Review of Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophy

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society , 2011

The article presents some key aspects of the approach called sociology of philosophy, as represented by Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Colins and others. Comparisons are made with the philosophical research programme, developed by Dieter Henrich, which goes under the name constellation research. One thing that unites the sociology of philosophy and constellation research is an interest in antagonistic constellations involving rivalry, competition and controversy. A few references to the case of Rorty are included in the discussion.

This book presents the dynamics of conflict and alliance in the intellectual networks which have existed longest in world history. This enterprise is situated in today’s field of contending positions, in sociology, and in intellectual life generally. It too is framed by its nexus of disagreement. Some might say that the effort undermines itself; that this of all times in world history is the least appropriate for a comparative, global eye, seeking out the universal and fundamental.

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2000

is one of America's great sociological theorists, but his new book, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change, may have succeeded in writing him out of his own rather considerable reputation. The Sociology of Philosophies is a book of breathtaking range, offering a provocative theory of intellectual creativity and reputations that challenges the very category of a "great theorist" while solidifying Collins's place at the forefront of the sociology of ideas and knowledge. Using a world history of philosophy as case material, Collins outlines a powerful theoretical framework for the social scientific analysis of intellectual networks, academic disciplines and the world of ideas itself. Collins's book will start arguments as well as inspire new research, and it is not difficult to predict the controversies that will emerge. The Sociology of Philosophies is practically a recipe for a turf war. Many intellectual historians will be shocked at the hubris of Collins's analysis. Never one prone to thinking in narrow and specialized terms, Collins offers us a global analytic history of philosophical thinking from the Greeks, Romans, the Enlightenment philosophes, the Reformation and Medieval Catholic theology through to the existentialists in the West, as well as dealing in great detail with non-Western thought over many centuries in China, India, and Japan. Many philosophers will be outraged by Collins's argument that the concept of a "great philosopher" is a social construction, reflecting the needs of intellectual networks fixated on a competition for attention more than on the intrinsic quality of ideas or on a disinterested search for truth. Collins treats many major philosophers with skeptical irreverence, as when he calls F. W. J. Schelling a "niche hog" and refers to Ludwig Wittgenstein's "personality cult" and brooding over suicide as a claim for status in the intellectual elite. Collins's book-length attempt to explain philosophers' creativity and reputations by social, organizational, and network factors will ruffle feathers, as when he offers a sociological account of why G. W. F. Hegel made it and Arthur Schopenhauer did not. And intellectuals more generally will find little comfort in Collins's brutally unsentimental critique of the cult of the intellectual hero. Collins draws a picture of intellectuals as self-interested, calculating status climbers who are as concerned with gaining eminence and financial security as they are with the various social and intellectual movements and causes often associated with what we now call "public intellectuals." Collins's critics have a point. The norms of contemporary intellectual history rightly call for specialization in specific geographical areas in particular times, allowing for the consultation of primary documentary evidence in original languages and the mastery of the relevant literature. Collins, in contrast, writes a global intellectual history based on secondary sources. Errors of detail are inevitable in this book, as is a sacrifice of depth. And while Collins's discussion of world philosophical ideas is well written and impressive, specialists will have many interpretations to challenge and nuances to add. These legitimate criticisms of Collins's book, however, should not deter us from taking his theory of intellectual creativity and reputation very seriously indeed. Turf wars work both ways. Intellectual historians who work in one area or within a

Acta Sociologica, 2010

The article presents and discusses the sociology of philosophy as a theorybased empirically practised sociological subdivision that came to the fore in the 1980s. In the first part, the type of empirical material and the forms of data presentation that are available to the sociology of philosophy are discussed. In the second part, the focus is on two important attempts, those of Randall Collins and Pierre Bourdieu, to develop general sociological theories about the relationship between social being and thought. The main lesson to be drawn from them is that in normal circumstances philosophical thought cannot be reduced to socio-political conditions outside the attention space (Collins) or the philosophical field (Bourdieu). In the concluding part, we tentatively sketch a programme for a future sociology of philosophy. All in all, the sociology of philosophy is seen as an emerging new subdivision within sociology, the potential of which is far from exhausted with respect to theoretical development as well as empirical approaches.

Through a Glass Darkly: The Social Sciences Look at the Neoliberal University, 2015

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed., 2015

This article first reviews the development of the term ‘intellectual’ and the social and historical circumstances that led intellectuals to become a large, moderately well-defined, and occasionally self-consciousgroup. Particular attention is paid to the rise of commerce and industry since the late Middle Ages, the spread of literacy, the growth of markets, and the proliferation of social contexts for intellectual discussion and debate. The article then argues that three main traditions of analysis inform the sociological study of intellectuals: class theories, theories of classlessness, and theories of shifting social networks. It is argued that the third of these traditions is the most fruitful. Evidence to support this claim is drawn from analyses of the social conditions that lead intellectuals to assume various ideological and political positions. It is concluded that, to explain intellectuals’ allegiances, one must trace their paths of social mobility as they are shaped by the capacity of various social collectivities to expand the institutional milieus through which intellectuals pass. To the degree these milieus are imprinted with the interests of the social collectivities that control them, they circumscribe the interests reflected in intellectuals’ ideologies and political allegiances.

Metaphilosophy, 1972

This article is one of the first sociological explorations of power struggles between intellectuals where matters of life and death are literally at stake. It counters the prevailing tendency within sociology to study intellectuals within confined academic institutions where power struggles are limited to matters of symbolic and institutional recognition. This study explores the conflict between collaborationist and Resistance intellectuals at the end of the Second World War in France, and it focuses in particular on the purge of collaborationist intellectuals which culminated in several high profile trials. This article shows that the arguments and meta-arguments put forward in these trials led to broader intellectual debates outside the courtroom. These debates not only centred on the notion of the writer’s responsibility, but also dealt with anxieties about the disintegrative forces of modern society. Whereas collaborationist intellectuals portrayed their writing as either separate from politics or rescuing a defunct or degenerate nation, Resistance intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre were keen to portray collaborators as outsiders, both socially and sexually, lacking in social integration and subservient to a strong external force. The Resistance intellectuals saw the notion of individual responsibility not as antithetical but as integral to the remaking of the French nation, and this concept would become the cornerstone of the reshaping of the intellectual landscape in the post-war era in France. Keywords: de Beauvoir, intellectuals, meta-arguments, power struggles, purge, Sartre, trials