Mueller - Outline of Analytic Sociology

7/30/2019 Mueller - Outline of Analytic Sociology

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ANALYTICAL SOCIOLOGY: AN OUTLINE

Gert H. Mueller

CONTENTS

PREFACE..................................................................................................................... 1

Eidetic Reduction and Foundational Hierarchies ......................................................... 1Social Inequality and Social Structure.......................................................................... 4

Eidetic and transcendental Reduction........................................................................... 8

ApodicticIntension versus ContingentExtension ...................................................... 10The Architectonics of Social Stratification................................................................. 12

The Moral Order: Personal Ethos and Social Consciousness..................................... 13

Culture Systems and their Architectonics................................................................... 15

AnalyticalIntension and ContingentExtension.......................................................... 17Husserls Path-breaking Contributions ....................................................................... 18

An Unexpected Concordance: Husserl, Parsons and Giddens.................................... 18

Parsons Action Systems as Regional Ontologies ...................................................... 20The Two Moieties of Action Systems ........................................................................ 22

The Attitudinal Axis ................................................................................................... 24

The World as Will and Idea........................................................................................ 26A Short Foray into Macrosociology ........................................................................... 30

The Axes of Analytical Theory................................................................................... 31

The Logical Foundations of Analytical Theory.......................................................... 35

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PREFACE

At age eighty it is time to bring my work to a conclusion and to relent from my unending

quest to raise sociology to the status of a rigorous science an endeavor that is usually

equated with positivism, but which also inspired Husserls Ideas of a general phenome-

nology. In contrast to positivism the latter is no longer predicated on determinate laws

and axioms, but on eidetic and transcendental reduction, i.e., on structure and intentional

action.

Eidetic Reduction and Foundational Hierarchies

Still, for all my admiration for Husserl I have never considered myself a phenomenolo-

gist. What attracted me to Husserl were not his forays into phenomenology, which link

him to Dilthey, but his strict distinction between Wesen (essence) and facts (appear-

ance), which reveals Husserl as the mathematician and logician who was affiliated with

Weierstrass in Berlin, with Cantor in Halle, and with Hilbert in Gttingen and who was

strictly opposed to psychologism. There should therefore be no doubt that as a thinker

Husserl was closer to Frege than to Dilthey, or for that matter, to William James or Berg-

son although he spoke highly of them (Dilthey?). At the same time Husserl does not seem

to have been aware that the very notion of eidetic reduction makes him the unacknow-

ledged founder of a new type of structuralism that is based on set theory.

It has thus become clear to me that beginning with my dissertation on The Structure

of Pure Dialectics, structuralism has been the key to my own thinking, even though I was

unaware at the time that the key to structure lies in Husserls notion of eidetic reduction

and that the latter is identical with objectivity and with the rejection of realism. Like Lu-

ther and Kant I consider myself Occams disciple. By the same token my advocacy of

ontology following Husserls Ideas is strictly constructivist, which excludes any con-

cession to suprapersonal forces and hidden teleology. There can be no doubt that Kants

syntheses a priori and Leibniz vrits de raison are ideal constructs of our own making

which defy any idea of preestablished harmony.


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It is under this proviso that ontology represents structuralism avant la lettre. No less

important, ontology contains an additional principle that goes beyond structuralism, viz.

the notion of hierarchy, which orders various levels (Schichten) of reality in an ascending

order of complexity one of the constituent principles of Comtes positivism and of

modern systems theory or in terms of St.-Simon and Marx, of basis and superstructure.

A short glance at Aristotles work De Anima will be instructive. Aristotle distin-

guishes four layers of reality, viz. Matter, Flora, Fauna, and human Reason, which are

marked by specific qualities, viz. inertia, life (metabolism and propagation), direction

(movement and procreation) and reason (language and symbols). A widely unappreci-

ated stroke of genius, Aristotles identification of distinctive qualities anticipates set the-

ory and its duality of timeless intension and empirical extension. At the same time Aris-

totle noted a rising order of complexity: Inertia involves none of the other parameters;

life presupposes matter; direction presupposes life and matter; reason implies direction,

life, and matter, as the following Table brings out:

Table 1Aristotles Foundational Hierarchies

Reason

Direction direction

Life life lifeInertia inertia inertia inertia

___________________________________________

Scope: MATTER > FLORA > FAUNA > MANKINDComplexity: MATTER < FLORA < FAUNA < MANKIND

In this way a hierarchy of increasing complexity is established which, reading in the

horizontal, identifies distinctive qualities, while reading in the vertical provides the ana-

lytical formula for various SECTIONS (in upper case) of concrete reality. The gain ana-

lytical theory derives from ontology is thus invaluable. It comes therefore as no surprise

that one of its earliest applications had an enormous impact on 18th

century thought:

Montesquieus Spirit of the Laws is predicated on the dual hierarchy of Laws whose

spirit is conditioned by the form of government, just as the latter is in turn conditioned by


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size and topography (anticipating Durkheims notion of social morphology and Marxs

material basis), as the following Table brings out:

Table 2From Montesquieu to Durkheim

Spirit of Laws

Form of Government form of government

Natural Setting natural setting natural setting______________________________________________________

MORPHOLOGY > SOCIAL ORDER > MORAL ORDER

To be sure, neither Montesquieu nor Durkheim had a clear idea of the difference be-

tween abstract parameters (reading in the horizontal) and composite, real DOMAINS

(reading in the vertical). They did however have a clear sense of the hierarchy of social

Morphology, Social Order, and Moral Order, viz. that the higher presupposes the

lower as its basis.

Much more will have to be said about the theories of Montesquieu, Marx, and Durk-

heim. However, this much is clear: the three theories are founded on an ontological hier-

archy, whether the latter is interpreted in terms of increased domination over nature, of

change from indeterminate incoherent homogeneity to determinate coherent heterogene-

ity, of increasing complexity, or of material basis and ideological superstructure. How-

ever variant the terminology, structural reduction and its corollary, foundational hierar-

chies, are the instruments which make analytical theory possible. By the same token, any

attempt at theory construction that fails to employ these instruments will not succeed.

As Marx once remarked, if there were no difference between essence and fact (ap-

pearance), there would be no need for science. By the same token, structure must not be

confounded with organizations and institutions. The latter are concrete and include ac-

tion; by contrast, structure is abstract. While organizations and institutions are reducible

to structure, they are not identical with it. In the last analysis, analytics is identical with

structural reduction, as demonstrated by Logic and Mathematics, just as Linguistics re-

duces concrete, multidimensional SPEECH to unidimensional Acoustics, Semantics and

Grammar.


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On the other hand analytics is not limited to mathematics and the natural sciences.

Rather, it applies to the social order as well as to the moral order (communicative ac-

tion) and to culture and thus guarantees the unity of the sciences. It is therefore not true,

as Dilthey (1883) contended, that the Geisteswissenschaften are not reducible to struc-

ture, or as Rickert contended, that the cultural sciences are inherently idiographic and

hence resist analytics a fundamental error, which haunts Max Webers Wissenschaftsle-

hre and its theory of ideal types because it fails to realize that types, rather than represent-

ing unique wholes, represent sets, which are intrinsically analytic. What Weber fails to

realize is that there are no such things as historical ideal types. To be sure, the monarchies

of Louis XIV or of Frederick II did come close to absolute Monarchy (despotism) as a

homogeneous generic ideal type. Still, in contrast to ideal types they represent historically

unique, self-regulating, heterogeneous Wholes moved by the interaction of innumerable

individuals. It is from concrete human interaction that ideal types are constructed as

abstractions in order to attain analytical homogeneity.

Social Inequality and Social Structure

To make our case let us return to Rousseaus famed essay On the Reasons and Causes

of Social Inequality. According to Rousseau social inequality starts with the division of

labor, i.e., the differentiation of skills, which led to the formation of property and the rise

of political power. While Rousseau castigated private property as the source of social

inequality and of all injustice, his views contrast sharply with those of John Locke, whose

Second Treatise of Government made property the foundation of Civil and Political Soci-

ety, just as for Hegel (1821) Law and Moral Consciousness emerge with the development

of private property.

Their disagreement notwithstanding both theories end up with an ascending order of

skills (production), property (distribution) and political power (organization), with the

Division of Labor as the necessary condition for Civil Society, and the latter, as the nec-

essary condition for political Power a trichotomy that is reflected in Adam Smiths

Wealth of Nations as well as in Hegels ascending order of the Family Household (the

Oikos), Civil Society, and the State, with Herbert Spencers trichotomy of sustaining,

distributive and regulative Systems and Sorokins trichotomy of occupational, economic

and political bonds as their most prominent successors.


