ABSTRACT
Philosophical thought and the social sciences are closely related yet also in conflict with each other. Certainly, the origin of the social sciences can be found within philosophy and history, but once the social sciences had forged their own conceptuality in the 19th century (social classes, anomie, ethnicity, …) they were to be viewed as separate from philosophy.
In this chapter, the author attempts to show that certain concepts of philosophical origin—such as “struggle for recognition,” “unhappy consciousness,” resentment, the “beautiful soul,” et al.—can be very useful for the social sciences if they are properly redefined and re-contextualized. The example of jihadism shows how both fields shed light on many aspects of the intentionality of Jihadi actors—if they are readapted within the respective social, anthropological, and historical context. This requires the historicization of the above-mentioned categories (with a view to the historical context), their socialization (with a view to the social framework) and their anthropologization (by way of an adaptation to the anthropological setting).
