rc-am wrote:
> [SNIP] goran therborn in _science, class and society_ puts it like this:
>
> "in the development of the social concerns of sociology the 'red'
> revolution was a very real historical spectre.[SNIP]
> ...one can hear the echoes of it [the Paris Commune of 1871] in Durkheim's
> _Division of Labour in Society_, where the author refers to 'class wars',
> civil wars which occur 'due to the manner in which labour is distributed'.
> We can probably catch a glimpse of what Durkheim thought were its lessons
> in his account of the tasks of a teacher of philosophy... 'To the teacher
> of philosophy also belongs the task of awakening in the minds that are
> entrusted to his care the concept of the law; of making them understand
> that mental and social phenomena are like other phenomena, subject to laws
> that the human will cannot upset simply by willing, and therefore that
> revolutions, taking the word literally, are as impossible as miracles'.[SNIP]
This reference to sociology and its history is *very* relevant to the history of the humanities. I think I mentioned Matthew Arnold in an earlier post in this thread, but it is useful to know that Arnold expected what is now called the humanities and he called "Culture" to perform exactly the task that Durkheim ascribed to philosophy. Arnold was provoked to write *Culture and Anarchy* but workers's demonstrations (which horrified him) in Hyde Park. He thought they ought to be crushed. And whatever one thinks of postmodernism or critical theory or any other contemporary practice in the humanities, it seems to me that *Culture and Anarchy* is still the Bible of the field. To be speculative, I suspect that from the perspective of a century or so it will be more or less impossible to tell the difference between *Culture and Anarchy* and *Spectres of Marx* or *Bodies that Matter*. Therborn's book sounds important.
Carrol