Anton Leist

During the last years Anglosaxon discussion about Marx and Marxism has been characterized by an intensified interest in historical materialism as a general theory of history. The most extensive, careful and analytically rigorous among several new treatments is the one by G.A. Cohen, which is the subject of four critical articles in the present issue of Analyse & Kritik. To make these articles and Cohen’s project understandable to the German reader, an attempt is made in the following to summarize the main arguments of Cohen’s defence of historical materialism and of the ensuing comprehensive and detailed discussion.

Since Hobbes' Leviathan was published in 1651, the 'problem of order' has been known for some time. Despite this long gestation period for social theory even today we do not have a universally agreed upon answer to this 'problem'. One of the reasons behind this lacuna may be the overly dispersed work being done in the economic and sociological traditions. Whereas one tradition favours 'collective action' as a central answer, the other thinks of the problem itself being dissolved by the acceptance of 'socialized man'. Here, an attempt is made to offer the phenomenon of 'cooperation' as a promising middle ground for both traditions. To underline the importance of cooperation as an elementary social activity, first, cooperation is shown as working in tandem with its rival 'competition'. Secondly, several conceptual analyses of what is included in collective action and cooperation are offered. These analyses, thirdly, are deepened by an overview of the motivational bases potentially advancing cooperation. Overall, an awareness of the self-creating character of cooperation is explored, and put forward as the most feasible way of answering the classical problem of order.

Ernst Fehr’s experimental research on altruistic behaviour aims at superseding the classical homo oeconomicus in micro-economic behaviour theory. This essay discusses Fehr’s results from two points of view: first, in regard to the understanding of social action associated with the term “altruism”; second, in regard to the ‘anthropological’ strategy of research that is based on the laboratory method. Against the emphasis on altruism it will be argued that it misleads into providing a distorted description of social acting, and that, due to insufficient clarity about motives for acting, Fehr’s empirical results give evidence not of altruism but rather of phenomena of social recognition. The objection against the anthropological strategy will be that it makes visible only local phenomena within prevailing social conditions and that it thus assumes more than it explains.

This critical review concentrates on four important parts of Raimo Tuomela’s analytical theory of social action. It examines the book’s reconstructions of social action, of practical reasoning in this context, of social norms and it investigates its claim to a conceptual individualism. The result is critical in several aspects. Tuomela’s most original idea in the analysis of joint action, that of we-intentions, is not broad enough to cover more than a part of social action in the commonly understood sense. His ‘social’ practical reasoning incorporates an implausible premiss. The game-theoretical reconstruction of social norms strikes one as unlikely to be fulfilled in social reality. Hardly any of these analyses back up the individualist claims of Tuomela’s project.

The article argues for a synthesis between analytical philosophy and social sciences as relevant and necessary. The motivation and framework of such a synthesis is outlined on the basis of a critical social science. The authors illuminate such a perspective negatively in a critique of empirical and theoretical sociology, then positively in a clarification of the critical standpoint. Four theses, two under each-aspect, are defended: 1. Concerning empirical social sciences Neither the quantitative nor the qualitative paradigm of empirical social science is able to put forward adequate methods for social research. Instead, the development of reconstructive methods is proposed to combine the advantages and eliminate the disadvantages of the quantitative and qualitative paradigms. 2. Concerning theoretical sociology Macrosociological theories tend to resist empirical corrobation. Pure theoretical and philosophical justification abounds instead. In this situation the tools of analytic theory of science are proposed in order to clarify the necessary steps towards a further development of theories, which can be empirically tested. 3. Concerning the critique of society A critical social science must incorporate a theory of a just society in order to analyse social institutions in a normative way. In this context an ethical realist approach is offered which tries to fulfill two conditions for sociologically relevant normative reasonings: satisfaction of individual interests and the rational consensus of all persons concerned. 4. Concerning critique of ideology The tools of analytic philosophy can be given new application by combining them with an analysis of interests under the title of critique of ideology.

Among philosophers and social scientists, Hume’s idea of justice is generally identified with a system of rules based on mutual advantage, their moral quality playing either an insignificant or no part at all. This conventional or contractarian model, respectively, is not adequate to the special institution of morality or, in Hume, to the virtues, artificial or natural. It is not self-interest but sympathy in combination with the indirect passions of pride and humility that gives conventions their moral quality and social relevance. This article suggests exegetic and systematic reasons for the normative importance of Hume’s moral psychology, which should open the way to a developing morality much more in agreement with actual Western societies than a static morality based on self-interest would allow.