ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of Michel Freitag's work. Following a quick comparison with similar grand theories, it shows that Freitag's renewal of sociological theory rearticulates the latter with phenomenology and philosophy on the basis of the recognition of the ontological frailty of the symbolic. This 20th-century experience centrally informs his work which unfolds into: a general theory where the social “beingness” that sociology proposed as a substitute to early modern political philosophy “Man's individual's nature”, is widened into understanding humanness as the realm of the symbolic always necessarily articulated through sensible experience; a historical typology of societal forms hinging on the conceptualisation of modes of reproduction emphasising the reflexive way in which societies maintained themselves as totalities in time and space; and a scathing criticism of postmodernity and of the uncontrolled development unleashed by globalisation demanding people's unreflective adaptation and leading to a possible disconnection between “structure” and “agency”.
