Social Criticism, Moral Reasoning and the Literary Form

Tsilipakos, Leonidas

doi:10.15845/nwr.v7i2.3512

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…More recently, Alice Crary construes Winch as proposing ‘a distinctive social ontology … on which objective features of the social world are irreducibly ethical’ (Crary, 2018: 31; emphasis in original; cf. Tsilipakos, 2018: 82). Winch, on Crary's reading, tells us that values are just (or almost?)…”

Section: The Epistemic Interest In Explaining Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The pincer movement of The Idea of a Social Science: Winch, Collingwood, and philosophy as a human science

Ahlskog

Lagerspetz

2023

History of the Human Sciences

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This article argues that, in order to understand Peter Winch's view of philosophy, it is profitable to read him together with R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of history. Collingwood was both an important source for Winch and a thinker engaged in a closely parallel philosophical pursuit. Collingwood and Winch shared the view that philosophy is an effort to understand the various ways in which human beings make reality intelligible. For both, this called for rapprochement between philosophy and the humanities. Like Collingwood, Winch wanted to reformulate philosophy as a form of human science. Both thinkers advanced a conception of logic where the validity of judgements, propositions, and thought are dependent on their function as instruments in human dialogue. In their treatments of logic, Winch and Collingwood were fleshing out their idea that questions concerning human meaningful behaviour also tie back to the question of what philosophical analysis is about. There is a deep connection between two main issues in both Collingwood's and Winch's writings: on the one hand, the need for ‘internal’ understanding of how human beings relate to reality, and on the other hand, their critique of the idea of logic as a self-sufficient system, external to historically embedded forms of life. At the core of their shared vision there was a comprehensive critique of metaphysical realism.

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Section: The Epistemic Interest In Explaining Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The pincer movement of The Idea of a Social Science: Winch, Collingwood, and philosophy as a human science

Ahlskog

Lagerspetz

2023

History of the Human Sciences

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“…13 Consequently, supporters who ascribe to Winch a distinctive social ontology—which Crary describes as “irreducibly ethical” (2018, 31)—are not incorrect as long as such ontological commitments are understood as following from methodological presuppositions of social knowledge, and not as independent claims about the “objective world” (cf. Tsilipakos 2018, 82–83). 14…”

Section: Conclusion: the Iss As Descriptive Metaphysicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peter Winch and the Autonomy of the Social Sciences

Ahlskog

2022

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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This article offers a reassessment of the main import of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences. Critics argue that Winch presented a flawed methodology for the social sciences, while his supporters deny that Winch’s work is about methodology at all. Contrary to both, the author argues that Winch deals with fundamental questions about methodology, and that there is something substantial to learn from his account. Winch engages methodological questions without being committed to social ontology. Instead, Winch’s work on methodology is best described as a descriptive metaphysics of social inquiry. This alternative reading clarifies the close link between Winch’s argument for the autonomy of the social sciences and R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history.

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“…7. I have argued elsewhere that the appeal to art is not something that can be turned into a methodological recommendation for social science (Tsilipakos, 2018). As to the need to resort to extraordinary language, this is why Gaita seems to think, and possibly Winch in ISS, that Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP), with its 'what we would say whens', does not quite deliver.…”

Section: Conclusion: Winch and The History Of Sociological Debatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The idea of an ethically committed social science

Tsilipakos

2021

History of the Human Sciences

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This article presents a long overdue analysis of the idea of an ethically committed social science, which, after the demise of positivism and the deeming of moral neutrality as impossible, has come to dominate the self-understanding of many contemporary sociological approaches. Once adequately specified, however, the idea is shown to be ethically questionable in that it works against the moral commitments constitutive of academic life. The argument is conducted with resources from the work of Peter Winch, thus establishing its continuing relevance and critical importance for the social sciences, sociology in particular. Special reference is made to heretofore unappreciated aspects of Winch’s work, including within the groundbreaking The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, but focusing specifically on his later contributions to ethics.

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Social Criticism, Moral Reasoning and the Literary Form

Cited by 3 publications

References 12 publications

The pincer movement of The Idea of a Social Science: Winch, Collingwood, and philosophy as a human science

The pincer movement of The Idea of a Social Science: Winch, Collingwood, and philosophy as a human science

Peter Winch and the Autonomy of the Social Sciences

The idea of an ethically committed social science

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