Rationality in the Social Sciences: The Schumpeter-Parsons Seminar 1939-40 and Current Perspectives PDF
Preview Rationality in the Social Sciences: The Schumpeter-Parsons Seminar 1939-40 and Current Perspectives
Helmut Staubmann · Victor Lidz Editors Rationality in the Social Sciences The Schumpeter-Parsons Seminar 1939-40 and Current Perspectives Rationality in the Social Sciences Helmut Staubmann (cid:129) Victor Lidz Editors Rationality in the Social Sciences The Schumpeter-Parsons Seminar 1939-40 and Current Perspectives Editors HelmutStaubmann VictorLidz UniversityofInnsbruck DrexelUniversityCollegeofMedicine Innsbruck,Austria Chesterbrook,Pennsylvania,USA ISBN978-3-319-62376-4 ISBN978-3-319-62377-1 (eBook) DOI10.1007/978-3-319-62377-1 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017958034 ©SpringerInternationalPublishingAG2018 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartof the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilarmethodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexempt fromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinformationinthis book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained hereinor for anyerrors oromissionsthat may havebeenmade. Thepublisher remainsneutralwith regardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations. Printedonacid-freepaper ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbySpringerNature TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerInternationalPublishingAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Acknowledgements ThemanuscriptsofPartIandPartIIIhereinarepublishedthroughthecourtesyof theHarvardUniversityArchives,TalcottParsonsPapers. We want to thank Ruth Grathoff and Walter M. Sprondel for permission to publish the letter exchange in Part III between Richard Grathoff, Walter M.SprondelandTalcottParsons. This publication is supported by the Anniversary Fund of the O¨sterreichische Nationalbank,ProjektNr.15236,TheUnpublishedLegacyofTalcottParsons. v Contents Editors’Introduction:TheHarvardRationalitySeminar. . . . . . . . . . . 1 HelmutStaubmannandVictorLidz PartI OriginalPapersoftheSchumpeter/ParsonsSeminar TheMeaningofRationalityintheSocialSciences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 JosephA.Schumpeter DiscussionsontheMeaningofRationalityinAction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 (UnknownAuthor) AnApproachtotheAnalysisoftheRoleofRationalityinSocial Action. . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. . 53 TalcottParsons RationalityinAction:(DiscussionProtocolofthe)MeetingofMonday, Feb.19,1940. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 DonaldV.McGranahan TheRoleofIdeasintheExtensionandLimitationofRationality. . . . . 61 WilbertE.Moore TheRationalMeans-EndSchemaasaToolforEmpiricalAnalysisof SocialAction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 RainerSchickele TheProblemofRationalityintheSocialWorld. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . 85 AlfredSchütz PartII CurrentPerspectives BoundedRationalityandEmotionsandHowSociologyMayTake Profit:TowardsanInterdisciplinaryOpening. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 DieterB€ogenhold vii viii Contents TheConceptofRationalityinModernSocialSciences:ACritical AppraisalofJosephA.Schumpeter’sEssayon“TheMeaningof Rationality”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 AndreasDiekmann Schu€tzonRationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 MartinEndress Rationality,Norms,andtheSociologicalReconstructionofEconomic Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 MarkGould ConceptualizingRationalSocialAction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 VictorLidz OrdinaryBeauty,OrdinaryUgliness,andtheProblemofRationality. . . 189 AntonioStrati ContinuityandChangeinParsons’UnderstandingofRationality. . . . . 207 RafVanderstraeten InchoateSituationsandExtra-RationalBehavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 ChristopherWinship PartIII LetterExchangeontheRationalitySeminar LetterExchangeRegardingtheSeminarandPlansforPublication. . . . 247 HelmutStaubmannandVictorLidz TalcottParsonstoAlfredSchuetz(Jan.10,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 AlfredSchuetztoTalcottParsons(Jan.24,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 JosephA.Schumpeter,TalcottParsonsandDonaldV.McGranahanto Authors(May15,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 JosephA.SchumpetertoTalcottParsons(June12). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 JosephA.SchumpetertoTalcottParsons(June12)(copyoforiginal handwriting). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 TalcottParsonstoJohnP.Dunlop(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 TalcottParsonstoGottfriedHaberler(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 TalcottParsonstoDonaldV.McGranahan(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 TalcottParsonstoWilbertE.Moore(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 TalcottParsonstoPaulM.Sweezy(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 TalcottParsonstoRobertWaelder(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 PaulM.SweezytoTalcottParsons(Oct.17,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 WilbertE.MooretoTalcottParsons(Oct.22,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 GottfriedHaberlertoTalcottParsons(Nov.8,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 TalcottParsonstoWilburE.Moore(Dec.5,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 TalcottParsonstoWilburE.Moore(March2,1941). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 Contents ix LaterLettersRegardingtheSeminar. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . 265 HelmutStaubmannandVictorLidz RichardGrathoffandWalterM.SprondeltoTalcottParsons (Dec.4,1973). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 TalcottParsonstoRichardGrathoff(Aug.9,1974). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 RichardGrathofftoTalcottParsons(Sept.2,1976). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 TalcottParsonstoRichardGrathoff(Jul.5,1978). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 RichardGrathofftoTalcottParsons(Oct.9,1978). . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. 278 RichardGrathofftoTalcottParsons(Feb.28,1979). . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. 280 TalcottParsonstoRichardGrathoff(March27,1979). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 NameIndex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Editors’ Introduction: The Harvard Rationality Seminar HelmutStaubmannandVictorLidz The Harvard Rationality Seminar In the academic year of 1939–1940, an unusual interdisciplinary seminar on the general topic of Rationality was conducted by a number of faculty members and advancedgraduatestudentsatHarvardUniversity.Ofparticularinterestthroughout wasthequestionofhowrationalityshouldfitintothebasicpremisesandcategories ofintellectuallydisciplinedthoughtabouthumanconduct,especiallyinthesocial sciences—economics, sociology,politicalscience,anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry.Ofnote,manyoftheparticipantswerefiguresalreadydistinguishedin theirrespectivedisciplinesorwho,wenowknow,haddistinguishedcareersintheir futures. The present volume is organized about the seminar. The first section presents documentary materials from presentations to and discussions in the seminar—all thatremain,webelieve—oressaysthatsomeparticipantslaterpublishedbasedon their seminar presentations. The seminar materials were collected by Helmut Staubmannin2013/2014duringasabbaticalinCambridge,Massachusetts,where hewasabletoretrievethemfromtheHarvardUniversityArchives,predominantly from the Talcott Parsons Papers. The second section consists of contemporary essays by a variety of social scientists who reflect either on the major essays themselves or on aspects of the topic of rationality in relation to human social action. In a briefer third section, we present correspondence pertaining to the H.Staubmann(*) DepartmentofSociology,UniversityofInnsbruck,Innsbruck,Austria e-mail:[email protected] V.Lidz DepartmentofPsychiatry,DrexelUniversityCollegeofMedicine,Philadelphia,PA,USA e-mail:[email protected] ©SpringerInternationalPublishingAG2018 1 H.Staubmann,V.Lidz(eds.),RationalityintheSocialSciences, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-62377-1_1 2 H.StaubmannandV.Lidz seminar, including plans to publish papers from it and later reflections about its importance. Joseph A. Schumpeter and Talcott Parsons Joseph A. Schumpeter and Talcott Parsons were the two main figures who pro- posed,convened,andorganizedtheseminarordiscussiongroup.Bothwereideally qualified as scholars familiar with developments in sociology and in economics concerningtheplaceofrationality.Bothhadfocusedtheirinterestsonthetheoret- icalandconceptualfoundationsofthesocio-economicdisciplinesinverycompre- hensiveterms. TalcottParsonswasamongthefirstsocialscientists,afterMaxWeber,tothink comprehensively and intensively about techniques for constructing frames of reference for the interdisciplinary study of human action or conduct. In The StructureofSocialAction,publishedinlate1937,hehadexploredtheconceptual schemesthatkeysociologistsandeconomistsofapreviousgenerationhadutilized. He argued that, although the several figures on whom he focused had written in basicallydifferentintellectualtraditions,they hadsettled upon—he wroteoftheir having“converged”upon—equivalentsetsofcoreconcepts.Hethendemonstrated thattheseideas,whenprobed,provedtoderivefrombasicallythesamemethodo- logical and conceptual assumptions. Parsons called this procedure of identifying andthenrelyinguponagreed-uponformulationsthemethodofconvergence,andhe proposed that the essential areas of conceptual agreement could, and should, be used as an initial formulation of a general frame of reference for sociology. He maintainedthattheveryfactthatacommonframeofreferencehademergedfrom disparateandinsomerespectsconflictingintellectualtraditionsspoketoitsfunda- mental validity and essential nature. Later, in several stages, he explored further convergencesthroughprobingandtechnicalanalysesoftheconceptualschemesof a wide range of additional figures, including a number of his contemporaries, therebyexpandingthescopeandincreasingtheprecisionofhisframeofreference. Throughouthislifetime,Parsonsheldthatworkswritteninthefieldofeconom- icswereessentialtoincludeinageneraltheoryofaction.Lookingbacktotheearly yearsofhisworkduringaseriesofdiscussionshehadwithfacultyandstudentsat Brown University in 1973, he remembered: “I decided I would make a study of Marshalltotrytoteaseouthissociologicalideas.Iwrotewhatturnedouttobetwo papers,whichIsubmittedtoTaussig,whowastheneditoroftheQuarterlyJournal of Economics, and he kindly accepted them for publication. That was the real startingpointofTheStructureofSocialAction,becauseIhadakindofafulcrum inMarshallforsystematizingthecomparisonbetweenMarshall,Englisheconom- ics,thebackgroundinutilitarianism,andsoon,withDurkheim,Pareto,andWeber. That was the main jumping-off place of that book and a very decisive one for me. That’s something that has stayed with me” (Parsons 2006 in Moss and Savchenko2006).
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