Mead and modernity : science, selfhood, and democratic politics / Filipe Carreira da Silva.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carreira da Silva, Filipe.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mead, George Herbert, 1863-1931--Criticism and interpretation.

Mead, George Herbert.

Mead, George Herbert, 1863-1931.

Social psychology.

Social sciences--Philosophy.

Social sciences.

Self (Philosophy).

Political sociology.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

viii, 243 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, [2008]

Summary:

Filipe Carreira da Silva addresses the basic questions "How should we read Mead?" and "Why should we read Mead today?" by showing that the history of ideas and theory-building are closely related endeavors. Following a contextualist approach in exploring the meaning of Mead's writings, Carreira da Silva reads the entire corpus of Mead's writings in light of the context in which they were originally produced, from concrete events like the American involvement in World War I to more general debates like that of the nature of modernity. Mead and Modernity attests to the relevance of Mead's ideas by assessing the relative merits of his responses to three fundamental modern problematics: science, selfhood, and democratic politics. The outcome is an innovative intellectual portrait of Mead as a seminal thinker whose contributions extend beyond his well-known social theory of the self and include important insights into the philosophy of science and radical democratic theory.

Contents:

Introduction

Mead and the modern problematic of selfhood

Imagining the intellectual edifice

The making of a classic

Science as a problem-solving activity

From the logic of the sciences to the theory of the act

A scientific social psychology

A science of politics and morals

Mead on the social origins of self

Educating the self

Mead on social psychology : a story rewritten

Mead, Habermas, and social individuation

The theory and practice of social reconstruction

Mead and the war

Communicative ethics and deliberative democracy

Conclusions: Provisional answers to inescapable questions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-223) and index.

ISBN:

9780739115114

0739115111

OCLC:

181516782