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Like Montesquieus path-breaking discovery, that of Rousseau has founded social

theory. However, with the exception of Comtes opuscule fondamental and Marxs Ger-

man Ideology which both lean on St.-Simon none of the successors has drawn the

conclusions which follow from the hierarchical order of its constituents. While it is clear

that the political order presupposes Civil Society, which in turn presupposes the House-

hold, it is no less important to realize that the three Sectors of Reality are determined by

the dominance of one dimension over the two others. The Household is thus determined

by skills; Civil Society, by private property, and the State, by rank, as the following Table

brings out:

Table 3

Social Inequality: individual indicators and generic parameters

rank organization

property property distribution of wealthskills skills skills occupation

____________________________________________

HOUSEHOLDS CIVIL SOCIETY THE STATE

The preceding table impresses by its consistency and insight into the structure of so-

cial action, depending on which parameter, viz. organization, distribution, or occupation

predominates. The table thus reveals an ascending order of complexity that lends itself to

an evolutionary interpretation, as Rousseau and Herbert Spencer have argued. At the

same time we may wonder whether primitive Households and their context, Tribal Socie-

ties, are devoid of unequal distribution and rank, or whether Civil Society is devoid of

political power. Everything suggests that, however primitive, Society invariably com-

bines skills, property and rank such that occupation (occ), distribution of wealth (dis) and

organization (org) are the parameters which form a Cartesian product none of whose fac-

tors can decline to zero, i.e.,

Social Structure = occ x dis x org.


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Table 4

Generic parameters, dominant Core Ranges, and real DOMAINS

rank: organization organization Organization = power structureproperty: distribution Distribution distribution = economic structure

skills: Occupation occupation occupation = division of labor_____________________________________________________________

HOUSEHOLDS v CIVIL SOCIETY v THE STATE = DOMAINS OF REALITY

In other words, HOUSEHOLDS, CIVIL SOCIETY and STATES denote DOMAINS of Reality,

each of which combines the same three parameters of stratification, but with a different

distribution of dominance (underlined) such that the parameter that dominates constitutes

the Core Range of the DOMAIN it determines. By the same token, each DOMAIN is coter-

minous with its Core Range even though the latter is abstract while the concomitant DO-

MAIN is concrete.

In this way HOUSEHOLDS are determined by their occupational structure, with which

they are coterminous, while property and rank, i.e., distribution of wealth and organiza-

tion, play the role of *supplements, which depend on the occupational structure from

which they emerge, without being dominated by it.

By contrast, CIVIL SOCIETY is determined by, and coterminous with, the distribution of

wealth, which dominates the occupational structure and reduces it to its subsidiary that

functions as an allocative resource in the sense of Giddens, (1984). By contrast, the

power structure depends on the property structure from which it emerges without being

dominated by it.

Finally, THE STATE is determined by, and coterminous with the power structure,

which converts property and labor (skills) into subsidiaries, which function as authorita-

tive resources in the sense of Giddens.

The preceding discussion has laid bare the calculus that rules SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

and has thus given us a first idea of analytical theory. Depending on whether we deal

with individual indicators, generic parameters or composite, real DOMAINS we end up

with three complementary formulas, viz.

Table 5


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Indicators, Parameters and DOMAINS

singular indicators = skills property rank;generic parameters = occupation & distribution & organization

real DOMAINS = HOUSEHOLDS v CIVIL SOCIETY v THE STATE.

The three formulas work in different ways:

1) Indicators identify distinctive qualities that mark individual status.

2) By contrast, structural parameters are ideal constructs, whose Cartesian product

constitutes abstract Systems which reveal the structure of reality.

3) The alternate DOMAINS of reality constitute self-sufficient, self-regulating, autopoi-

etic WHOLES,which are coterminous with, and hence defined by their structure. The point

is that in contrast to Systems, DOMAINS are run by individuals whose action follows quite

a different rationale: it is inherently unique and contingent. It is therefore not enough to

emphasize the difference between (ideal) Systems and (real) Domains. Rather, Systems

must be juxtaposed with something equally transcendental in Kants sense, viz. the

transcendental Ego as the core of human action, as illustrated by Husserls duality of

eidetic and phenomenological reduction, both of which are coterminous with real Do-

mains albeit in different ways:Eidetic reduction is tantamount to structural reduction, and

phenomenological reduction, to existential reduction, the first, revealing objective struc-ture, the second revealing the internal dynamics of real, concrete DOMAINS, With which

they are coterminous, each in its own ways, but not identical. We thus end up with the

following concordance:

Table 6

real DOMAINS,objective Structure and subjective Choices

SOCIAL ORDER MORAL ORDER SYMBOLIC ORDERSOCIAL EXISTENCE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS CULTURE SYSTEMS

domination legitimation objectification

Praxis Ethics Logic

Zweckrationalitt Wertrationalitt Formrationalitt


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Eidetic and transcendental Reduction

The distinction between homogeneous, but abstract Sets and Systems, on the one hand,

and concrete, but heterogeneous DOMAINS,on the other hand, is crucial for understanding

analytical theory: Without eidetic reduction, i.e., set theory, there can be no insight into

the structure of reality. Likewise, without phenomenological (transcendental) reduction,

there can be no insight into the dynamics of action. Husserls duality ofeidetic andphe-

nomenological (transcendental) reduction thus provides the key to structure and dynam-

ics as the two keys to analytical theory.

At the same time Husserls duality concurs remarkably with Leibniz duality of ra-

tional and factual truth, the first based on the principle of non-contradiction, the second,

on the principle of sufficient reason; the first producing precise but abstract ideal con-

structs; the second reducing seemingly self-regulating Systems to unbridled, spontaneous

activity, which is as much in constant flux as it is pegged to the present, i.e., it either an-

ticipates the future (intentionality) or reminisces the past (sedimentation) regardless of

coherence. With astounding perspicacity the Leibnizian dualism anticipates Husserls

dual eidetic andphenomenological reduction, the first, discrete, generic and objective; the

second, continuous, dynamic, and subjective; the first pegged to coherence theory, the

second pegged to correspondence theory.

The fact that discrete ideal constructs and dynamic Egos are both coterminous with,

and define, concrete, real DOMAINS may at first sight seem confusing, but it is easily illus-

trated by a glance at real, ongoing games. The latter are as much defined by objective

rules that underlie them as their outcome is determined by the action of individual players

whose interaction is not predictable. While the rules of the game remain the same, the

performance of the players varies from game to game. Attending a football game would

not be worthwhile if its results could be deduced from its rules. While reality is deter-

mined by action, the rules of the game reveal the rationale it follows.

It comes therefore as no surprise that Lebensphilosophie (Bergson) and Geisteswis-

senschaften (Dilthey), Historicism (Ranke and Croce) and Pragmatism (William James)

have variously argued that human action and history are not reducible to laws, as is the

case with the natural sciences. In terms of W. Windelband (1884) the latter are nomo-


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thetic; by contrast, history and the cultural sciences are idiographic a view to which

Max Weber subscribed in opposition to positivism, Marxism, structuralism and systems

theory.

The solution of the dispute is easily at hand, as our glance at dynamic, dia-

chronic, ongoing games and static, synchronic rules of the game has shown. How-

ever, the distinction between abstract Structure and concrete Domains does not go far

enough. While it rightly distinguishes between ideal constructs and concrete wholes, it

fails to see that action, i.e., the pure, transcendental Ego follows a rationale of its own.

While concrete wholes represent multibonded Cartesian products, transcendental re-

duction reduces reality to the spontaneous action which is marked by uniqueness and

freedom of choice, i.e., indeterminacy. The pure Ego is therefore toto coelo different

from structure, as emphasized by Bergsons distinction between abstract, impersonal

temps and singular, personal dure.

It is at this juncture that Husserls contribution to philosophy and to social theory

stands out. Phenomenological reduction reduces reality to Kants and Fichtes transcen-

dental Ego -- William James pure Ego and Meads Self. Every individual, and collec-

tively, every Family, Society, Nation, or Culture, thus represents aMonadthat is identical

only with itself and is irreducible to general laws. In terms of historicism, every historical

entity is unique, including the epochs of history.

Rather than on systematicity which is predicated on set theory -- action is predi-

cated on sedimentation. While people (Families, Nations, Cultures, etc.) may share the

same present, each has its own, distinctive past, which constitutes its biography regard-

less of contradictions.

