Spectacles and Predicaments Essays in Social Theory

This collection of essays is concerned with philosophy, politics and society. The first group examines what philosophers such as Hegel, Wittgenstein and Chomsky have said or implied about the nature of society in general. A second group examines the cognitive predicament, questions concerning the nature of the possibility of knowledge, as handled by a thinker such as Descartes, or the Pragmatist tradition. The third group handles the political predicament and deals specifically with problems such as nationalism, the nature of the liberalisation process, the future of the welfare and consumer state and the option facing underdeveloped societies. The essays deal not only with classical theories concerning these problems but also with various recent discussions. The volume will interest many individual philosophers and social theorists and those with a more general interest in our culture and political discussions.

Editorial preface I. C. Jarvie and J. Agassi; Part I. Understanding Humanity: 1. The absolute in braces; 2. Ethnomethodology: the re-enchantment industry or the Californian way of subjectivity; 3. A Wittgensteinian philosophy of (or against) the Social sciences; 4. Period piece; 5. Chomsky; 6. Notes towards a theory of ideology; Part II. The Cognitive Predicament: 7. Options of belief; 8. The pure enquirer; 9. An ethic of cognition; 10. Beyond truth and falsehood, or no method in my madness; 11. The last pragmatist, or the behaviourist Platonist; 12. Pragmatism and the important of being earnest; Part III. The Political Predicament: 13. Nationalism, or the new confessions of a justified Edinburgh sinner; 14. A social contract in search of an idiom: the demise of the Danegeld state; 15. The withering away of the dentistry state; 16. From the Revolution to liberalisation; 17. Plaidoyer pur une libéralisation manquée; 18. Gone and gone forever; 19. The Kathmandu option; Sources; Bibliography of Gellner, 1972–78; Indexes.

This collection of essays is concerned with philosophy, politics and society. The essays deal not only with classical theories concerning the problems of the implied nature of society in general, the cognitive predicament and nationalism, the nature of the liberalisation process and the future of the welfare and consumer state, but also with various recent discussions.