The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

The social ontological foundations of

immanent critique

Titus Stahl
stahl@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M., Germany

Colloquium Philosophy and the Social Sciences

Prague, May 14-18, 2008

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

Types of social criticism

Types of social criticism

1 Internal criticism: explicitly acknowledged norms
2 External criticism
3 Immanent criticism: norms, not explicitly acknowledged,
but implicit in practice
But what does it exactly mean that norms are implicit in
social practice?

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

Possible candidates for grounding implicit norms

Unsuccessful candidates for sources of implicit normativity

Explicit beliefs
Regularities of behavior
Dispositions
Conclusion: No facts about individuals are sufficient to ground
implicit normativity.
Better idea: Norms are implicit in social interactions
⇒ Social pragmatism

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

Social pragmatism I

“The basic idea of social pragmatism is to look for the

existence of normativity not in the raw behavior of individuals,
but in the normative reactions they exhibit towards each
other’s behavior, in their second-order behavior. In normative
reactions we can not only see what kind of behavior a
community exhibits, but also what kind of behavior it takes
itself to exhibit, and therefore, how people classify their
behavior.”

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

Social pragmatism II

What a community takes its norms to be can consequently be

discovered by how it treats its normative behavior, that is, by
looking at the normative reactions to normative reactions.

⇒ Conceiving social norms as web of reinforcing normative

attitudes allows to explain historical development of normative
structures.

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

Social pragmatism III: Three problems of social

pragmatism

Three problems of simple social pragmatism:

Individualist bias
Conformist bias
Does not account for reflexive structure of normativity

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

Introducing collective attitudes I

The individualist bias can be solved by understanding

sanctions as expression of a collective attitude
A collective attitude should be understood as mutual
normative commitment to a shared standard
Notion of recognition

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

Introducing collective attitudes II

Recognition
Recognition is a mutual ascription of default (but not absolute)
authority of evaluation between members of a community by
virtue of which they can exhibit collective attitudes

A recognition theory of immanent normativity can also

integrate
1 problem of conformism (→ default-and-challenge
structure)
2 problem of reflexivity (→ discursive practices)

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

The method of immanent critique I

If immanent norms are constituted by recognition,

immanent norms are the second-level norms which show
up in social attitudes towards normative behaviour
such attitudes express what people practically take their
norms to be
immanent norms can be sociologically discovered and
studied

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

The method of immanent critique II

Types of immanent critique

1 simple disagreement between immanent and explicit
norms: critic makes immanent norms explicit
2 conflicting or inconsistent immanent normative attitudes:
critic must look for social source of deformation and
engage in dialogue

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

The method of immanent critique III

This model can also be used to justify

demands for the realization of the material
presuppositions of normativity
criticism of reified forms of normative practice
in any community which takes itself to be a normative
community.

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt

The social ontological foundations of immanent critique

stahl@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Titus Stahl JWG-Universität Frankfurt