New light thus falls on Hegels philosophy. While his obsession with the absolute

Idea is to be dismissed as a metaphysical excess, his Phenomenology of Mind and its

omnipresent Umschlag ins Gegenteil and Negation of the Negation represents phenome-

nological reduction at work. Rather than interpreting his Triads as the logical straightjacket that determines human action, the constant switch from thesis to antithesis and

back to a reinterpreted thesis will have to be seen in the light of William James pragma-

tism, viz. as free choices between alternatives of every actors own making, in the pursuit

of which the Ego is pushing forward regardless, as Bachelard has argued, of logical rup-

tures.


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Every Self is thus the author of his or her own past regardless of contradictions be-

cause his or her choices are predicated on actionness rather than systemness. What

Hegel and his fellow Marxists wrongly attributed to logic thus vindicates him (Hegel?) as

an early proponent of pragmatism, surpassed only by William James radical empiri-

cism, which in a strange mixture of Kantian transcendentalism, MachianDenkkonomie

and NietzscheanAmor Fati is founded in the freedom of the Ego to choose between al-

ternatives of his or her own making.

ApodicticIntension versus ContingentExtension

By the same token, parameters and mapping functions turn out to be identical with the

intension of sets, and the correspondent Mappings, with theirextension. Pace Quine, who

offhand dismisses intension as superfluous in view of the fact that intension without ex-

tension seems tantamount to Occams razor, the fact remains that there can be no exten-

sion without intension, i.e.,

INT EXT. = ~ INT~ EXT. = ~(~ INT & EXT) = INT v ~ EXT.

It thus turns out that intension is not only indispensable foreidetic reduction that is,

for analytical thought -- it is also the hidden mechanism without which ordinary knowl-

edge by acquaintance could never rise to knowledge by description, i.e., to strict sci-

ence. As Marx pointedly put it, if essence were identical with appearance, there would be

no need for science. (already stated p.4 above?)

Set theory thus provides an unprecedented degree of precision and flexibility. For ex-

ample, we find a new, more precise rationale for Sorokins distinction of unibonded

and multibonded groups: There are either unibonded, abstract parameters and sets,

on the one hand, or multibonded real groups,on the other hand. The first represent ho-

mogeneous, but abstract ideal constructs; the second represent clusters of real, acting

individuals each of whom pursues his or her own material interests, personal values, or

objective calculi, all of which are of the individuals own making and hence irretrievablycontingent.

By the same token DOMAINS are inherently contingent and not reducible to unity ex-

cept by (eidetic) reduction to their structure. It is therefore true that all our knowledge

starts with experience; but it is also true that there is no progress from cumulative experi-

ence to systematic theory without reduction to sets. It is only with the latter that multifac-


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eted, polythetic Reality can be reduced to monothetic concepts, which, like the naviga-

tional lines of longitudes and latitudes, provide objective knowledge by description.

Far from being deterministic the Cartesian product of parameters allows for a remark-

able flexibility. This holds for "status inconsistency of individuals who excel on one

indicator, i.e., skills, wealth or rank, but lag behind on the two other indicators, as it

holds for generic parameters, i.e., occupation, distribution and organization, whose rela-

tionship determines the internal balance of society. We thus know of artists, scholars and

religionists who are poor and/or powerless, of the rich who are uneducated and/or pow-

erless, and of political or military upstarts who are uneducated and/or penniless.

In the same fashion we may construct various types of society based on the uneven

distribution of skills, wealth or power such as

1.25 x 1.0 x 1.0 = 1.25 for increased division of labor in Primal Societies,1.25 x 1.25 x 1.0 = 1.56 for increased investment in Civil Societies,

1.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 = 1.96 for improved organization in Political Societies,

assuming that the total strength of society increases with increasing division of labor,

investment and organization. To be sure the assumed percentages are mere assumptions

meant to illustrate the rationale that rules the ever-fluctuating strength of Society, which

may decline as well as grow.

In another thought experiment we may keep the total strength of society constant. Let

us thus assume that 1.0 x 1.0 x 1.0 = 1 reflects the optimal composition of simple, Pri-

mal Societies. Then the various combinations of 1.25 x 1.0 x 0.8 will denote quite differ-

ent types of society dependent on which parameter dominates at the expense of the oth-

ers. Thus

1.25 x 1.0 x 0.8 = 1 indicates unevenly expanding productivity;

1.o x 1.25 x 0.8 = 1 indicates unsustainable economic power; and0.8 x 1.0 x 1.25 = 1 indicates unsustainable political power.

None of the three combinations will last unless a sustainable balance is achieved either by

upgrading the parameters that lag behind, or by downgrading the dominant parameter.

From a mere formal point of view the three formulas may not look much different. It is

only when we realize that there exists a hierarchical relationship between the three pa-

rameters that things look differently: In the long run, 0.8% productivity will not sustain

1.0% wealth, and even less, 1.25% power.

The given examples illustrate the flexibility and power of analytics. Rather than gath-

ering data that are inherently contingent, analytics proceeds by constructing models ac-


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cording to rules that transcend contingency. Most important, the fact that social structure

is invariably three-dimensional does not rule out infinite variation according to strict

rules.

The Architectonics of Social Stratification

The point is that there exists an intricate relationship between monothetic parameters,

polythetic DOMAINS of Reality, and Mappings, which combine the distinctive qualities of

the parameters with the contingent character of Reality from which they are abstracted. In

other words, Mappings are hybrids, or in Kantian terms, Syntheses, which combine the

distinctive quality of the mapping function with the contingent occurrence in a given DO-

MAIN of Reality from which they are abstracted. Accordingly, the parameters of social

stratification produce different Mappings depending on whether they are bound up in a

HAUSHOLD, CIVIL SOCIETY,orTHE STATE, as the following table brings out:

Table 7

The Architectonics of Social Stratification

org: *leadership *social contract sovereign power power structuredis: *surplus product capital budget economic structure

occ: free labor wage labor executive staff occup. structure

______________________________________________HOUSEHOLDS v CIVIL SOCIETIES v STATES

Accordingly we distinguish three types of occupation, property, and organization.

Occupational status thus falls into three Sections (reading in the horizontal), viz. self-

employed labor; wage labor, which is subsidiary to property; and executive (white collar)

labor, which is subsidiary to the institution it serves (e.g., government, military, law

courts, church, school, corporation, etc.).

By the same token economic status falls into accumulated surplus (hoarding), invest-

ment of capital, and subsidiarity under a budget (taxation and salaries, currency and

treasury). Finally power falls into informal leadership, which emerges and vanishes spon-

taneously, into contractual power, which is based on consensus, and sovereign power,

which defines the State. In sum, simple Households, Civil Society, and the State combine


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the same three parameters, but with varying distribution of dominance, *dependence, and

subsidiarity:

Simple Households = occ v *dis v *orgCivil Society = occ & dis v *org

State Power = occ & dis & org.

We have thus brought our analysis to a conclusion. In spite of the infinite variety of

its ever-changing forms, social Structure falls into three alternate Sections, which are

coterminous with the Core Range (underlined), which determines them:

Primitive Households are coterminous with their Occupational Structure;

Civil Societies are coterminous with their Property or Class Structure;

States are coterminous with their Power Structure.

The Moral Order: Personal Ethos and Social Consciousness

What holds for the Social Order also holds for the Moral Order and for Culture Systems.

The first is determined by personal values; the second, by objective calculi. In order to

shorten our analysis let us assume that both Systems are homologous with the social Or-

der, i.e., that they combine three complementary parameters (reading in the horizontal)

with three alternate Sections (reading in the vertical), which are coterminous with their

Core Ranges.

Turning first to what Durkheim called the Moral Order, and what Hegel called the

Mind or Social Consciousness, we miss the broad consensus that facilitated the analysis

of the Social Order. One of the earliest analyses, Francis Bacons idols of the cave, the

tribe, the market and the theater, came close to conceive of social Consciousness as a

distortion of reality, with the idols of the cave and the tribe standing for Solidarity, and

the idols of the market and the theater standing for Ideology, while Ethics was considered

an independent philosophical discipline in spite of its fundamental importance for soci-

ety. In fact, as in Platos Republic, Ethics was considered equivalent with social Con-

sciousness. Let us therefore add morality as the third parameter of the personal Ethos.

This

assumption is corroborated by three corresponding pairs of polar opposites, viz. friends

versus foes, good vs. bad, and right vs. wrong, which lie at the bottom of Solidarity,

Ideology, and Morality as the respective parameters, as the following Table brings out:

Table 8


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Polar Opposites, Parameters and Core Ranges of the Personal Ethos

Right vs. wrong: *morality *morality morality Sense of Justice

Good vs. bad: *ideology ideology ideology Definition of Situation

Friend vs. foe: solidarity solidarity solidarity Ingroup-Feeling_______________________________

? ? ?

