Objective
My proposal focuses on the uses of Spinoza’s thought in French and German sociological literature from the last three decades of the 19th century up to the end of the First World War. It was in these countries and this period that sociology was progressively institutionalized as an academic discipline. Sociology’s claim for institutional and epistemological autonomy provoked an inevitably tension with political philosophy. The quest for a different conception of normativity was at the core of this querelle. In opposition to the classical conception of political normativity, sociologists posited that moral and legal norms were not imposed by legislators or established by philosophers, but should be analysed as the historical effects of the society’s power to self create.
Spinoza was a crucial reference for the early sociologists Tönnies and Worms, Simmel and Tarde and their endeavor to provide a theoretical foundation for the new discipline. Interestingly, however, this reference progressively disappears from the sociological debate from the 1890s onwards, and Spinozism was replaced by normative and Neo-Kantian approaches, as, partially, in Durkheim or definitely in Weber.
In this project I intend to provide the first rigorous historical investigation of Spinoza’s uses in classical sociology, thus offering a new paradigm for the philosophy of social sciences. My project aims to answering two sets of questions: 1. Why were classical sociologists drawing on Spinoza? What theoretical devices did Spinozism provide and how did these conceptual tools match the theoretical and epistemological expectations of classical sociology? 2. How are we to interpret the fact that Spinozism was defeated by Kantianism? How can Spinoza and Kant be considered as supporting alternative conceptions of social normativity shaping the realm of classical sociology and how does this alternative still operate in contemporary debates on the philosophy of social sciences?
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social sciences sociology
- humanities history and archaeology history modern history
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy political philosophy
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF
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Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
75270 Paris
France
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.