We have many histories of social theory-what different authors attempted to do as they responded to previous theories. But we know precious little about how they did this in structural terms-what scaffolding they adopted and adapted to make their claims. Yet today's social thoughts largely employ structures passed down from previous generations, structures that were developed to solve problems that are no longer ours.
In The True, the Good, and the Beautiful, John Levi Martin explores these structures, the resulting tensions, and their broader significance for sociological thought. By examining how thinkers mapped interpersonal to intrapersonal structures, he traces the development of the underlying architectonics of theory, focusing on one that was inherited from eighteenth-century philosophy and brought into social science in the nineteenth century. He shows that the structural tensions inherent in these theories paralleled those being worked out in practical terms by constitutional theorists as thinkers attempted to return to their most fundamental understandings of the nature of the human, the social, and the political to recraft their societies. A magisterial new interpretation of the foundations of sociological thought, The True, the Good, and the Beautiful is as ambitious a work of social theory as we have seen in generations.
By:
John Levi Martin
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780231213127
ISBN 10: 0231213123
Pages: 1120
Publication Date: 10 February 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface: The Architectonic of Theories Introduction: The Approach Taken PART I. FROM SUBORDINATION TO COMBINATION: THE CONSOLIDATION OF AN ARCHITECTONIC I-1. From a Trinity of Faculties to Two Platonic Wings I-2. From Ideas to Transcendentals I-3. The Birth of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful I-4. The Stabilization of the Triad of Faculties I-5. Imagination and Judgment in Immanuel Kant I-C. The First Constitutional Moment Conclusion to Part I. From Ideas to Faculties PART II. FROM COMBINATION TO DIMENSIONALIZATION: ADOPTION AND ADAPTION II-1. The Battle for the French Mind II-2. Because I Said So II-3. The Birth of Values II-4. History, Individuals, and Concepts II-5. The Revaluation of Devaluation II-C. The Second Constitutional Moment Conclusion to Part II. From Faculties to Values PART III. FROM SERIALIZATION TO SUBORDINATION: REJECTION AND REFORMULATION III-1. The Creative Spirit III-2. Of Laws and Lies III-3. A Guess at the Riddle III-4. The Quest for a Unified Science III-5. Work Resumed on the Tower III-C. The Third Constitutional Moment Conclusion to Part III. From Values to Validity Conclusion References
John Levi Martin is the Florence Borchert Bartling Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Social Structures (2011) and The Explanation of Social Action (second edition, 2021), as well as Thinking Through Theory (2014), Thinking Through Methods (2017), and Thinking Through Statistics (2018).
Reviews for The True, the Good, and the Beautiful: The Rise and Fall and Rise of an Architectonic for Action
This book is a major statement meant to stand the test of time. Connecting philosophy, social theory, and sociology, it explains in a new way what centuries of thinking about society and human action were actually about, and what the underlying intellectual issues driving all this effort were. Radically novel, fun to read, and deep both in learning and insight—a rare combination. -- Stephen Turner, author of <i>Explaining the Normative</i>