In an ascending order of compactness the Mind is thus the Cartesian product of soli-

darity, ideology and morality, with Ingroup-Feeling, theDefinition of the Situation, and

the categorical Imperative as the respective Core Ranges, which in turn determine Com-

mon Consciousness, Critical Consciousness, and Moral Consciousness as alternative

Subsystems of the Mind as a self-regulating Whole.

Table 9

The Architectonics of the Mind

*Customary Justice *Conventional Justice Categorical Imperative*Volont gnrale Definition of the Situation Righteousness

Ingroup-Feeling status Consciousness Elitism of the Elect

____________________________________________________________________COMMON CONSCIOUSNESS v CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS v MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Durkheim: Marx: Kant:

mechanic solidarity class consciousness categorical imperative

The Mind, or Social Consciousness, thus constitutes a tightly knit system of three dis-

tinctive parameters (reading in the horizontal), which intersect with three composite real

DOMAINS (reading in the vertical), which are determined by, and coterminous with, their

distinctive Core Range. Common Consciousness is thus determined by Ingroup-Feeling,

Critical Consciousness, by the Definition of the Situation, and Moral Consciousness, by

the Categorical Imperative.

We thus end up with a new interpretation of the MIND as the carrier ofSOCIAL CON-

SCIOUSNESS. The latter falls into three DOMAINS, orSUBSYSTEMS, that share the same pa-

rameters but differ by their Core Range, or in terms of Althusser, by their structure

dominance. At the same time our analysis sheds an interesting light on Durkheims no-

tion ofmechanic solidarity and ofcollective representations as well as on Marx notion


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ofIdeologie and on Kants categorical imperative, which each in its own ways have

served as synonyms of the Mind.

Culture Systems and their Architectonics

Moreover, a sharp distinction must be made between SOCIALCONSCIOUSNESS asan ag-gregate of autonomous individual Minds, on the one hand, and objective, transpersonal

CULTURE SYSTEMS,on the other hand. The first is based on value judgments that consti-

tute the personal Ethos; the second are based on impersonal calculi that transcend the

here and now. At the same time the Moral Order and Culture Systems are homologous

with the Social Order, i.e., they too combine three parameters, one of which alternately

dominates the two others as the core range of the given CULTURE SYSTEM. The Arts, Sci-

ences and Religion thus constitute alternate self-sufficient DOMAINS of Reality, whose

structure is nonetheless determined by their parameters.

Table 10The parameters and core ranges ofCULTURE SYSTEMS

sacred vs. profane: *totalization *totalization totalization Faithtrue vs. false: *analysis analysis analysis Logic

beautiful vs. ugly: proportion proportion proportion Aesthetics

_____________________________________ARTS SCIENCES RELIGION

Each Culture System is thus determined by a dominant parameter, which constitutes

its core range and which is coterminous with it. Art is thus coterminous with proportion;

Science, with analytics; and Religion, with ultimate meaning (in terms of Paul Tillich), or

totalization (in terms of Sartre). In other words, while each Domain combines the same

parameters, it is the dominant parameter that accounts for its distinct character. Thus the

Arts make analytics and ultimate meaning depend on the free play of intuition. By con-

trast, Religion reduces analytics and intuition to subsidiaries of ultimate meaning.

Thirdly, Science reduces intuition to a subsidiary of analytics while allowing Metaphys-

ics to emerge and vanish freely.


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The same parameters thus produce quite different DOMAINS depending on whether

they dominate, emerge as free-floating experiments that are liable to vanish, or whether

they are reduced to subsidiarity, which subjects them to the rule of system rationality.

Table 11The Architectonics of the Arts, Sciences and Religion

Faith: *mythology *metaphysics Revelation

Logic: *style,rhythm,harmony Analytics dogmaAesthetics: Intuition perception ritual

_________________________________________________________________

CULTURE SYSTEMS: ARTS v SCIENCES v RELIGION

Obviously, the different Architectonic of the three CULTURE SYSTEMS is predicated on

the varying core range. Accordingly, as reading in the horizontal shows, Aesthetics,

Logic and Faith (ultimate meaning) play quite different roles as we switch from Arts to

Science and Religion. The transition is most impressive in the case of Faith, which rises

from fantastic Romantic Mythology to increasingly rational Metaphysics to come into its

own in a sudden, fulminating Illumination, or Revelation, that knows of nothing but un-

conditional, implicit faith.

By contrast, the Arts enjoy the unrestrained free play of Intuition, which stretches farbeyond the realm of the senses into that of logic. Style and proportion, rhythm and mel-

ody, combination and abstraction thus rule painting, sculpture and architecture, song,

dance and poetry to culminate in rhetoric and epos, and ultimately, in mythology and

drama, as elaborated in Hegels Aesthetics and as practiced in Romanticism and its cult

of creativity.

A glance at Logic is no less instructive. While Logic comes into its own only in Sci-

ence, it plays already a crucial role in the sensorimotoric preverbal phase of child de-

velopment. As Piaget has argued, logic does not wait for language to lay the foundations

of the Intellect. At the same time Logic becomes ineffective when reduced to a mere

technology.

In any case the reduction of religion to science and the railing against metaphysics is

not corroborated by the preceding analyses. While there is no doubt that all the religious

texts from the Vedas to the Thora and the Gospels are products of the human Intellect and


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would otherwise not even be understandable, their specific truth-value consists in tack-

ling matters of ultimate concern (in terms of Tillich) such as fate and randomness,

overdetermination and nothingness that elude analytics.

The solution to the puzzle lies not in evasion into other-worldliness, but in radical in-

ner-worldliness: As Vico shrewdly pointed out, mankind creates Gods, or more precisely,

images of Gods, in order to explain the unexplainable and to use fear of the supernatural

to set straight what is crooked. Along with Aesthetics and Analytics Faith and Hope thus

constitute the third elementary faculty to make life more livable. Like the Arts and the

Sciences Religion is a luxury that gains momentum as it is practiced, a source of strength

that is measured by its capacity to ward off nothingness. Belief does not save, Faith does.

Like Intuition and Logic, it is a creation ex nihilo of the human Mind.

AnalyticalIntension and ContingentExtension

A comparison of Tables 4 and 7, 8 and 9, and 10 and 11 elucidates the working of ana-

lytical theory. It also provides a new answer to Kants question how science is possible.

To master the abyss of experience, we have, as it were, to construct the lenses that set

everything in focus. Husserls notion ofeidetic reduction provides the answer to Kants

question. At the same time eidetic reductionper se remains as static as Platonic Ideas, or

Forms (eide). The point is that intensions are inherently generic. They are therefore pow-

erless like shadows, to be used as instruments to map reality, i.e., they are useless unless

accompanied by extensions. The latter are intrinsically contingent even where they are

mere fictions such as unicorns, centaurs or witches. By the same token we may map dif-

ferent objects, e.g., cities, such as Paris or London, at different epochs and end up with

totally different Mappings while using the same (occupational, economic, and political)

parameters to reveal their structure just as same? parameters of solidarity, definition of

the situation and sense of justice will map changing social consciousness.

Obviously, Intensions are quite different from Extensions. The first are intrinsically

generic, i.e., transcending time and space, while Extensions are intrinsically contingent,

i.e., embedded in space and time. We therefore distinguish pure, monotheticparameters

from contingent,polythetic empirical Mappings, which are not reducible to one another.

Historicism emphasizes that reality is inherently unique and does not lend itself to

analytics, which suggests that besides eidetic reduction a second kind of reduction will

have to deal with unique, historical reality Husserls transcendental reduction, whose


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affinity to historicism escaped Husserl, but inspired William James Radical empiricism.

Yet even granted that reality is unique as is every single life and every historical event -

- the fact remains that Mappings presuppose distinct parameters on which they are predi-

cated.

Husserls Path-breaking Contributions

The preceding analysis sheds new light on Parsons theory of (analytical) structural func-

tionalism and of (holistic, self-regulating) Action Systems to which we have now to turn

to show the whole extent of analytical sociology. At the same time it is appropriate to

point out that nothing in the preceding analysis indicates that analytics is limited to

mathematics and the natural sciences, as Dilthey and the neo-Kantianism have argued in

opposition to positivism. We thus end up with a conception of the Unity of Science

whose emphasis is no longer on formalism, but on set theory. We thus leave the fascina-

tion with mathematics behind without joining the historicist camp and its aversion to ana-

lytics that permeates the thought of Dilthey as much as that of Rickert and Max Weber.

