious Vision (a sociological book addressed principally to Christians) to Invitation to Sociology (a text keyed to a mostly secular audience), Berger’s idea of humanism is described. So, too, are the roles that debunking and unmasking play in its articulation. Debunking and unmasking, conflated by Berger, are then analytically distinguished, historically located, and criticized. Debunking, an American specialty, ridicules its targets but explains nothing. Unmasking, of European provenance, has pronounced anti-humanist – violent, denunciatory, coercive – tendencies, evidenced in both the French and Bolshevik Revolutions. Accordingly, any defense of unmasking that claims to uphold humanism requires major qualification. The article, as well as assessing Berger’s humanism, employs it as an opportunity to think more broadly, and more critically, about the types of debunking/unmasking in modern life.
Opposition to the burqa is widespread in Europe but not in the United States. What
explains the ... more Opposition to the burqa is widespread in Europe but not in the United States. What
explains the difference? Focusing primarily on the French case and its Belgian
facsimile, we seek to underscore the role of social theorists in legitimizing bans on the
full veil. Ironically, this role has been largely disregarded by Anglophone theorists who
write on the veil, and who often oppose its prohibition. This article suggests that
Europe tends to be more repressive towards full veils because its political process is
more open to multiple theoretical representations of the phenomenon of veiling.
Conversely, the United States is more open to the provocative display of religious
symbols in public because the political process is pre-structured by legal conventions
that tend to filter out social theory. The push to ban the burqa in France principally
derives from its brand of republicanism rather than being a product of racism and
Islamophobia. Of particular significance in the French case is the emphasis on
reciprocity as a political principle, a principle that is elongated into an ideal of
sociability by French theorists in different disciplines. The arguments of these
theorists are described, their rationale is explained and the impact of their intervention
on the policy process is documented. The French case, where the popular press and
legislature play a major role in shaping policy towards the burqa, is contrasted with
that of the United States, where the judiciary, defending religious freedom, remains
the most influential collective actor. Each country has correspondingly different
attitudes to democracy. In France, the mission of democracy is to extend political equality to the social realm whereas in the United States it is religion that is
prioritized so as to protect that which is deemed most sacred to the individual.
Unmasking is a recurrent feature of modern sociology and cultural criticism. While false consciou... more Unmasking is a recurrent feature of modern sociology and cultural criticism. While false consciousness is imputed by intellectuals to religious groups and to certain social classes, unmasking is, or claims to be, a corrective performed by intellectuals themselves. Unmasking supposes that enlightened enquirers are able to help the less rational to understand their real interests; a type of exposure, it offers a cognitive tool of emancipation. This article (a) examines unmasking; and (b) contrasts it with an approach to understanding that we call disclosure. Our claim is that disclosure is more attuned to the full keyboard of social action, and less demeaning of its players, than unmasking is. Disclosure attempts to grasp what actions are like for those who enact them. Nothing has been more often or consistently unmasked and with more venom than religion. It is the main example explored in this article.
In 1952, Waldemar Gurian, founding editor of The Review of Politics, commissioned Eric Voegelin, ... more In 1952, Waldemar Gurian, founding editor of The Review of Politics, commissioned Eric Voegelin, then a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, to review Hannah Arendt's recently published The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). She was given the right to reply; Voegelin would furnish a concluding note. Preceding this dialogue, Voegelin wrote a letter to Arendt anticipating aspects of his review; she responded in kind. Arendt's letter to Voegelin on totalitarianism, written in German, has never appeared in print before. She wrote two drafts of it, the first and longest being the more interesting. It contained an early reference to her thinking about the relationship among plurality, politics, and philosophy. It also invoked her notion of the compelling “logic” of totalitarian ideology. But this was not the letter Voegelin received. Because of this, he misunderstood significant parts of her argument. Below, the two versions of Arendt's letter are translated. They are prefaced by a translation of Voegelin's initial message to Arendt. An introduction compares Arendt's letters, offers context, and provides a snapshot of Arendt's and Voegelin's perceptions of each other. Their views of political religion and human nature are also highlighted. Keyed to Arendt and Voegelin's letters are pertinent aspects of the debate in The Review of Politics that followed their epistolary exchange.
Dislike among European publics for the Islamic full veil and the desire to ban it are often ascri... more Dislike among European publics for the Islamic full veil and the desire to ban it are often ascribed to nativist "Islamophobia." This article questions that assumption. It argues that, in political terms, the wearing of the burqa and niqab is inconsistent with Western norms of equality, the backbone of the citizenship ideal; and that, in social terms, the full veil erects a partition to interpersonal understanding and reciprocity. While the constitutional duty to protect religious freedom is a good argument in favor of tolerating the full veil, the practice of wearing it is at the edge of solidarity and injurious to the democratic public sphere.
We celebrate great writers not only by reconstructing their ideas but also by thinking in their
... more We celebrate great writers not only by reconstructing their ideas but also by thinking in their
spirit. Many aspects of Raymond Aron’s legacy could, today, be exploited by writers of an Aronian
turn of mind. They might draw on his philosophy of history; his defense of the specificity of
politics; his acute awareness of the burdens of responsibility imposed on great powers. In this
article, I flag a different topic: Aron’s concern with the impact of regimes and local cultures on
political discussion. Of special interest to him were state-sponsored ideology and self-induced
groupthink (the ‘opium of the intellectuals’). After briefly describing Aron’s views of both of
these phenomena within the context of official and unofficial Marxism, I examine two modalities
of communicative inhibition that have emerged since his death. Both turn on the emergence
of Islamism as a major modern political ideology; both entail impediments to free speech: the
vilification of political disagreement as ‘phobic’ and, relatedly, the political use of law (‘lawfare’) to
halt debate on matters sensitive to Islamists.
