Pragmatism’s much reviled ‘theory of truth’ received a sympathetic and yet critical and rigorous treatment in Émile Durkheim‘s little-known–to philosophers–Pragmatism and Sociology (John P. Allcock, ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1955.) As part of this treatment, Durkheim notes that: If thought had as its object simply to ‘reproduce’ reality, it would be the slaveContinue reading “Durkheim On The Pragmatist Conception Of Truth”
Tag Archives: Émile Durkheim
Durkheim On Social Facts As Things: Methodology As Metaphysics
In The Rules of Sociological Method (The Free Press, 1982, pp. 35-36) Émile Durkheim writes: The proposition which states that social facts must be treated as things…stirred up the most opposition. It was deemed paradoxical and scandalous for us to assimilate to the realities of the external world those of the social world. This was singularly toContinue reading “Durkheim On Social Facts As Things: Methodology As Metaphysics”