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Situated creativity, contingency and modernity: an interview with Hans Joas Hans Joas -‐ Pablo Beytía
Translated section of: Beytía, Pablo (2012). Creatividad situada, contingencia y modernidad. Entrevista a Hans Joas. Andamios, Nº 12, pp. 361-‐389.
Pablo Beytía: Let me start this interview with a general question about the theory of action. With influences from historicism, hermeneutics and pragmatism, you have criticized the rationalistic and normativistic theories, and proposed a unified theory of practice based on creativity, on the "situated freedom" of the human being. What are the theoretical problems that you identified in the earlier action theories and how can the emphasis on creativity overcome them? Hans Joas: In the history of sociological theorizing, or one might even say, in the history of social scientific theorizing, there has been for more than hundred years a constant controversy between those who propose models of rational action and those who criticize these economic types of theorizing, mostly by emphasizing the normative character of human action. I think this is a controversy that you can identify, for example, in Émile Durkheim's critique of Herbert Spencer in his book The Division of Labor in Society1 or in Talcott Parsons' book of 1937 The Structure of Social Action,2 but also in the 1980s, when Amitai Etzioni wrote the book The Moral Dimension,3 which is a critique of the microeconomic model. I accept most of the objections these normativists have raised against the rational action model. I think that rational action is the narrowest model for understanding human action, because we all know that only a very small amount of human actions empirically fit the description of rational action. Most proponents of the rational action model would agree with that and say: “Yes, of course empirically only very few actions are rational actions. But, nevertheless, this model, for other reasons, is the most useful to conceptualize action”. Now, what the normativists —from Durkheim through Parsons and up to Etzioni— say, is that rational action models have two main problems: One is that they cannot explain where the normativity, which is an element of the notion of rationality, comes from. And, secondly, they have problems explaining the existence of stabilized social order. This was the argumentation in Parsons' The Structure of Social Action. Furthermore, we all know that we live within a social order and that this social order is more than the result of the aggregations of rational action. In that
1 Durkheim, Émile. 1893. De la Division du Travail Social. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 2 Parsons, Talcott. 1937. The Structure of Social Action. New York: McGraw Hill. 3 Etzioni, Amitai. 1988. The Moral Dimension. Toward a new economics. New York: The Free Press.
sense, the model of normatively oriented action is wider than the rational action model, because it tries to explain the existence of normative social order and the emergence of norms, including the normative character of rationality. When you say rationality, you use it as a normative concept in itself. For example, in the history of economic theorizing, one of the great books is Albert Hirschman's study The Passions and the Interests,4 which showed that in the history of economic theorizing, rationality meant not simply the release of your spontaneous corporeal desires, but a control over these desires to act as a truly economic actor. And so, we have this ambiguity in the understanding of rational action: whether it means just following your desires or whether it means controlling your desires with long-‐term rational goals in mind. For example, accumulating wealth instead of just spending all the money that you earn or that you have. In that sense, rational action itself has a normative character, but you cannot explain the quality of this normativity within the terminology of rational action theory. That was Parsons' argument in The Structure of Social Action (1937), that I regard as his greatest and most important book. I say that the model of normatively oriented action is more comprehensive and that it is able to solve two problems that cannot be solved by means of the rational action theory. Now, the model of the creativity of action is even more comprehensive, because the normatively oriented models cannot explain two things: one is how we apply norms and values in concrete situations of action. Even if we have internalized specific norms or values, it is not necessarily clear how we have to act. We cannot logically derive from our norms and values what we have to do. For example, I may think that peace is an important value, but let's say somewhere in the world a civil war breaks out or let's say in my country a civil war breaks out. What do I have to do when I believe in peace? Does that mean that I have to be a radical pacifist who says: “I will never use means of violence, whatever happens, I will not use means of violence, even if I'm being attacked, I will not use violence to defend myself”. It would be one possible conclusion. Of course another possible conclusion is to say: “Since I believe in peace, I have to fight for a peaceful order to repress those who have taken up arms”. And, in this situation, I will maybe use weapons for the sake of peace. So, the mere fact that I believe in the value of peace does not really tell me what I have to do, because there can be totally different courses of action that are based on the same value. For the solution of that problem —for an adequate description of how our actions are based on our norms and values—, we need a creativity-‐oriented understanding of action, because our courses of action are always risky. Even if I think that I am doing something with a distinct goal in mind, I can never be sure that this is really the action that leads me to achieve that end, because action is future oriented and I cannot anticipate the things that may pervert the course of my action. So this is one of the two problems of a normative theory that the theory of creative action can solve.