The article discusses university finances, focusing on a controversy surrounding a donation made ... more The article discusses university finances, focusing on a controversy surrounding a donation made by Saif al’Islam Gaddafi, son of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, to the Centre for Global Governance at England's London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It considers universities' missions and roles in society, commenting on associations between higher education, governments, and the private sector. The author considers universities' commitments to political progress. The views of LSE professors David Held and Richard Sennett are also discussed.
During the autumn of 1949, Hannah Arendt completed the manuscript of The Origins of Totalitariani... more During the autumn of 1949, Hannah Arendt completed the manuscript of The Origins of Totalitarianism. On 1 October of the same year, the People’s Republic of China was founded under the leadership of Mao Zedong. This article documents Arendt’s claim in 1949 that the prospects of totalitarianism in China were ‘frighteningly good’, and yet her ambivalent judgment, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, about the totalitarian character of the Maoist regime. Despite being the premier theorist of totalitarian formations, Arendt’s interest in China was half-hearted and her analysis often wildly inaccurate. The concern of this paper, however, is less with the veracity of her remarks, than with a counterfactual question. If Arendt had known what we know now, would she have considered Maoist China to be a totalitarian regime? Put another way: to what extent is our modern picture of Mao’s regime consistent with Arendt’s depiction of the Soviet Union under Stalin or Germany under Hitler? While Arendt got many of her facts wrong, her theory of totalitarianism — as shapeless, febrile, voracious of human flesh, and endlessly turbulent — was in good measure applicable to Mao’s regime, even though she failed to recognize it.
For many centuries, Julius Caesar was a name that evoked strong feelings among educated people. S... more For many centuries, Julius Caesar was a name that evoked strong feelings among educated people. Some of these responses were complimentary, but others came from the point of view of "political republicanism"—which envisaged Caesar as a historical symbol for some of the most dangerous tendencies a polity could experience. Caesar represented everything that republicans detested—corruption, demagogy, usurpation—and as such, provided an antimodel against which genuine political virtue could be measured. Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World examines the reception of Caesar in republican thought until the late eighteenth century and his transformation in the nineteenth, when he enjoyed a major rehabilitation in the literary culture and historiography of the day.
Critical of hereditary monarchy and emphasizing the collective political obligations citizens owed to their city or commonwealth, republican thinkers sought to cultivate institutions and mores best adapted to self-governing liberty. The republican idiom became an integral element in the discourse of the American revolutionaries and constitution builders during the eighteenth century, and of their counterparts in France.
In the nineteenth century, Caesar enjoyed a major rehabilitation; from being a pariah, he was elevated in the writings of people like Byron, De Quincey, Mommsen, Froude, and Nietzsche to the greatest statesman of his age. Simultaneously, Caesar's name continued to function as a term of polemic in the emergence of a new debate on what came to be called "Caesarism." While the metamorphosis of Caesar's reputation is studied here as a process in its own right, it is also meant to highlight the increasing enfeeblement of the republican tradition. The transformation of Caesar's image is a sure sign of changes within the wider present-day political culture and evidence of the emergence of new problems and challenges.
Drawing on history, political theory, and sociology, Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World uses the image of Caesar as a way of interpreting broader political and cultural tendencies. Peter Baehr discusses the significance of living not in a postmodern society, but in a postclassical one in which ideas of political obligation have become increasingly emaciated and in which the theoretical resources for the care of our public world have become correspondingly scarce. This volume is an important study that will be of value to sociologists, political theorists, and historians.
How do writers, marginalized by the authoritarian state in which they live, intervene in the poli... more How do writers, marginalized by the authoritarian state in which they live, intervene in the political process? They cannot do so directly because they are not politicians. Other modes of engagement are possible, however. A writer may take up arms and become a revolutionary. Or, as Max Weber did, he may try to influence politics by playing the role of constitutional advisor, or by seeking to shape the dominant language in which his contemporaries think. Weber sought to reconstitute the political and social vocabulary of his day.
Part I of Caesarism, Charisma and Fate examines a great writer's political passions and the linguistic creativity they generated. Specially, it is an analysis of the manner in which Weber reshaped the nineteenth century idea of "Caesarism," a term traditionally associated with the authoritarian populism of Napoleon III and Bismarck, and transmuted it into a concept that was either neutral or positive. The coup de grace of this alchemy was to make Caesarism reappear as charisma. In that transformation, a highly contentious political concept, suffused with disapproval and anxiety, was naturalized into an ideal type of universal value-free sociology.
Part II augments Weber's ideas for the modem age. A recurrent preoccupation of Weber's writings was human "fate," a condition that evokes the pathos of choice, the political meaning of death, and the formation of national solidarity. Peter Baehr, marrying Weber and Durkheim, fashions a new concept, "community of fate," for sociological theory. Communities of fate—such as the Warsaw Ghetto or Hong Kong dealing with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis—are embattled social sites in which people face the prospect of collective death. They cohere because of an intense and broadly shared focus of attention on a common plight. Weber's work helps us grasp the nature of such communities, the mechanisms that produce them, and, not least, their dramatic consequences.
