kelley wrote:
> all
> political theories must account for the relationship between self and society.
I don't know. The intended meaning may be correct (may even be tautological, in that is what we *mean* when we say political theory, hence this merely affirms that the relationship between self and society is the relationship between self and society). But as stated I think it is incoherent, since one can speak of a "relationship" only if one can speak of two separate things that are in relation.. But there is no way to separate the "self" from the social relations in which it exists (and apart from which it has no existence). As soon as one posits "selves" as having some kind of reality autonomously of or separately from social relations one is eventually committed to Thatcher's "Society does not exist." But if we can act (be human) only through social relations, then one can began to see why "personal autonomy is found, even assigned, to the Right," for modern conservatives characteristically hold to some version of the "individual" (Marx's "abstract -- isolated -- individual) as existing prior to and independently of social relations. And "leftists" who adhere (knowingly or unknowingly) to this assumption can see social relations (society, institutions) only as an arbitrary order imposed from without. To be have personal autonomy in the libertarian sense is to be a god or an animal, not a human.
B. Ollman, I guess, would call the relationship (of society and the self) an internal one -- but I have not read his books carefully enough to be sure.
Carrol