Jeffrey Alexander, "The Centrality of the Classics" (1987)

Jeffrey Alexander, "The Centrality of the Classics," in A. Giddens and J. Turner, eds., Social Theory Today. Stanford and MacMillan, 1987: 11-57. (제프리 알렉산더, "고전의 중심성[중요성]") 

발췌(영어) 및 일부 요약(한국어) 

(Introduction; 11-12)

… I will offer a pointed definition of just what a classic is. Classics are earlier works of human exploration which are given a privileged status vis-à-vis contemporary explorations in the same filed. 

(The Empiricist Challenge to the Centrality of the Classics)

*Two assumptions upon which the empiricist challenge to the centrality of the classics depends: see p.12, 15. 

(13)

To the contrary, he [Merton] insists that while sociology’s intermediate position between science and the humanities may be a fact, it must not be made into a normative position. 

(14)

He [Merton] offers two alternatives, one from the side of systemics, the other from the side of history. 

(15) 

[Merton’s] account of the history of science is purely progressive one. Rather than a relativistic and historical treatment of earlier scientific texts, which in the spirit of post-Kuhnian sensibilities emphasizes the formative power of supra-scientific cultural and intellectual frameworks, Merton looks on earlier work as a series of ‘anticipations’, ‘adumbrations’ and ‘prediscoveries’ of what is known in the present day (1967a, pp.8-27). 

… Merton does not view social science as paradigm-bound in Kuhn’s sense. 

(The Post-positivist View of Science) 

(16) 

… I suggested that the positivist persuasion in the social sciences rests on four major postulates. The first is that a radical, epistemological break exists between empirical observations, … and non-empirical statements, … [Second,] more general and abstract concerns … do not have fundamental significance for the practice of an empirically-oriented discipline. Third, questions which are of a generalized, abstract and theoretical nature can be evaluated only in relation to empirical observations. … the fourth postulate suggests that scientific development is ‘progressive’, that is, linear and cumulative. 

(Why There Are No Classics in Natural Science: A Post-positivist View) 

(19)

Thus, rather than classics, natural science has what Kuhn called exemplars. 

(The Post-positivist Case for the Classics)

머튼과 같은 실증주의적 관점을 채택하지 않고 사회과학에 고전이 존재하는 이유를 설명하기

(21)

1) In social science, were the objects are either mental states or conditions in which mental states are embedded. 

2) Resistance to simple agreement on empirical referents also emerges from the distinctive evaluative nature of social science. 

3) [I]n so far as it is difficult … to gain consensus about even the simple empirical referents of social science, there will be even less about the abstractions from such concrete referents which form the substance of social theory. 

4) [T]he full range of non0empirical inputs to empirical perception become objects of debate. 

For all of these reasons, discourse - not just explanation - becomes a major feature of the social science field. 

(27)

Because disagreement is so rife in social science, serious problems of mutual understanding arise. 이러한 ‘합의’의 문제가 생기는 영역에서 고전이 개입하게 되는 것이다. 고전을 읽는 데에는 지적인 이유와 기능적인 이유가 있다. 

기능적 이유: 이론적 담론의 장을 통합하는 데에 고전이 기여함. 공통의 준거점을 주는 고전의 상징은 복잡성을 줄이는 데(루만)에 기여함. 즉, 고전은 응축(condensation)의 기능을 함. 이것은 네 가지의 기능적 이점을 갖고 있음. 

1) 이론적 논의를 단순화하고, 그럼으로써 그것을 촉진시킴. 

2) [C]lassics allow generalized commitments to be argued without the necessity for making the criteria for their adjudication explicit.

3) Because a common classical medium of communication is taken for granted, it becomes possible not to acknowledge the existence of generalized discourse at all. 

4) Condensation이 고전에게 특권적 지위를 부여하기 때문에, 도구적이고 전략적인 의미에서 고전을 인용하는 것이 중요해짐. 

왜 고전을 읽는가: intellectual reason 1) 

(29) 

All other things being equal, the works of social scientists who manifest such capacities to the highest degree become classics to which those with more mundane capacities must refer for insight into the subjective inclinations of humankind. 

[I]t is not Goffman's inheritance of interactionist theory or his empirical methods which has made his theorizing so paradigmatic for the micro-analysis of social behaviors; it is his extraordinary sensitivity about the nuances of human behaviour.

intellectual reason 2) 

(30)

Because disagreement on background issues make even the objective empirical referents of social sicence open to doubt, the complexity of the objective world cannot here be reduced via the matrix of conesnsual disciplinary controls.

As Daw writes about the classics, 'throughout the creative power of there thought … they reveal the historical and human continuity which makes their experience reprensentative of ours' (1978, p.366). 

It is not only insightfulness but that evanescent thing, 'quality of mind', upon which the capacity for representation depends. … Has any Marxist since Marx been able to produce an economic-political history with the subtlety, complexity and apparent conceptual integration of _The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte_?

intellectual reason 3) Through the formulation of moral and ideological evaluations. 

The more general a social scientific statement, the more it must provide compelling self-reflection on the meaning of social life. 

(pp.32-46)

알렉산더는 사회학자들이 고전에 대해 후설이 “소박한 태도naive attitude”라 부른 관계를 맺고 있다고 함. 사회학자들의 고전에 대한 논의에서 그들의 intentionality는 그들 자신에게도 감춰져 있음. 고전들이 어떠한가에 대한 지향들은 현상학적으로 괄호쳐져 있는 것임. 데리다를 인용해, “고전의 중심성이 예증되려면 고전에 대한 사회과학 논의는 탈구축되어야 한다.” “텍스트의 “부재absence와 현존presence의 미묘한 상호작용이 이해될 때에만 고전의 이론적 기능이 보일 것이다.” 이하에서 알렉산더는 파슨스부터 시작해 사회이론의 논쟁과정에서 고전의 해석이 어떻게 변해왔는지를 다룸. 

(pp.46-마지막)

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