This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of th... more This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of the twentieth century. It focuses on Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism was an entirely unprecedented regime and that the social sciences had integrally misconstrued it. A sociologist who is a critical admirer of Arendt, Baehr looks sympathetically at Arendt's objections to social science and shows that her complaints were in many respects justified.
Avoiding broad disciplinary endorsements or dismissals, Baehr reconstructs the theoretical and political stakes of Arendt's encounters with prominent social scientists such as David Riesman, Raymond Aron, and Jules Monnerot. In presenting the first systematic appraisal of Arendt's critique of the social sciences, Baehr examines what it means to see an event as unprecedented. Furthermore, he adapts Arendt and Aron's philosophies to shed light on modern Islamist terrorism and to ask whether it should be categorized alongside Stalinism and National Socialism as totalitarian.
Three categories-founders, classics, canons-have been vitally important in helping to frame socio... more Three categories-founders, classics, canons-have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's precarious identity, defining the discipline's sense of its past and the implications for its current activity. Today that identity is being challenged as never before. Within the academy, a number of positions-feminist, postmodernist, poststructuralist, postcolonial-converge in questioning the status of "the tradition." These currents, in turn, reflect wider social questioning about the meaning and uses of knowledge in technologically advanced societies.
In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr scrutinizes the nature of this challenge. He provides a model of the processes through which texts are elevated to classic status, and defends the continuing importance of sociology's traditions for a university education in the social sciences. The concept of "classic" is, as Baehr notes, a complex one. Essentially it assumes a scale of judgment that deems certain texts as exemplary in eminence. But what is the nature of this eminence? Baehr analyzes various responses to this question. Most notable are those that focus on the functions classics perform for the scholarly community that employs them; the rhetorical force classics are said to possess; and the processes of reception that result in classic status. The concept of classic is often equated with two other notions: "founders" and "canon." The former has a well-established pedigree within the discipline, but widespread usage of the latter in sociology is much more recent and polemical in tone. Baehr offers arguments against these two ways of interpreting, defending and attacking sociology's great texts and authors. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.
While questioning the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr's purpose is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning they have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or excoriate the liberal university tradition. In examining the tactics of this battle, this volume offers a model of how social theory can be critical rather than radical.
Stephen Turner's brief history of American sociology culminates in a description of its current s... more Stephen Turner's brief history of American sociology culminates in a description of its current state and prospects. The collapse of the behavioral science ideal, and the aversion to big theory, Turner argues, suggests that sociology is ever more approximating what it was in its early reformist days: a partisan endeavor, oriented to social justice, guided by and legitimized by fact-producing techniques of broadly sociological provenance. The demographic ascendancy of women in the discipline, Turner continues, is likely to accentuate this development and will parallel, rather than transform, the caste-like exclusivity of the top twenty sociology departments and the AJS/ASR nexus. This article examines Turner's analogy of previous partisan expertise with its contemporary manifestations. It argues that the analogy is misleading, and that the "post-normal" sociology Turner sketches is of doubtful expertise precisely because of its antipathy to serious critical thought and open enquiry.
By the time that Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism was
published in 1951, one totali... more By the time that Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951, one totalitarian regime lay in ruins while another – Soviet Communism – stood newly reenergized. Stalin’s prestige, burnished by victory, had never been greater. The cold war was re-dividing the world. And, in the United States, the fear of Communism was a pervasive feature of the political landscape. The revelation that the State Department and other government ministries, in the 1930s and beyond, had been penetrated by American Communists, prompted public outrage against the miscreants. It aroused corresponding curiosity about those who had once embraced the Marxist creed but who now publicly renounced it. One such person was Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) – Communist spy, Communist defector, and key witness in the perjury trial of Alger Hiss. Into this imbroglio stepped Hannah Arendt. She was by turns suspicious and dismissive. Who were the ex-Communists? Why had they broken with Communism? How thorough or deep-rooted was their abrogation? On her account, Chambers and others like him had no understanding of democratic politics and of what it means to be a quotidian political actor. She also denounced ‘ex-Communist’ informing as analogous to the exposure practices of totalitarian regimes. This article evaluates the cogency of her analysis. It devotes particular attention to a problematic distinction Arendt draws between ‘ex-Communists’ and ‘former’ Communists. And it seeks to answer a question that Arendt left opaque: when, if ever, is informing against fellow citizens justified in a constitutional republic?
Since the French Revolution, intellectual and popular cultures of the West have been characterize... more Since the French Revolution, intellectual and popular cultures of the West have been characterized by tropes of “unmasking,” a kind of exposure that purports to show mendacity and domination operating unseen beneath the surface of human affairs. Karl Mannheim was a particularly astute commentator on this phenomenon. His Ideology and Utopia (1929) and cognate writings offer an account of unmasking that is detailed, contextual, nuanced and critical. While he grants that unmasking was a condition of sociology’s emergence, Mannheim argues that it has outlived its usefulness for purposes of explanatory understanding. He further decries the destructive impact of unmasking on political discourse: an openly debunking attitude poisons the well of principled dialogue by claiming one’s interlocutor to be either a charlatan or a dupe of history. Critics such as Hannah Arendt and her mentor Karl Jaspers went further, condemning unmasking as execrable in principle and depicting sociology and psychology as major casualties of its rhetorical excesses – Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge included. This article describes Mannheim’s analysis of unmasking, the rhetorical moves he employed to move beyond the unmasking mode, and objections to his project of Jaspers and Arendt. Mannheim’s reception is muted today while Arendt’s is on a steadily rising curve of appreciation. But a reconstruction of Mannheim’s ideas on unmasking reveals an author who, at the time Arendt sparred with him, demonstrated a far greater comprehension than she did of the history and stakes of a topos that pervades modern thinking.