The philosopher who was instrumental in finding a new solution was Edmund

Husserl. An accomplished mathematician before he turned to philosophy and became the

founder of phenomenology, his thought was originally influenced by Franz Brentano,

whose thought was as much centered on ontology as on intentionality, a combination

which also lies at the bottom of Husserls Ideas and his distinction of transcendental and

eidetic reduction -- a discovery that finally led him back to Kant: eidetic reduction would

answer the question how science, including the social and the cultural sciences, is possi-

ble, while transcendental reduction would open a fresh access to Kants transcendental

Ego.

An Unexpected Concordance: Husserl, Parsons and Giddens

Our admiration for Husserl does not stop here. His Ideas also contain the path-breaking

conception of a new division of ontology that replaces that of Aristotle. What Aristotle

classified as nous and what Nicolai Hartmann addressed as Geist and as ideales Sein,

Husserl (Ideas 139) divided into Praxis, Ethics, and Logic as fundamentally different

intentional acts which produce practical, axiological, and theoretical truth which is in

constant flux and thus replaces traditional ontology with phenomenology.


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Husserls trichotomy seems paralleled by Sorokins (1947) Society, Culture and Per-

sonality were it not for the failure to draw a clear distinction between subjective, personal

values and objective, impersonal systems, which has resulted in an unending confusion.

Adopting Sorokins trichotomy, Parsons (1951, 1960, 1966) assumed that the Personality

System precedes the Social System rather than emerging from it, a grave error which is

contradicted by Husserls phenomenology and by Durkheims (1893) sequence of the

Social Order and the Moral Order

Table 12

A Synopsis of Husserl, Parsons and Giddens

Theoretical truth: Logic Culture Systems signification

Axiological truth: Ethics ? the Social System ? legitimation

Practical truth: Praxis ? the Personality System ? domination

Another impressive parallel to Husserl is Giddens (1984) trichotomy of domination,

legitimation and signification, whose Cartesian product (read in the vertical) accounts for

three types of (real, concrete) INSTITUTIONS,while reading in the horizontal maps Logic,

Ethics, and Praxis as alternative types of action. An important difference thus separates

composite INSTITUTIONS from homogeneous parameters. Like games, Institutions involve

action and contingency; by contrast, parameters produce ideal constructs which transcend

time and space.

Table 13

Giddens parameters and Types of Institution

Signification signification signification Logic

Legitimation legitimation legitimation Ethics

Domination domination domination Praxis_____________________________________________

SOCIAL LEGAL SYMBOLIC

INSTITUTIONS INSTITUTIONS ORDERS


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Parsons Action Systems as Regional Ontologies

We have only to add Giddens notion of allocation of resources -- which roughly corre-

sponds to Durkheims notion of social Morphology -- to arrive at a crossover of four

functional parameters (reading in the horizontal) with four concrete WHOLES (reading in

the vertical), which informs Parsons four Action Systems:

Table 14Giddens functional parameters and Parsons concrete Action Systems

signification signification signification signification pattern maintenance

legitimation legitimation legitimation legitimation integrationdomination domination domination domination goal attainment

allocation allocation allocation allocation adaptation

__________________________________________________BEHAVIORAL ?PERSONALITY ? ?SOCIAL ? CULTURE

SYSTEMS SYSTEMS SYSTEMS SYSTEMS

Once it is clear that latent pattern maintenance is not really latent and that it is iden-

tical with the construction of Artifacts for which Giddens notion of signification is too

narrow -- Parsons functionalism begins to fit well with Giddens parameters. We have

only to replace signification with objectification to identify the parameters that lie at

the bottom of Parsons four functions, viz. allocation, domination, legitimation and objec-

tification, to set Parsons rather cryptic structural functionalism straight.

Unfortunately, what holds for Parsons four functions does not hold for his Action

Systems. It is odd to assume that Personality Systems are coterminous with Polities and

domination, and Social Systems, with Societal Communities and integration. Rather,

let us follow a distinction made by Parsons in a different context, and divide the four pa-

rameters into instrumental Environments, viz. allocation (Energy Input) and objectifi-

cation (Artifacts), on the one hand, and a consummatory Core, viz. domination and

legitimation, on the other hand.

Table 15

Consummatory Core and instrumental Environment

objectification objectification objectification Objectification Artifacts


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legitimation legitimation Legitimation legitimation Personal Valuesdomination Domination domination domination Social Status

Allocation allocation allocation allocation Energy Input

______________________________________________________KINSHIP SOCIAL PERSONALITY EXPERT

SYSTEMS SYSTEMS SYSTEMS SYSTEMS

We thus end up with a division that is fundamental for understanding the dynamics of

Society. While domination and legitimation define the consummatory Core around

which all social action veers, action by itself does not entail accumulative progress. As

Hobbes observed: No single individual or group is strong enough to withstand the oppo-

sition of others that coalesce to defeat him. The history of feudal Europe, as of all agrar-

ian empires, illustrates the perpetual up and down, which ancient and medieval folklore

symbolized by the wheel of fortune that raises individuals and societies as inexorably as

it condemns them to fall down.

Looked at more closely, the consummatory Core is marked by dynamic, unstruc-

tured Fields which are in continual flux in which each participant is free to act at will; by

contrast the instrumental Environment is marked by inert matter and Artifacts which

are structured and resist change. Core and Environment thus follow different rationales

which are not reducible to one another. For reasons which will become ever more obvi-ous, the two poles of action dynamic fields and fixed structures concur with Husserls

two modes of reduction: Consummatory Cores reduce to pure Egos that interact spon-

taneously without being bound by fast and fixed rules. It is in this sense that every single

person and every single society is unique and follows its own distinctive trajectory.

The case is quite different with instrumental Environments. The latter consist of inert

Matter and man-made Artifacts which endure beyond the action that produces them. Be-

ing inert, Artifacts resist change think of Egyptian Pyramids, statues of the Buddha and

the Chinese Wall. Most important, while action is entropic, Artifacts are created and used

to stem entropy. It is in this sense of reducing entropy, not of reversing it that Arti-

facts are inherently negentropic. While all action, sentiment and thought are inherently

spontaneous and indeterminate, i.e., seemingly irrational, the invention and use of Arti-

facts subjects them to the principle of least effort, or in terms of Mach and Oswald, to

Kraftkonomie. The latter underlies Benthams utilitarianism as well as Hegels famed


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adage that whatever is effective is inherently rational, and vice versa without, as we

hasten to add, implying some absolute Idea. While Artifacts are not identical with action,

they add a special twist to it: while action is in constant flux and as such, transitory, Arti-

facts endure. In Hegels pregnant formula they represent objectified mind, which lasts

as long as its material carrier survives.

Social action is therefore intrinsically dual. It combines indeterminate, transient ac-

tionness with determinate systemness such that the latter presupposes the former, i.e.,

ACTION SYSTEM. = ~ACT~SYS. = ~(~ACT & SYS). = SYS ACT.

It thus elucidates that the consummatory Core is identical with Husserls notion of

transcendental reduction, which reduces action to the pure, transcendental Ego, or

in terms of Schopenhauer, to the prepredicative Will. By the same token The Will to

Power determines short-term Praxis and Ethics, whose long-term outcome is determined

by the invention and use of Artifacts. It is therefore crucial to realize that Praxis and Eth-

ics are promoted by different Artifacts: Praxis leans on the development of technology

such as tools, weapons and buildings. By contrast, Ethics depends on the development of

language as the chief instrument which propels the growth of the Mind and manifests

itself in Culture.

The Two Moieties of Action Systems

We now understand why Parsons structural functionalism is fraught with irremediable

inconsistencies, gaps and contradictions. Whatever the merits of his crossover of ideal

parameters and real Action Systems, his theory lacks the insight that Action Systems fall

into two moieties, viz. free-floating, *emergent Superstructures which supplement their

bassis without dominating it, on the one hand, and compulsory, dominant Superstructures

which supersede, and amalgamate with, their subsidiaries, on the other hand. The first

depend on the basis from which they emerge without being determined by it; the second

rise to dominance over their erstwhile bases and convert them into subsidiaries with

which they amalgamate while they continue to depend on them.

By the same token *emergent Superstructures are open-ended and in terms of Herbert

Spencer, indeterminate and incoherent, open to rise or vanish any time. By contrast,

dominant Superstructures form closed Systems that impose system rationality on their

subsidiaries and on themselves in order to enhance consistency and efficiency. In terms

of Pareto, *emergent Systems are open to innovation and combination; by contrast domi-


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nant systems are closed and geared to persistence and rationality in order to maximize

power, as the following interpretation of Parsons Action Systems brings out :

Table 16The two Moieties of Action: *emergent and dominant Superstructures

Logic: l = pattern maintenance *Al *Gl *Il Ll

Ethics: i = integration *Ai *Gi Ii Li

Praxis: g = goal attainment *Ag Gg Ig Lg(Morphology): a = adaptation Aa Ga Ia La

________________________A G I L

segmental social moral organized

Societies Order Order Societies

With the suggested reinterpretation of Parsons and Giddens we have come as close to

analytical sociology as social theory has come this far. For one, Aristotles ontology is

replaced by the sequence of Energy Input, Praxis, Ethics and Artifacts (reading in the

horizontal) and reinterpreted as self-regulating Action Systems (reading in the vertical).

