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1The Changing Forms of Social Phenomena TodayPhilosophy and Technology 38 (1): 1-22. 2025.This essay provides a framework for characterizing changes to social phenomena that accompany the digitalization of society. It begins by discharging two preliminary tasks: presenting the social ontology used in the analysis—a version of practice theory—and surveying extant general accounts of sociodigital phenomena to give readers a sense of the accounts on offer and to indicate through contrast how broad my account is. The starting point for the essay’s own account is the great number and vari…Read more
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10Pas de deux: Practice Theory and PhenomenologyPhänomenologische Forschungen 2017 (2): 24-39. 2017.This essay explores consonant aspects of the relationship between phenomenology and practice theory. It makes three basic claims. The first is really just an observation, namely, that phenomenology makes incisive contributions to the account of action found in practice theory. The second claim is that practice theory updates an important conception of sociality developed in post Heideggerian phenomenology. And the third claim is that phenomenologies and practice theories can combine to form wide…Read more
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11Early Heidegger on SocialityIn Hubert L. Dreyfus & Mark A. Wrathall (eds.), A Companion to Heidegger, Wiley-blackwell. 2005.This chapter contains sections titled: Conclusion: Heidegger and Social Theory.
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9Ancient and Naturalistic Themes in Nietzsche's EthicsIn Mazzino Montinari, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Heinz Wenzel, Günter Abel & Werner Stegmaier (eds.), 1994, De Gruyter. pp. 146-167. 1993.
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13Nietzsche's WesensethikIn Mazzino Montinari, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Heinz Wenzel, Günter Abel & Werner Stegmaier (eds.), 1991, De Gruyter. pp. 68-87. 1991.
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23Social Change in a Material Worldoffers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author's earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the formation and evolution of digitally-mediated associati…Read more
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20Questions of Practice in Philosophy and Social Theory (edited book)Routledge. 2018.Humanistic theory for more than the past 100 years is marked by extensive attention to practice and practices. Two prominent streams of thought sharing this focus are pragmatism and theories of practice. This volume brings together internationally prominent theorists to explore key dimensions of practice and practices on the background of parallels and points of contact between these two traditions. The contributors all are steeped in one or both of these streams and well-known for their work on…Read more
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24Where Times MeetCosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 1 (2): 191-212. 2006.This essay pursues two goals: to argue that two fundamental types of time—the time of objective reality and “the time of the soul”—meet in human activity and history and to defend the legitimacy of calling a particular version of the second type a kind of time. The essay begins by criticizing Paul Ricoeur’s version of the claim that times of these two sorts meet in history. It then presents an account of human activity based on Heidegger’s Being and Time, according to which certain times of the …Read more
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Social Reality and Social ScienceDissertation, University of California, Berkeley. 1986.My dissertation traces the consequences following for social science from an analysis of the nature of its object domain, which I call "socio-historical reality." In particular, I hope thereby to dissolve many misconceptions about the character of social science. ;Influenced by Dilthey, I propose an "individualist" account that analyzes socio-historical reality as nothing but interrelated everyday lives, which themselves consist in series of actions that are governed by practical intelligibility…Read more
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108Reply to 'Rethinking Social Criticism: Rules, Logic and Internal Critique'History of the Human Sciences 16 (4): 91-94. 2003.
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162Overdue analysis of Bourdieu's theory of practiceInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 30 (1 & 2). 1987.Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice is an unsung classic of contemporary social philosophy. It combines the first analysis by a social theorist of the practical intelligibility governing action with an exciting perspective on how the structure of social phenomena determines and is itself perpetuated by action. Bourdieu, however, misinterprets his own theory of intelligibility as a theory of the causal generation of action. Moreover, he attempts to analyze the underlying structure of intelligibi…Read more
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Marx and Wittgenstein as natural historiansIn Gavin Kitching & Nigel Pleasants (eds.), Marx and Wittgenstein: Knowledge, Morality and Politics, Routledge. 2002.
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45Social science in societyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (1). 2002.This Article does not have an abstract
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223The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (edited book)Routledge. 2000.This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology
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86The social bearing of natureInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 43 (1). 2000.This essay examines how nature pertains to social life. Part I describes the social ontology the essay employs to address this issue. This ontology is of the site variety and is opposed to ontologies of both the individualist and socialist sorts. Part II describes where nature appears in this ontology. Artifacts are differentiated from nature, and much of ?nature? is shown to be second nature, a type of artifact that looks and feels like nature. Part II concludes by disputing the idea that natur…Read more
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35Simulation theory and the verstehen school: A Wittgensteinian approachIn K. R. Stueber & H. H. Kogaler (eds.), Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, Boulder: Westview Press. 2000.
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274Practices and actions a Wittgensteinian critique of Bourdieu and GiddensPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (3): 283-308. 1997.This article criticizes Bourdieu's and Giddens's overintellectualizing accounts of human activity on the basis of Wittgenstein's insights into practical under standing. Part 1 describes these two theorists' conceptions of a homology between the organization of practices (spatial-temporal manifolds of action) and the governance of individual actions. Part 2 draws on Wittgenstein's discussions of linguistic definition and following a rule to criticize these conceptions for ascribing content to the…Read more
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93Living out of the past: Dilthey and Heidegger on life and historyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 46 (3). 2003.This essay examines continuities and transformations in Heidegger's appropriation of Dilthey's account of life and the accompanying picture of history between the end of World War One and Being and Time . The essay also judges the cogency of two conclusions that Heidegger draws in that book about history, viz, that historicity qua feature of Dasein's being both underlies objective history and makes the scholarly narration of history possible. Part one describes Dilthey's account of life, Heidegg…Read more
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38Subjects, intelligibility, and historyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 28 (1-4): 273-287. 1985.
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1Early Heidegger on Being, the Clearing, and Realism in Heidegger (1889-1989)Revue Internationale de Philosophie 43 (168): 80-102. 1989.
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135This book develops an original Heideggerian account of the timespace and indeterminacy of human activity while describing insights that this account provides into the nature of activity, society and history. Drawing on empirical examples, the book argues that activity timespace is a key component of social space and time, shows that interwoven timespaces form an essential infrastructure of social phenomena, offers a novel account of the existence of the past in the present, and defends the teleo…Read more
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2Raimo Tuomela, The Philosophy of Social Practices: A Collective Acceptance View Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 23 (6): 409-411. 2003.
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82Nature and technology in historyHistory and Theory 42 (4). 2003.This essay sketches an expanded theoretical conception of the roles of nature and technology in history, one that is based on a social ontology that does not separate nature and society. History has long been viewed as the realm of past human action. On this conception, nature is treated largely as an Other of history, and technology is construed chiefly as a means for human fulfillment. There is no history of nature, and the history of technology becomes the history of useful products. The essa…Read more
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14Where times meetCosmos and History 1 (2): 191-212. 2005.This essay pursues two goals: to argue that two fundamental types of time—the time of objective reality and “the time of the soul”—meet in human activity and history and to defend the legitimacy of calling a particular version of the second type a kind of time. The essay begins by criticizing Paul Ricoeur’s version of the claim that times of these two sorts meet in history. It then presents an account of human activity based on Heidegger’s Being and Time, according to which certain times of the …Read more
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