This article examines Robert Nisbet’s claim that the first totalitarian experiment of the twentie... more This article examines Robert Nisbet’s claim that the first totalitarian experiment of the twentieth century occurred not in the Soviet Union or in Nazi Germany, but in the United States during the First World War. Totalitarianism appeared in the form of mass propaganda, surveillance and repression. It was accompanied by a messianic desire of Woodrow Wilson and his team to transform America into a “national community.” By 1920, American totalitarianism was effectively at an end but, claimed Nisbet, it left a legacy of centralization that, over successive Democratic and Republican administrations, has stripped the Republic’s citizens of social authority and independence; the political trumped the social. Nisbet’s depiction of American totalitarianism is contrasted with Hannah Arendt’s argument that totalitarianism, thus far in history, is restricted to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Raymond Aron (1905–1983) assumed many guises over a long and fruitful career:
journalist, polemi... more Raymond Aron (1905–1983) assumed many guises over a long and fruitful career: journalist, polemicist, philosopher of history, counselor to political leaders and officials, theorist of nuclear deterrence and international relations. He was also France’s most notable sociologist. While Aron had especially close ties with Britain, a result of his days in active exile there during the Second World War, he was widely appreciated in the United States too. His book Main Currents in Sociological Thought was hailed a masterpiece; more generally, Aron’s books were extensively reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review (in earlier days, it hosted a review section), Contemporary Sociology, and Social Forces. And he was admired and cited by sociologists of the stature of Daniel Bell, Edward Shils, and David Riesman. Yet despite appearing well poised to become a major force in international sociology, analogous to his younger collaborator, Pierre Bourdieu, Aron has almost vanished from the sociological landscape. This article explains why, offering in the process some observations on the conditions—conceptual and motivational—of reputational longevity in sociological theory and showing how Aron failed to meet them. Special attention is devoted to a confusing equivocation in Aron’s description of sociology and to the cultural basis of his ambivalence toward the discipline.
Over a long and prodigiously fertile academic career, Peter Berger’s vision of sociology has cons... more Over a long and prodigiously fertile academic career, Peter Berger’s vision of sociology has consistently emphasized its debunking and unmasking properties. Such properties, Berger contends, are evidence of sociology’s humanistic promise. Following a brief description of his early transition from The Precarious Vision (a sociological book addressed principally to Christians) to Invitation to Sociology (a text keyed to a mostly secular audience), Berger’s idea of humanism is described. So, too, are the roles that debunking and unmasking play in its articulation. Debunking and unmasking, conflated by Berger, are then analytically distinguished, historically located, and criticized. Debunking, an American specialty, ridicules its targets but explains nothing. Unmasking, of European provenance, has pronounced anti-humanist – violent, denunciatory, coercive – tendencies, evidenced in both the French and Bolshevik Revolutions. Accordingly, any defense of unmasking that claims to uphold humanism requires major qualification. The article, as well as assessing Berger’s humanism, employs it as an opportunity to think more broadly, and more critically, about the types of debunking/unmasking in modern life.
Opposition to the burqa is widespread in Europe but not in the United States. What
explains the ... more Opposition to the burqa is widespread in Europe but not in the United States. What
explains the difference? Focusing primarily on the French case and its Belgian
facsimile, we seek to underscore the role of social theorists in legitimizing bans on the
full veil. Ironically, this role has been largely disregarded by Anglophone theorists who
write on the veil, and who often oppose its prohibition. This article suggests that
Europe tends to be more repressive towards full veils because its political process is
more open to multiple theoretical representations of the phenomenon of veiling.
Conversely, the United States is more open to the provocative display of religious
symbols in public because the political process is pre-structured by legal conventions
that tend to filter out social theory. The push to ban the burqa in France principally
derives from its brand of republicanism rather than being a product of racism and
Islamophobia. Of particular significance in the French case is the emphasis on
reciprocity as a political principle, a principle that is elongated into an ideal of
sociability by French theorists in different disciplines. The arguments of these
theorists are described, their rationale is explained and the impact of their intervention
on the policy process is documented. The French case, where the popular press and
legislature play a major role in shaping policy towards the burqa, is contrasted with
that of the United States, where the judiciary, defending religious freedom, remains
the most influential collective actor. Each country has correspondingly different
attitudes to democracy. In France, the mission of democracy is to extend political equality to the social realm whereas in the United States it is religion that is
prioritized so as to protect that which is deemed most sacred to the individual.
Unmasking is a recurrent feature of modern sociology and cultural criticism. While false consciou... more Unmasking is a recurrent feature of modern sociology and cultural criticism. While false consciousness is imputed by intellectuals to religious groups and to certain social classes, unmasking is, or claims to be, a corrective performed by intellectuals themselves. Unmasking supposes that enlightened enquirers are able to help the less rational to understand their real interests; a type of exposure, it offers a cognitive tool of emancipation. This article (a) examines unmasking; and (b) contrasts it with an approach to understanding that we call disclosure. Our claim is that disclosure is more attuned to the full keyboard of social action, and less demeaning of its players, than unmasking is. Disclosure attempts to grasp what actions are like for those who enact them. Nothing has been more often or consistently unmasked and with more venom than religion. It is the main example explored in this article.