Moreover, the distinction between *emergent and dominant superstructures reveals the

crucial importance ofCore Ranges, which mediate between the two moieties. By same

token the shift of the Core Ranges from allocation to domination, legitimation and objec-

tification accounts for the different dynamics of the four Action Systems, which are

marked by diminishing openness and variety and increasing density and persistence.

A hidden but pervasive order thus rules the Action Systems, viz. diminishing (>)

scope, entropy, and randomness, on the one hand, i.e.,

Physis > Flora > Fauna > Humanity,

and increasing (


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ICS, andINTELLECT,or in terms of Durkheim, Social Order, Moral Order and Symbolic

Order its internal relationship is homologous with the hierarchical order of ontology.

Table 17Real Domains: Decreasing Scope, Randomness and Entropy

Natural Order: Physis > Flora > Fauna

Social Order: *Households > Civil Society > State Power

Moral Order: *Solidarity > Ideology > MoralitySymbolic Order: *Artifacts > Sciences > Metaphysics

Once we turn from real, polythetic DOMAINS to ideal, monothetic parameters the de-

scending order of scope reverses into an ascending order of density, which oscillates fromsimple, indeterminate heterogeneity to determinate homogeneity:

Table 18

Ideal Parameters: Increasing Selectivity, Homogeneity and Negentropy

Physis: inertia < metabolism < self-direction

Praxis: occupation < investment < organizationEthics: solidarity < ideology < morality

Artifacts: proportion < analytics < ultimate meaning

The principle of least effort and Kaftkonomie thus rules each of the fourACTION

SYSTEMS just as it has ruled ontology.

The Attitudinal Axis

At the same time the division of social action into two moieties leads us to assume a

third axis of analytical theory that has been barely touched upon in spite of its ubiquity.The point is that alternative choices such as, most prominently, Gemeinschaftand Gesell-

schaft(Tnnies), combination and persistence (Pareto), once-born and twice-born believ-

ers (William James), inner-worldly and other-worldly mysticism and asceticism (Max

Weber), Dionysian and Apollonian (Nietzsche) abound, but are taken for isolated, theory-

irrelevant ideal types that serve as historicist substitutes for strict theory.


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However, if looked at more closely, the seemingly disconnected ideal types follow a

distinct rationale that is founded in the duality of free-floating, spontaneous action, on the

one hand, and deliberate, rational action, on the other hand. We thus discern two alter-

native choices such as instant or deferred gratification indulgence or discipline, con-

sumption or investment which underlie Max Webers famed typology of inner-worldly

asceticism as one side of the coin, which remains suspended in midair until its possible

alternative is added, viz. other-worldly asceticism in the original essay, respectively in-

ner-worldly and other-worldly mysticism in the subsequent writing.

Significantly the discussion switches from the Lutheran Ethic to the inner-worldly

asceticism of the twice born Pietists, Baptists and Methodists of William James, whose

Protestant Ethic replaces that of Luther. Be this as it may what happens in Webers

essay and its sequels is the discovery of the attitudinal axis, which Weber and the vast

ensuing literature have mistaken for a specific method that is in accordance with histori-

cism. What this interpretation fails to grasp is that ideal types do not represent objective

mappings. Rather, they address choices, which are entirely subjective. They do not map

reality, as do ontological categories and parameters, but are constitutive of the Ego, as

Husserl (1970) never tired to emphasize. As Sartre put it in his rebuttal of positivism, by

making choices, the individual determines him- or herself, and while the individual is

free whatto choose, he or she is not free notto choose.

At the same time choices are made in a pregiven world. It comes therefore as no sur-

prise that the subjective choices of individuals fit with the objective structural parameters

within whose boundaries they are made. This is particularly clear with the three Culture

Systems, each of which is marked by particular choices that have been addressed by a

number of authors reaching from Leibniz and Vico to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and to

William James, Max Weber and Wlfflin. In every case individuals choose between al-

ternatives that complement each other such that choice A excludes alternative choice B,

and the more people chose A, the less people choose B, i.e.

A | B. = ~A v ~B. = A ~B. & B ~A.. = A v B. = 100%..

In other words, while the individual is free to choose, his or her choices are delimited.

The Arts oscillate between Form and Content, Classicism and Romanticism, Diony-

sian exuberance and Apollonian clarity.


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Science oscillates between Empiricism and Rationalism, facticity and apodicticity,

vrits de faitand vrits de raison,idiographic and nomothetic Sciences.

Religion oscillates between the tender-minded and the tough-minded, Mysticism and

Asceticism, Priests and Prophets, Incarnation and Redemption, unconditional surrender

(Schleiermacher) andfides efficax (Calvin),.

The attitudinal axis thus addresses objectively possible subjective choices that deter-

mine individual character and life style. At the same time alternative choices are not lim-

ited to Culture Systems, but hold for the social Order (Society) and for the Moral Order

social (the Mind) as well:

Society:occupation: Habit or Innovation, cooperation or competition,

distribution: Indulgence or Investment, instant or deferred gratification

organization: collective Order or personal Rights.

The Mind:

solidarity: Inclusion or Exclusion, egalitarianism or meritocracy

ideology: Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction, contentment or discontentmorality: piecemeal Compromise or unquestioning Radicalism.

At the same time alternate choices may stretch over several Domain, e.g.,

Collectivism or Individualism,

GemeinschaftorGesellschaft,Order or Freedom,

Consensus or Dissent.

On the whole the attitudinal axis reduces to the contrast of soft or hard

choices, tender-mindedness and tough-mindedness, or Pragmatists and Hard-liners in

politics. In every case there exists a wide gamut of alternatives which range from

Kretschmers duality ofcyclothyme and schizothyme character and C.G. Jungs extro-

verted and introverted personality to Tnnies, Durkheims, Paretos and Max We-

bers well-known dichotomies as well as to Nietzsches vision ofDionysos and

Apollo as opposite life-styles between which the individual is free to choose.

From Bergson to James

A strong case thus exists for a third, attitudinal axis of sociological theory, which repre-

sents the subjective counterpart to the structural axis and which imparts a new meaning to

Husserls notion of phenomenological reduction. In contrast to structural parameters,

which transcend space and time and whose criterion of truth is system consistency, i.e.,


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coherence, choices are inherently singular, unique, and centered on the extended present,

including the immediate past and the projected future insofar as they are continuous with

the present. What William James summarized as radical empiricism thus remarkably

concurs with Husserls notion of phenomenological reduction (to the pure Ego and

intentionality) as it is reducible to alternative choices. As William James argues, radical

empiricism replaces strict, unequivocal logic the hallmark of abstract theory with a

multitude of choices, whose totality constitutes the Pluralistic Universe which marks Life

in contrast to Theory. In terms of Bergson, whom James admired, concrete dure replaces

abstract temps.

While Bergson argued mainly against intellectualism, James argues for free choice as

opposed to determinism. For example, no artist is exclusively focused either on form or

on content, as no scholar is one-sidedly focused on empiricism or rationalism think of

Kant, who concluded that he was as much empirical realist as he was transcendental ide-

alist. By the same token none of the World Religions is exclusively Mystical or Ascetic.

Rather, it is sound to assume that everyones religion combines both Mysticism and As-

ceticism, albeit to various degrees at different epochs in his or her life, oscillating from

80:20% to 20:80% in extreme cases.

Concrete, real Life thus presents us with an infinite variety of ever changing

choices and in this sense constitutes a Pluralistic Universe as historicism has never

tired to emphasize the singularity and uniqueness of history. By the same token, histori-

cism risks a fall into irrationalism and unbridled relativism unless the indeterminism of

free choices is reigned in by the insight that single, isolated types are abstractions which

obtain full clarity only if placed in a continuum which is limited by extremes. This is

illustrated by Webers famed search for the Protestant Ethic, which for all its family

affinity with the Spirit of Capitalism, ranges between pure Asceticism and Mysticism

as its limits, much as James distinguished between the tender minded and the tough-

minded as opposite choices to act (Praxis), to take sides (Ethics), and to think (Logic).For every individual, the problem is to find out the right proportion between his or

her choices. In every case ones choices determine ones character, which is indelibly

unique, idiosyncratic and existential in Sartres sense, as is Husserls Lebenswelt. In

every case types are liminal cases that do not exist in their own right and independent of

their alternatives.


