ABSTRACT
In this volume the author maintains that sociology must learn to combine the insights of both Durkheim and Marx and that it can only do so on the presuppositional ground that Weber set forth. Alexander maintains that the idealist and materialist traditions must be transformed into analytic dimensions of multidimensional and synthetic theory. This volume focusses on the writing of Talcott Parsons, the only modern thinker who can be considered a true peer of the classical founders, and examines his own profoundly ambivalent attempt to carry out this analytic transformation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |38 pages
The Early Period
Interpretation and the Presuppositional Movement toward Multidimensionality
chapter |46 pages
The Later Period (1):
The Interchange Model and Parsons' Final Approach to Multidimensional Theory
chapter 5|32 pages
The Later Period (2)
Socialization, Social Change, and the Systemic and Historical Bases of Individual Freedom
chapter 6|19 pages
The Methodological Error(1)
Neopositivism and the Formalization of Parson's Theory
chapter 7|42 pages
The Methodological Error (2)
The Neopositivist Strategy and the Conflation of Presuppositional Logic with Specific Commitments
chapter 8|19 pages
The Presuppositional Error (1)
Sociological Idealism and the Attack on Instrumental Order in the Early and Middle Work