In 1952, Waldemar Gurian, founding editor of The Review of Politics, commissioned Eric Voegelin, ... more In 1952, Waldemar Gurian, founding editor of The Review of Politics, commissioned Eric Voegelin, then a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, to review Hannah Arendt's recently published The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). She was given the right to reply; Voegelin would furnish a concluding note. Preceding this dialogue, Voegelin wrote a letter to Arendt anticipating aspects of his review; she responded in kind. Arendt's letter to Voegelin on totalitarianism, written in German, has never appeared in print before. She wrote two drafts of it, the first and longest being the more interesting. It contained an early reference to her thinking about the relationship among plurality, politics, and philosophy. It also invoked her notion of the compelling “logic” of totalitarian ideology. But this was not the letter Voegelin received. Because of this, he misunderstood significant parts of her argument. Below, the two versions of Arendt's letter are translated. They are prefaced by a translation of Voegelin's initial message to Arendt. An introduction compares Arendt's letters, offers context, and provides a snapshot of Arendt's and Voegelin's perceptions of each other. Their views of political religion and human nature are also highlighted. Keyed to Arendt and Voegelin's letters are pertinent aspects of the debate in The Review of Politics that followed their epistolary exchange.
Dislike among European publics for the Islamic full veil and the desire to ban it are often ascri... more Dislike among European publics for the Islamic full veil and the desire to ban it are often ascribed to nativist "Islamophobia." This article questions that assumption. It argues that, in political terms, the wearing of the burqa and niqab is inconsistent with Western norms of equality, the backbone of the citizenship ideal; and that, in social terms, the full veil erects a partition to interpersonal understanding and reciprocity. While the constitutional duty to protect religious freedom is a good argument in favor of tolerating the full veil, the practice of wearing it is at the edge of solidarity and injurious to the democratic public sphere.
We celebrate great writers not only by reconstructing their ideas but also by thinking in their
... more We celebrate great writers not only by reconstructing their ideas but also by thinking in their
spirit. Many aspects of Raymond Aron’s legacy could, today, be exploited by writers of an Aronian
turn of mind. They might draw on his philosophy of history; his defense of the specificity of
politics; his acute awareness of the burdens of responsibility imposed on great powers. In this
article, I flag a different topic: Aron’s concern with the impact of regimes and local cultures on
political discussion. Of special interest to him were state-sponsored ideology and self-induced
groupthink (the ‘opium of the intellectuals’). After briefly describing Aron’s views of both of
these phenomena within the context of official and unofficial Marxism, I examine two modalities
of communicative inhibition that have emerged since his death. Both turn on the emergence
of Islamism as a major modern political ideology; both entail impediments to free speech: the
vilification of political disagreement as ‘phobic’ and, relatedly, the political use of law (‘lawfare’) to
halt debate on matters sensitive to Islamists.
The article discusses university finances, focusing on a controversy surrounding a donation made ... more The article discusses university finances, focusing on a controversy surrounding a donation made by Saif al’Islam Gaddafi, son of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, to the Centre for Global Governance at England's London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It considers universities' missions and roles in society, commenting on associations between higher education, governments, and the private sector. The author considers universities' commitments to political progress. The views of LSE professors David Held and Richard Sennett are also discussed.
During the autumn of 1949, Hannah Arendt completed the manuscript of The Origins of Totalitariani... more During the autumn of 1949, Hannah Arendt completed the manuscript of The Origins of Totalitarianism. On 1 October of the same year, the People’s Republic of China was founded under the leadership of Mao Zedong. This article documents Arendt’s claim in 1949 that the prospects of totalitarianism in China were ‘frighteningly good’, and yet her ambivalent judgment, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, about the totalitarian character of the Maoist regime. Despite being the premier theorist of totalitarian formations, Arendt’s interest in China was half-hearted and her analysis often wildly inaccurate. The concern of this paper, however, is less with the veracity of her remarks, than with a counterfactual question. If Arendt had known what we know now, would she have considered Maoist China to be a totalitarian regime? Put another way: to what extent is our modern picture of Mao’s regime consistent with Arendt’s depiction of the Soviet Union under Stalin or Germany under Hitler? While Arendt got many of her facts wrong, her theory of totalitarianism — as shapeless, febrile, voracious of human flesh, and endlessly turbulent — was in good measure applicable to Mao’s regime, even though she failed to recognize it.
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Books by Peter Baehr
Critical of hereditary monarchy and emphasizing the collective political obligations citizens owed to their city or commonwealth, republican thinkers sought to cultivate institutions and mores best adapted to self-governing liberty. The republican idiom became an integral element in the discourse of the American revolutionaries and constitution builders during the eighteenth century, and of their counterparts in France.
In the nineteenth century, Caesar enjoyed a major rehabilitation; from being a pariah, he was elevated in the writings of people like Byron, De Quincey, Mommsen, Froude, and Nietzsche to the greatest statesman of his age. Simultaneously, Caesar's name continued to function as a term of polemic in the emergence of a new debate on what came to be called "Caesarism." While the metamorphosis of Caesar's reputation is studied here as a process in its own right, it is also meant to highlight the increasing enfeeblement of the republican tradition. The transformation of Caesar's image is a sure sign of changes within the wider present-day political culture and evidence of the emergence of new problems and challenges.