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Table 19

Actorness and Systemness

transcendental reduction: eidetic reduction:subjectivity objectivityLebenswelt mathematics, science

intentionality systematicity

Will Intellect

factual truth rational truth

based on correspondence based on coherence

existential axis structural axishistoricism evolutionism

empirical research analytical theory

The attitudinal and the structural axis thus relate not only like Roland Robertsons

duality of Actorness and Systemness but also like Fichtes (1797) little acknowl-

edged dichotomy of Will and Intelligence, and Schopenhauers (1818) dichotomy of Will

and Idea, and moreover, like Leibniz (1714) dichotomy of factual and rational truth.

We thus notice an astounding convergence with Leibniz, whose dichotomy of factual

and rational truth strikingly matches Hussers dichotomy of transcendental and eidetic

reduction. Leibniz formula leaves no doubt that objectivity, like science in general, is an

ideal construct that is based on coherence rather than on correspondence with reality. In

strident opposition to Comtean positivism the principle of sufficient reason is wedded to

factual, contingent truth, that is, to the life world as the foundation of objective truth.

Husserl thus envisioned a revolution in philosophy. Yet while he rightly commended

Fichte and Hegel for having pursued Kants transcendental turn, his analyses are unfor-

tunately limited to Logic at the expense of Praxis and Ethics, as Enzo Paci and Barry

Smart have argued in unison with Sartre. Nowhere is the conclusion drawn that the Ego

posits the non-Ego, or that the Will lies at the bottom of the Intellect.

It is with this proviso that Husserl has had three eminent predecessors in Fichte,

Hegel and Schopenhauer, and three eminent successors in Nietzsche, Sartre and Merleau-

Ponty, with all the linguistic turn a misnomer for transcendental reduction, and with

William James and symbolic interactionism as an unacknowledged corollary. After all,

what distinguished James pragmatism from that of Peirce was its subjective, prag-


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matic, turn. The point is that the practical, axiological and cognitive projects of the Ego

transcend the pregiven world and replace the natural en soi with the transcendental

pour soi.

As Husserl noted, a fundamental difference exists between focusing on the world and

its objects and focusing on the world and our consciousness of it. The focus on the first

produces ontology and objective science; the focus on the second produces phenomenol-

ogy and the subjective turn. Phenomenology thus opens our eyes to a hidden subjective

universe which lies at the bottom of objectivity and, not unlike Leibnizian monads, con-

stitutes self-regulating wholes. Set theory, or in terms of Husserl, eidetic reduction, al-

lows to analyze their structure, but, as stipulated by Leibniz, it is unable to account for

their dynamics. As Engels drastically put it, history does nothing, it fights no battles and

it accumulates no legendary riches. It is real, living human beings who do all this.

An unbridgeable gap thus separates analytical theory from empirical research, as il-

lustrated by the distinction between evolutionism and historicism, objective analysis and

subjective verstehen. Evolutionism thus constructs stages of evolution, but in no way

explains history, which is made by individuals whose action is determined by decisions

that transcend structure. Anything else would imply determinism. By the same token his-

tory knows of no stages of evolution but only of contingent epochs.

Like latitudes and longitudes the latter are ideal constructs that exist only in the eye of

the beholder. Herbert Spencers evolutionary sequence from simple, indeterminate and

incoherent homogeneity to complex, determinate and coherent heterogeneity and Lewis

Henry Morgans sequence from savagery through barbarism to civility thus represent two

prominent examples of evolutionism, the first using levels of political organization, the

second using cultural mostly technical artifacts as indicators. By contrast, Marx se-

quence of slavery, feudalism and capitalism as successive stages of evolution does not

hold water. Rather than with modes of production Marx is dealing with social forma-

tions. Like Spenglers Hochkulturen and Toynbees Civilizations the latter are markedby uniqueness, uneven development and structural pluralism.

The difference between stages of evolution and epochs of history thus highlights the

difference between the structural axis and the attitudinal axis and sheds additional light

on both of them.


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A Short Foray into Macrosociology

From early beginnings, i.e. from the Gentile Societies of the Neolithicum, Human Society

has thus combined, in whatever primitive form, all four parameters while advancing spo-

radically from primitive Households to Tribal (Gentile or Archaic) Society to Agrarian

Empires, to Industrial Society an array of self-regulating Action Systems which allows

us to combine systemic analysis with macrosociological stages of complexity which are

no longer conceived of as successive, but as complementary. In any case Tribal Societies

are loosely knit, based as they are on the Household of the extended family with its close

kinship bonds, but without an enduring social and political structure that survives its in-

dividual carriers. The advent of the latter marks the advent of the archaic Society of the

early empires, whose populations are still largely tribal.

Old Ancient Egypt and Mohenjo Daro, Tyrins and Troja, Tikal and Teotihuacan, Sac-sayhuaman and the Tenochtitlan of Moctezuma and Cuauhtemoc illustrate the transition

to Archaic Societies, which produced enduring stability of the power center, with song

and dance, mythology and cult, temples, pyramids, protective walls, etc., emerging and

vanishing in the endless chain of being that the Ilias, the Upanishads and the Old Testa-

ment illustrate.

It is with the rise of Culture Systems that endure, such as Law and Religion, that so-

cial Consciousness becomes a factor in its own right that survives the fluctuations of in-

dividual idiosyncrasies and ushers in the Hochkulturen such as the New Kingdom in

Egypt, Ancient Iran, India and China, and most prominently, the rise of Ancient Greece

and Rome, all of which are marked by the rise of the worlds great religions. What Her-

bert Spencer linked to increased levels of organization thus has its corollary in the suc-

cessive rise of Sovereign Power, Law, and Moral Consciousness, as illustrated by Ham-

murabi receiving the Laws of the Babylonian God Marduk, the Prophets of Israel, the

Age of Pericles in Athens and the Augustian Age in Rome.

The Social process thus includes a manifold of Action Systems of different complex-

ity and compactness, ranging from primitive kinship systems to Archaic Society, to the

Hochkulturen of the Agrarian Empires, to Modern Industrial Society. However, in con-

trast to evolutionary theory, the various Action Systems are no longer conceived of as

successive stages, but as alternative forms of complexity each of which oscillates be-

tween openness and closure while not ruling out the continuous growth of more primi-


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tive, less compact forms. Feudalism thus supersedes Tribal Society, but does not totally

replace it and may even recede. To put it in terms of Tnnies, while Gesellschaftsuper-

sedes Gemeinschaft, this does not rule out the continued existence and even growth of

Gemeinschaft.

It is in this sense that all human development is wrapped in the dialectics of blind,creative will and ideal, time-resistant form, which at the same time oppose and comple-ment each other. As Schopenhauer argued in ardent opposition to Hegel, Will and Idea

represent polar opposites between which human action oscillates in manifold ways which

are not exhausted by Tnnies modification of his original evolutionary conception.Rather than spanning the whole of human history, as it were, from monolithic Gemein-

schaftof Kinship Groups (Gentile Society) to monolithic post-modern Gesellschaft, we

instead face a much more variegated pattern of change from *emergence to dominancewithin each of the four action Systems, a pattern which reminds us of Mendeleevs Peri-

odic Table of Elements in which every line alternates from bases to acids. We thus note

the sequence from *emergence to split and full dominance in each Action System:

Table 20From free-floating *Combination to dominant Persistency

Social Order: *Households > Civil Society > Sovereign PowerMoral Order: *Common Consc-ness > Critical Consc-ness > Moral Consc-ness

Symbolic Order: *Arts > Sciences > Religion

The Axes of Analytical Theory

Arguing that if anything about sociology is crystal-clear, it is that it exhibits very low

degrees of analytic consistency, continuity and consensus, Roland Robertson (1974, p.

107), has suggested to base sociological analysis on two major axes which are widely

recognized, viz. the distinction between cultural and social factors, on the one hand, and

the distinction between subjective and objective approaches, on the other hand, which he

sees in many disguises, including the Marxian distinctions between base and superstruc-

ture, and between the objective situation and the situation as perceived subjectively

(1974, p.113).

Robertson thus ended up with two axes of analytical sociological theory, viz. subjec-tivity versus objectivity, and of sociality versus culturality (1974, p.121). Interestingly

Robertson addressed the first axis also as micro tug versus macro tug and as actor-

ness tug versus systemness tug corresponds exactly to Husserls distinction be-

tweenphenomenological ortranscendental reduction on the one side, and eidetic reduc-

tion, on the other side. Robertson thus preceded the discussion about The Micro-Macro


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Link (1987) by more than a decade oddly enough without ever being mentioned in the

latter discussion.

