“The development of the idea of a scientific sociology was inseparable from the transformation of transcendental logic into Geltungslogik, the paradigm of validity and values.
Prima facie the idea of sociological account of validity appears contradictory. For a sociological interpretation of experience, like a psychological one, might be expected to address itself to the quaestio quid facti, not the quaestio quid juris, to the history and genesis of experience, not to its justification or validity.
On the contrary, the sociology of Durkheim and of Weber indorsed the neo-Kantian critique of Psychologism, the derivation of validity from processes of consciousness. Like the neo-Kantians, Durkheim and Weber treated the question of validity as pertaining to a distinct realm of moral facts (Durkheim) or values (Weber) which is contrasted with the realm of individual sensations or perceptions (Durkheim) or from the psychology of the individual (Weber).
Durkheim granted the question of validity priority over the question of values, and made validity into the sociological foundation of values (moral facts). Weber granted the question of values priority over the question of validity and made values into the sociological foundation of validity (legitimacy). The meaning of the paradigms of validity and values was decisively changed. It was the ambition of sociology to substitute itself for traditional theoretical and practical philosophy, as well as to secure a sociological object-domain sui generis.
The identification of a realm of values (Sollen) or moral facts, and the development of a scientific method for their investigation, a Cohen-like logic in the case of Durkheim’s Rules, a Rickertian logic of the cultural sciences in the case of Weber, were classical neo-Kantian moves in the original project to found a scientific sociology.
But Durkheim and Weber turn a Kantian argument against neo-Kantianism. For when it is argued that it is society or culture which confers objective validity on social facts or values, then the argument acquires a metacritical or ‘quasi-transcendental’ structure. The social or cultural a priori is the precondition of the possibility of actual social facts or values (transcendental). The identified, actual, valid facts or values can be treated as the objects of a general logic (naturalistic). The status of the precondition becomes ambiguous: it is an a priori, that is, not empirical, for it is the basis of the possibility of experience. But a ‘sociological’ a priori is, ex hypothesi, external of the mind, and hence appears to acquire the status of a natural object or cause. The status of the relation between the sociological precondition and the conditioned becomes correspondingly ambiguous in all sociological transcendental arguments.” (pp.13-14)
The above quotation begins to elucidate the argument that Rose outlines at the beginning of the book where she says that:
“The transcendental structure of Durkheim’s and Weber’s thought has been persistently overlooked, and this has resulted in fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of their sociologies. The common criticisms that Durkheim’s most ambitious explanations are tautological, and that Weber’s hypothesis of a rational ethic to explain capitalism is circular, miss the point that a transcendental account necessarily presupposes the actuality or existence of its object and seeks to discover the conditions of its possibility. The neo-Kantian paradigm is the source of both the strengths and weaknesses of Durkheim’s and of Weber’s sociology.
Many of the subsequent radical challenges to the sociology of Durkheim and the Weber were motivated by the desire to break out of the constrictions of the neo-Kantian paradigm. Phenomenology and the Marxism of the Frankfurt School, for example, must be assessed in this light. Nevertheless, I shall argue, they remain essentially within that paradigm. More recent discussions of the significance of Marx for social theory have also been dominated by neo-Kantian assumptions.
The very idea of a scientific sociology, whether non-Marxist or Marxist, is only possible as a form of neo-Kantianism. This neo-Kantianism bars access to the philosophy of Hegel, and, consequently, inhibits discussion of Marxism from the standpoint of its philosophical foundations. Yet, as I shall show, Hegel’s thought anticipates and criticizes the whole neo-Kantian endeavour, its methodologism and its moralism, and consists of a wholly different mode of social analysis.” (pp.1-2)
Tahir
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