Drawing on history, political theory, and sociology, Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World uses the image of Caesar as a way of interpreting broader political and cultural tendencies. Peter Baehr discusses the significance of living not in a postmodern society, but in a postclassical one in which ideas of political obligation have become increasingly emaciated and in which the theoretical resources for the care of our public world have become correspondingly scarce. This volume is an important study that will be of value to sociologists, political theorists, and historians.
Part I of Caesarism, Charisma and Fate examines a great writer's political passions and the linguistic creativity they generated. Specially, it is an analysis of the manner in which Weber reshaped the nineteenth century idea of "Caesarism," a term traditionally associated with the authoritarian populism of Napoleon III and Bismarck, and transmuted it into a concept that was either neutral or positive. The coup de grace of this alchemy was to make Caesarism reappear as charisma. In that transformation, a highly contentious political concept, suffused with disapproval and anxiety, was naturalized into an ideal type of universal value-free sociology.
Part II augments Weber's ideas for the modem age. A recurrent preoccupation of Weber's writings was human "fate," a condition that evokes the pathos of choice, the political meaning of death, and the formation of national solidarity. Peter Baehr, marrying Weber and Durkheim, fashions a new concept, "community of fate," for sociological theory. Communities of fate—such as the Warsaw Ghetto or Hong Kong dealing with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis—are embattled social sites in which people face the prospect of collective death. They cohere because of an intense and broadly shared focus of attention on a common plight. Weber's work helps us grasp the nature of such communities, the mechanisms that produce them, and, not least, their dramatic consequences.
Avoiding broad disciplinary endorsements or dismissals, Baehr reconstructs the theoretical and political stakes of Arendt's encounters with prominent social scientists such as David Riesman, Raymond Aron, and Jules Monnerot. In presenting the first systematic appraisal of Arendt's critique of the social sciences, Baehr examines what it means to see an event as unprecedented. Furthermore, he adapts Arendt and Aron's philosophies to shed light on modern Islamist terrorism and to ask whether it should be categorized alongside Stalinism and National Socialism as totalitarian.
In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr scrutinizes the nature of this challenge. He provides a model of the processes through which texts are elevated to classic status, and defends the continuing importance of sociology's traditions for a university education in the social sciences. The concept of "classic" is, as Baehr notes, a complex one. Essentially it assumes a scale of judgment that deems certain texts as exemplary in eminence. But what is the nature of this eminence? Baehr analyzes various responses to this question. Most notable are those that focus on the functions classics perform for the scholarly community that employs them; the rhetorical force classics are said to possess; and the processes of reception that result in classic status. The concept of classic is often equated with two other notions: "founders" and "canon." The former has a well-established pedigree within the discipline, but widespread usage of the latter in sociology is much more recent and polemical in tone. Baehr offers arguments against these two ways of interpreting, defending and attacking sociology's great texts and authors. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.
While questioning the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr's purpose is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning they have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or excoriate the liberal university tradition. In examining the tactics of this battle, this volume offers a model of how social theory can be critical rather than radical.
Papers by Peter Baehr
published in 1951, one totalitarian regime lay in ruins while another –
Soviet Communism – stood newly reenergized. Stalin’s prestige, burnished
by victory, had never been greater. The cold war was re-dividing the world.
And, in the United States, the fear of Communism was a pervasive feature
of the political landscape. The revelation that the State Department and
other government ministries, in the 1930s and beyond, had been penetrated
by American Communists, prompted public outrage against the miscreants.
It aroused corresponding curiosity about those who had once embraced the
Marxist creed but who now publicly renounced it. One such person was
Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) – Communist spy, Communist defector,
and key witness in the perjury trial of Alger Hiss. Into this imbroglio
stepped Hannah Arendt. She was by turns suspicious and dismissive. Who
were the ex-Communists? Why had they broken with Communism? How
thorough or deep-rooted was their abrogation? On her account, Chambers
and others like him had no understanding of democratic politics and of
what it means to be a quotidian political actor. She also denounced
‘ex-Communist’ informing as analogous to the exposure practices of
totalitarian regimes. This article evaluates the cogency of her analysis. It
devotes particular attention to a problematic distinction Arendt draws
between ‘ex-Communists’ and ‘former’ Communists. And it seeks to
answer a question that Arendt left opaque: when, if ever, is informing
against fellow citizens justified in a constitutional republic?
journalist, polemicist, philosopher of history, counselor to political leaders and officials,
theorist of nuclear deterrence and international relations. He was also France’s most
notable sociologist. While Aron had especially close ties with Britain, a result of his
days in active exile there during the Second World War, he was widely appreciated
in the United States too. His book Main Currents in Sociological Thought was hailed a
masterpiece; more generally, Aron’s books were extensively reviewed in the American
Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review (in earlier days, it hosted a review
section), Contemporary Sociology, and Social Forces. And he was admired and cited by
sociologists of the stature of Daniel Bell, Edward Shils, and David Riesman. Yet despite
appearing well poised to become a major force in international sociology, analogous to his
younger collaborator, Pierre Bourdieu, Aron has almost vanished from the sociological
landscape. This article explains why, offering in the process some observations on the
conditions—conceptual and motivational—of reputational longevity in sociological
theory and showing how Aron failed to meet them. Special attention is devoted to a
confusing equivocation in Aron’s description of sociology and to the cultural basis of his
ambivalence toward the discipline.
explains the difference? Focusing primarily on the French case and its Belgian
facsimile, we seek to underscore the role of social theorists in legitimizing bans on the
full veil. Ironically, this role has been largely disregarded by Anglophone theorists who
write on the veil, and who often oppose its prohibition. This article suggests that
Europe tends to be more repressive towards full veils because its political process is
more open to multiple theoretical representations of the phenomenon of veiling.
