Fragile Normativity and the Politics of the Social Sciences, c. 1940-1975
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation reconstructs the interactions between German-speaking émigré intellectuals and social scientific debates in the mid-century United States. While classical interpretations often assume émigré thought was founded upon a humanistic rejection of American social scientific method, this dissertation argues that skepticism about the social sciences was far more complicated and wide-ranging from the 1940s to 1970s. Many figures, not just émigrés, began to question the methodological and epistemological premises of the social sciences. Above all, intellectuals wondered how and to what degree one could make normative claims while maintaining an objective conception of social scientific inquiry. These questions were strikingly similar to those asked by prior generations in fin de siècle Germany. In Chapter One, I trace back this intellectual lineage back, examining how Max Weber entered many neo-Kantian concerns about the social sciences into his writings in the 1910s and 1920s. The following chapters then pick up in the 1940s, and move chronologically into the 1970s, showing hidden continuities between these earlier Weberian problems and those in the mid-century. Chapter Two looks at how Alfred Schutz, Eric Voegelin, and Hans Kelsen laced together their philosophies of the social sciences with American democratic theory. Chapter Three follows Theodor Adorno back to the Bundesrepublik, examining how his reception ofWeber coincided with his thinking on values and political ethics. Chapter Four centers around Hannah Arendt, the Committee on Social Thought, and the role of intellectual responsibility during Vietnam. Chapter Five looks at Herbert Marcuse’s critique of social science alongside the New Left’s rejection of prescriptive political philosophy. In studying the historical and institutional dimensions of these mid-century debates about values and the social sciences, I contend that we can further clarify the constraints placed upon political thought. Exte…
abstract: This dissertation reconstructs the interactions between German-speaking émigré intellectuals and social scientific debates in the mid-century United States. While classical interpretations often assume émigré thought was founded upon a humanistic rejection of American social scientific method, this dissertation argues that skepticism about the social sciences was far more complicated and wide-ranging from the 1940s to 1970s. Many figures, not just émigrés, began to question the methodological and epistemological premises of the social sciences. Above all, intellectuals wondered how and to what degree one could make normative claims while maintaining an objective conception of social scientific inquiry. These questions were strikingly similar to those asked by prior generations in fin de siècle Germany. In Chapter One, I trace back this intellectual lineage back, examining how Max Weber entered many neo-Kantian concerns about the social sciences into his writings in the 1910s and 1920s. The following chapters then pick up in the 1940s, and move chronologically into the 1970s, showing hidden continuities between these earlier Weberian problems and those in the mid-century. Chapter Two looks at how Alfred Schutz, Eric Voegelin, and Hans Kelsen laced together their philosophies of the social sciences with American democratic theory. Chapter Three follows Theodor Adorno back to the Bundesrepublik, examining how his reception ofWeber coincided with his thinking on values and political ethics. Chapter Four centers around Hannah Arendt, the Committee on Social Thought, and the role of intellectual responsibility during Vietnam. Chapter Five looks at Herbert Marcuse’s critique of social science alongside the New Left’s rejection of prescriptive political philosophy. In studying the historical and institutional dimensions of these mid-century debates about values and the social sciences, I contend that we can further clarify the constraints placed upon political thought. Exte…
author: Howard, Mary
language: eng
keywords: Critical Theory, Intellectual History, normativity, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, values
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2022-04-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:21Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.88257