Significantly the debate ended without consensus because the various parties were

talking about different issues. To be sure, in point of size (small, primary groups and

ideas in the sense of Cooley and big aggregates in the sense of Durkheims reprsenta-

tions collectives) the distinction is unconvincing, nor does it coincide with the distinction

between (objective) status and (subjective) personal values (which is addressed by the

second, hierarchic or ontological axis).

What the Micro-Macro axis really addresses is the contrast, in terms of Robertson, of

actorness and systemness two neologism which have the advantage of being to the

point and of conforming with Husserls two forms of reduction. What is not brought out

by Robertson is the affinity of the micro axis with the existentialism of Sartre and Mer-

leau-Ponty an insight which is missing not only in Schtz and in Berger and Luckmann,

but in Husserl as well. The same holds foreidetic reduction, which the macro-camp has

failed to equate with structuralism and constructivism. In sum, micro theory is synony-

mous with actorness and existential (phenomenological) reduction; by contrast, macro

theory is synonymous with systemness and structural (eidetic) reduction.

To complete the picture another splendid achievement of the human Mind needs to be

brought in to which sociological theory has been insensitive: Leibniz famed dichotomy

ofvrit de raison and vrit de fait(rational and factual truth). The point is the funda-

mental insight which anticipates Kants Kritik that rational truth is the pure product of

logic, which, like shadows, is divested of power. The latter inheres solely in factual truth,

which alone is tuned to sufficient reason.

In other words, whatever insights set theory provides regarding social, moral and

logical structure, structure is indelibly abs-tract, that is, a product of abstraction that is not

invested with matter, weight or power. An enormous weight thus falls on actorness,

whether it is social, moral or theoretical, or in terms of Husserl, geared to Praxis, Axiol-ogy or Logic. The first, phenomenological axis is therefore geared to what Max Weber

addressed as Zweckrationalitt, Wertrationalitt, and Systemrationalitt, that is, pur-

posive, moral and formal rationality. As our previous analyses have shown, structural

analysis reveals the composition of each of the DOMAINS of reality, but to determine the

right balance between the various actors is up to the acting individuals. As Leibniz


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shrewdly realized, the exploration of sufficient reasons both causal and teleological

lies solely with contingent, factual truth, i.e., with actorness. Parameters do not act.

It is at this juncture that the third, attitudinal axis comes into play: Exactly because

action, valuation and calculation in terms of Giddens, dominance, legitimation and sig-

nification are up to individuals, idiosyncratic attitudes are an integral part of real, con-

crete DOMAINS which blur the insight into structure because the latter belongs to a differ-

ent world of ideal constructs.

At the same time we face the seemingly paradoxical fact that attitudes, being part of

the real world the conspicuousLebensweltof Husserls later phase are accessible to

direct experience, as illustrated by Sir Francis Bacons famed fourIdola specus, tribus,

fori et theatri, but become fully explicable only with the discovery of the two moieties of

action, depending on whether the Superstructure depends on the basis from which it

emerges, or whether it rises to dominance and reduces its basis to subsidiarity.

In any case it is arguable that attitudes are part and parcel of the first, most elemen-

tary, phenomenological axis, which, while predicated on the Ego, is not insensitive to

structural analysis after all Husserl left no doubt that phenomenological reduction is

intertwined with the parameters of Praxis, Axiology and Logic, with his own emphasis

limited to the latter. By the same token it is indisputable that personal attitudes are conso-

nant with distinct DOMAINS even if they respond to different parameters within a given

DOMAIN.

After all is said and considered we end up with two main axes of sociological theory,

the one based on phenomenological reduction (replacing Kants abstruse transcendental

Ego, which Kant wanted to distinguish from the empirical Self in the sense of G.H.

Mead), the other based on set theory and structural reduction. While we broaden

Husserls terminology to fit analytical theory we remain loyal to it in substance. The M-

icro-Macro Link is thus founded in Husserl and, no less amazing, in Leibniz dichotomy

of factual and rational truth, which tells us to beware of the fallacy of misplaced con-creteness, i.e., to beware of conceptual realism as exemplified by pace Quines, naive

empiricism and naturalism.


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The Logical Foundations of Analytical Theory

Given that all theory consists of ideal constructs, it should come as no surprise that the

key to analytical theory does not lie in mathematics, as Newton assumed, but in logic.

Analytical theory had therefore to wait for logic to leave Newton behind and come intoits own. Starting with Augustus de Morgan and Boole, and culminating in Freges Be-

griffsschrift, Russell and Whiteheads Principia Mathematica, and Wittgensteins Trac-

tatus Logico-Philosophicus the time has come to answer Kants question anew how sci-

ence is possible.

What is so sweeping in de Morgans Law is the insight that logic is a self-explanatory

discipline whose tautologies explain each other. Just as Kant noted that the left hand is

defined by not being the right hand, and vice versa, i.e.,

A = ~B. & .B = ~A. = FTTF,

De Morgan argued that

A v B. = ~(~A & ~B)and correspondingly,

A & B. = ~(~A v ~B).

De Morgan could likewise have argued, using the Nicod function, that

A B. = ~A & ~B. = ~(A v B). = ~(~A|~B). = FFFT,

and, using the Sheffer function, that

A|B. = ~(A & B). = ~A v ~B). = ~(~A ~B). = FTTT.

It thus becomes clear that zero-form, joint denial, converse, and dual constitute a

logical quadrant whose constituents explain each other, i.e., logical quadrants are self-

explanatory, independent of empirical observation, and as such, valid a priori. In other

words, logic produces strict, apodictic truths a priori because of the tautologies that de-

fine each truth functions salva veritate, i.e.,

A v B. = ~(A B). = ~A | ~B. = ~(~A & ~B). = TTTF

A B. = ~(A v B). = ~A & ~B. = ~(~A | ~B). = FFFTA & B. = ~(A | B). = ~A ~B. = ~(~A v ~B). = TFFFA | B. = ~(A & B). = ~A v ~B. = ~(~A ~B). = FTTT.

What holds for the symmetric functions of the first quadrant holds likewise for the

asymmetrical functions of the second quadrant. Presupposition () and implication ()

thus turn out to be converses that explain each other. They also reveal their asymmetry if

they are converted into symmetric functions, i.e.,


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A B. = ~A ~B. = ~(~A & B). = A v ~B. = TTFT.Accordingly,

A B. = ~A ~B. = ~(A & ~B). = ~A v B. = TFTT.

Moreover, to complete the second quadrant, we may ask what the joint denials of

supposition and implication look like. The answer is that

~(A B). = B does not depend on A = B is independent of A = A ind B.

Accordingly,

A ind B. = ~(AB). = ~(~A~B). = ~(A v ~B). = ~A & B. = FFTF.

A glance on the converse function, i.e., ~(A B), is no less revealing:

~(A B) = A does not imply B = B is accidental to A. = A acc B.

Accordingly,

A acc B. = ~(AB) = ~(~A~B) = ~(~A v B) = A & ~B. = FTFF.

With mathematical stringency we have thus discovered two elementary functions, in-

dependence and randomness, which shine by their absence in traditional

Logic books. Much to their detriment, for the explanation of AB, i.e., of presupposi-

tion, is exactly that it reduces fragmentation into incoherent, independent

facts, just as randomness provides the explanation for implication: It is the function of the

latter to reduce randomness, i.e., chaos. In sum, the function of Reason remains obscure

unless the quadrant is restored in fullness. (The above sentence is confusing)

Like any other theory, the validity of analytical sociology is based on the coherence

of its categories, as illustrated by the Social Order (or social status), the Moral Order (or

personal values), and Culture (or objective calculi), which represent self-regulating, con-

crete Wholes which in contrast to abstract sets are determined by the action of the indi-

viduals that compose them. Yet while each Whole represents a Monad that exists in its

own right and is as such unique, the astounding fact remains that, their difference not-

withstanding, the three Orders are homologous in structure: reading in the horizontal taps

the distinctive qualities that found set theory. As it turns out, Husserlseidetic

reductionis structural reduction.

At the same time, reading in the vertical sensitizes us to the alternating structure

dominance. What distinguishes the primitive Household from Civil Society and the State

is the alternating dominance of skills, property, or power, which divides reality into Sub-

systems of decreasing openness and increased compactness a division that is inherently

fluctuant and contingent and represents the legitimate field of empirical research. The


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latter applies only to concrete social and historical wh

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