Conversely, the United States is more open to the provocative display of religious
symbols in public because the political process is pre-structured by legal conventions
that tend to filter out social theory. The push to ban the burqa in France principally
derives from its brand of republicanism rather than being a product of racism and
Islamophobia. Of particular significance in the French case is the emphasis on
reciprocity as a political principle, a principle that is elongated into an ideal of
sociability by French theorists in different disciplines. The arguments of these
theorists are described, their rationale is explained and the impact of their intervention
on the policy process is documented. The French case, where the popular press and
legislature play a major role in shaping policy towards the burqa, is contrasted with
that of the United States, where the judiciary, defending religious freedom, remains
the most influential collective actor. Each country has correspondingly different
attitudes to democracy. In France, the mission of democracy is to extend political equality to the social realm whereas in the United States it is religion that is
prioritized so as to protect that which is deemed most sacred to the individual.
spirit. Many aspects of Raymond Aron’s legacy could, today, be exploited by writers of an Aronian
turn of mind. They might draw on his philosophy of history; his defense of the specificity of
politics; his acute awareness of the burdens of responsibility imposed on great powers. In this
article, I flag a different topic: Aron’s concern with the impact of regimes and local cultures on
political discussion. Of special interest to him were state-sponsored ideology and self-induced
groupthink (the ‘opium of the intellectuals’). After briefly describing Aron’s views of both of
these phenomena within the context of official and unofficial Marxism, I examine two modalities
of communicative inhibition that have emerged since his death. Both turn on the emergence
of Islamism as a major modern political ideology; both entail impediments to free speech: the
vilification of political disagreement as ‘phobic’ and, relatedly, the political use of law (‘lawfare’) to
halt debate on matters sensitive to Islamists.
Critical of hereditary monarchy and emphasizing the collective political obligations citizens owed to their city or commonwealth, republican thinkers sought to cultivate institutions and mores best adapted to self-governing liberty. The republican idiom became an integral element in the discourse of the American revolutionaries and constitution builders during the eighteenth century, and of their counterparts in France.
In the nineteenth century, Caesar enjoyed a major rehabilitation; from being a pariah, he was elevated in the writings of people like Byron, De Quincey, Mommsen, Froude, and Nietzsche to the greatest statesman of his age. Simultaneously, Caesar's name continued to function as a term of polemic in the emergence of a new debate on what came to be called "Caesarism." While the metamorphosis of Caesar's reputation is studied here as a process in its own right, it is also meant to highlight the increasing enfeeblement of the republican tradition. The transformation of Caesar's image is a sure sign of changes within the wider present-day political culture and evidence of the emergence of new problems and challenges.
Drawing on history, political theory, and sociology, Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World uses the image of Caesar as a way of interpreting broader political and cultural tendencies. Peter Baehr discusses the significance of living not in a postmodern society, but in a postclassical one in which ideas of political obligation have become increasingly emaciated and in which the theoretical resources for the care of our public world have become correspondingly scarce. This volume is an important study that will be of value to sociologists, political theorists, and historians.
Part I of Caesarism, Charisma and Fate examines a great writer's political passions and the linguistic creativity they generated. Specially, it is an analysis of the manner in which Weber reshaped the nineteenth century idea of "Caesarism," a term traditionally associated with the authoritarian populism of Napoleon III and Bismarck, and transmuted it into a concept that was either neutral or positive. The coup de grace of this alchemy was to make Caesarism reappear as charisma. In that transformation, a highly contentious political concept, suffused with disapproval and anxiety, was naturalized into an ideal type of universal value-free sociology.
Part II augments Weber's ideas for the modem age. A recurrent preoccupation of Weber's writings was human "fate," a condition that evokes the pathos of choice, the political meaning of death, and the formation of national solidarity. Peter Baehr, marrying Weber and Durkheim, fashions a new concept, "community of fate," for sociological theory. Communities of fate—such as the Warsaw Ghetto or Hong Kong dealing with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis—are embattled social sites in which people face the prospect of collective death. They cohere because of an intense and broadly shared focus of attention on a common plight. Weber's work helps us grasp the nature of such communities, the mechanisms that produce them, and, not least, their dramatic consequences.
Avoiding broad disciplinary endorsements or dismissals, Baehr reconstructs the theoretical and political stakes of Arendt's encounters with prominent social scientists such as David Riesman, Raymond Aron, and Jules Monnerot. In presenting the first systematic appraisal of Arendt's critique of the social sciences, Baehr examines what it means to see an event as unprecedented. Furthermore, he adapts Arendt and Aron's philosophies to shed light on modern Islamist terrorism and to ask whether it should be categorized alongside Stalinism and National Socialism as totalitarian.
In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr scrutinizes the nature of this challenge. He provides a model of the processes through which texts are elevated to classic status, and defends the continuing importance of sociology's traditions for a university education in the social sciences. The concept of "classic" is, as Baehr notes, a complex one. Essentially it assumes a scale of judgment that deems certain texts as exemplary in eminence. But what is the nature of this eminence? Baehr analyzes various responses to this question. Most notable are those that focus on the functions classics perform for the scholarly community that employs them; the rhetorical force classics are said to possess; and the processes of reception that result in classic status. The concept of classic is often equated with two other notions: "founders" and "canon." The former has a well-established pedigree within the discipline, but widespread usage of the latter in sociology is much more recent and polemical in tone. Baehr offers arguments against these two ways of interpreting, defending and attacking sociology's great texts and authors. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.
While questioning the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr's purpose is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning they have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or excoriate the liberal university tradition. In examining the tactics of this battle, this volume offers a model of how social theory can be critical rather than radical.
published in 1951, one totalitarian regime lay in ruins while another –
Soviet Communism – stood newly reenergized. Stalin’s prestige, burnished
by victory, had never been greater. The cold war was re-dividing the world.
And, in the United States, the fear of Communism was a pervasive feature
of the political landscape. The revelation that the State Department and
other government ministries, in the 1930s and beyond, had been penetrated
by American Communists, prompted public outrage against the miscreants.
It aroused corresponding curiosity about those who had once embraced the
Marxist creed but who now publicly renounced it. One such person was
Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) – Communist spy, Communist defector,
and key witness in the perjury trial of Alger Hiss. Into this imbroglio
stepped Hannah Arendt. She was by turns suspicious and dismissive. Who
were the ex-Communists? Why had they broken with Communism? How
thorough or deep-rooted was their abrogation? On her account, Chambers
and others like him had no understanding of democratic politics and of
what it means to be a quotidian political actor. She also denounced
‘ex-Communist’ informing as analogous to the exposure practices of
totalitarian regimes. This article evaluates the cogency of her analysis. It
devotes particular attention to a problematic distinction Arendt draws
between ‘ex-Communists’ and ‘former’ Communists. And it seeks to
answer a question that Arendt left opaque: when, if ever, is informing
against fellow citizens justified in a constitutional republic?
journalist, polemicist, philosopher of history, counselor to political leaders and officials,
theorist of nuclear deterrence and international relations. He was also France’s most
notable sociologist. While Aron had especially close ties with Britain, a result of his
days in active exile there during the Second World War, he was widely appreciated
in the United States too. His book Main Currents in Sociological Thought was hailed a
masterpiece; more generally, Aron’s books were extensively reviewed in the American
Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review (in earlier days, it hosted a review
section), Contemporary Sociology, and Social Forces. And he was admired and cited by
sociologists of the stature of Daniel Bell, Edward Shils, and David Riesman. Yet despite
appearing well poised to become a major force in international sociology, analogous to his
younger collaborator, Pierre Bourdieu, Aron has almost vanished from the sociological
landscape. This article explains why, offering in the process some observations on the
conditions—conceptual and motivational—of reputational longevity in sociological
theory and showing how Aron failed to meet them. Special attention is devoted to a
confusing equivocation in Aron’s description of sociology and to the cultural basis of his
ambivalence toward the discipline.
explains the difference? Focusing primarily on the French case and its Belgian
facsimile, we seek to underscore the role of social theorists in legitimizing bans on the
full veil. Ironically, this role has been largely disregarded by Anglophone theorists who
write on the veil, and who often oppose its prohibition. This article suggests that
Europe tends to be more repressive towards full veils because its political process is
more open to multiple theoretical representations of the phenomenon of veiling.
Conversely, the United States is more open to the provocative display of religious
symbols in public because the political process is pre-structured by legal conventions
that tend to filter out social theory. The push to ban the burqa in France principally
derives from its brand of republicanism rather than being a product of racism and
Islamophobia. Of particular significance in the French case is the emphasis on
reciprocity as a political principle, a principle that is elongated into an ideal of
sociability by French theorists in different disciplines. The arguments of these
theorists are described, their rationale is explained and the impact of their intervention
on the policy process is documented. The French case, where the popular press and
legislature play a major role in shaping policy towards the burqa, is contrasted with
that of the United States, where the judiciary, defending religious freedom, remains
the most influential collective actor. Each country has correspondingly different
attitudes to democracy. In France, the mission of democracy is to extend political equality to the social realm whereas in the United States it is religion that is
prioritized so as to protect that which is deemed most sacred to the individual.
spirit. Many aspects of Raymond Aron’s legacy could, today, be exploited by writers of an Aronian
turn of mind. They might draw on his philosophy of history; his defense of the specificity of
politics; his acute awareness of the burdens of responsibility imposed on great powers. In this
article, I flag a different topic: Aron’s concern with the impact of regimes and local cultures on
political discussion. Of special interest to him were state-sponsored ideology and self-induced
groupthink (the ‘opium of the intellectuals’). After briefly describing Aron’s views of both of
these phenomena within the context of official and unofficial Marxism, I examine two modalities
of communicative inhibition that have emerged since his death. Both turn on the emergence
of Islamism as a major modern political ideology; both entail impediments to free speech: the
vilification of political disagreement as ‘phobic’ and, relatedly, the political use of law (‘lawfare’) to
halt debate on matters sensitive to Islamists.