4 Hirschman, Albert. 1977. The Passions and the Interests: political arguments for capitalism before its triumph. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
The second one is the origin of values.5 Normatively oriented action theory, like the one Parsons developed, constantly speaks about values, but it has no answer to the question where these values come from. I think Durkheim is a different case, because I personally think that his book on religion, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,6 is one of the most important contributions to an understanding of the emergence of values, in experiences that I call self-‐transcendence. In that sense, the creativity oriented model of action is the most comprehensive, more comprehensive than the rational action model and than the normatively oriented model of action. But be careful: It would be wrong to think that we are talking about three types of action here: I'm talking about three types of action theory, not three types of action. And what I am emphasizing is the distinction between these three types of action theory. So, I am not talking about a type of creative action, but about a theory of the creativity of action that is also necessary to understand rational action and normatively oriented action. P. B.: A unified theory of action… Is this the same problem that Parsons attempted to resolve? H. J.: Yes, it was Parsons’ problem, but I think Parsons' model has remained within the range of the alternative between rational and normatively oriented action, whereas some of the sociological classics, above all Durkheim, to some extent also Max Weber and Georg Simmel —I have written about that in the beginning of the book The creativity of action—,7 and mostly American pragmatism and the hermeneutic historicist tradition have contributed to the understanding of the creativity of action. P. B.: One criticism to your theory has been (I am thinking of Charles Camic8 and Rafael Farfán)9 that its focus on creativity hides the importance of certain types of actions, such as imitation, habit or routine. This could prevent that your theory is conceived as a unified proposal for action theory. Is it possible to understand the creative action in these practices? H. J.: One of Charles Camic's articles, the one on habit in the American Journal of sociology10 many years ago, makes a point that is quite similar to what I am saying. You have to understand that my theory of the creativity of action is not a theory of creative action. Opposing habit to creative action is something totally different, of course.
5 On this topic, see: Joas, Hans. 1997. Die Entstehung der Werte. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. (English translation: The Genesis of Values. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2000). 6 Durkheim, Émile. 1998. Élémentaires Formes de la Vie Religieuse: le Système Totémique en Australie. Presses Universitaires de France. 7 Joas, Hans. 1992. Die Kreativität des Handelns. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 8 Camic, Charles. 1998. “Reconstructing the theory of action”. Sociological Theory, Vol 3, Nº 16. 9 Farfán, Rafael. 1999. “Ni acción ni sistema: el tercer modelo de acción de Hans Joas”. Sociológica, Nº 40. 10 Camic, Charles. 1986. “The matter of habit”. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 91, Nº 5.
Like the classical pragmatists, I say that for the understanding of human action habit is crucial. That was one of the crucial points in the writings of the pragmatists; they said that human action to a very large extent is habitual. And yes, of course we act on the basis of routines. I could not survive for five minutes without routines. For example, the way I walk around is totally habitual: I once learned how to walk, when I was about one year old, and, since then, it has become a corporeal habit. I do not have to think about how to walk, I just do it. That is the basic pragmatist idea, as long as I do not encounter a problem. When I encounter a problem —for example, I walk, but suddenly there is a river and there is no bridge but I want to get to the other side of the river, thus I encounter an obstacle because I cannot just continue walking—, I search a solution. So, in the pragmatist way of thinking, our action takes place in a constant tension between our habits and anticipating problems for which we have to find creative solutions. So my model of action is not a model of constant creativity, but of habitual action and creativity, applied in situations where the routines get into some kind of crisis: when I have a problem, when I cannot just continue. That is the understanding of the creativity of action that I have developed in my book twenty years ago. I think that it just does not make sense to say: —“but where are the habits? You just talk about creativity”—, because I am not just talking about creativity, but about the interplay between habits and creativity. You could say that on the basis of a theory of the creativity of human action, you can reach an appropriate understanding of what habit is. Habit is a central notion in the theory of the creativity of human action. P. B.: Distantly influenced by pragmatism (Pascal, Marx, Bachelard, etc.), Bourdieu also poses an escape from the philosophy of consciousness. He designs a nonteleological action theory that emphasizes the corporeality of the actor and his original sociality. Despite these remarkable coincidences, I think there is a fundamental difference between Bourdieu's focus and your focus: Bourdieu's theory of practice places great emphasis on the dispositions recorded in the agents and the society, while you emphasize —if I understand you correctly— the creative solution of problems encountered in habitual situations. Do you think that both theories are contradictory? Could the two approaches complement each other? H. J.: Let me say three things. The first is that if you want my extensive response to your question, you should look at the Bourdieu chapter in the book Social theory.11 There you will see much better a detailed critique of Bourdieu than what I can spontaneously develop now. Second point, I am not sure that Bourdieu and I describe the problem in the same terms. I think that Bourdieu, as a French thinker, was very much thinking in terms of an alternative to phenomenology and structuralism. His claim is to have 11 Joas, Hans and Wolfgang Knöbl. 2004. Sozialtheorie: zwanzig einführende Vorlesungen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, pp. 510-‐557 (Fünfzehnte Vorlesung). (English translation: Social Theory. Twenty Introductory Lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009. Spanish translation forthcoming).
developed a kind of synthesis of elements from phenomenology and from structuralism, or to have gone beyond that dichotomy. In his early days, he once published a very interesting article on the vacillation of French intellectual life between a kind of extreme emphasis on subjectivity, for example in Phenomenology, and an extreme emphasis on objectivity, for example in Structuralism. I think that is correct with regard to the French intellectual traditions, but it is not correct, for example, with regard to the German or American intellectual traditions. So, in that sense, I would not accept Bourdieu's description of the intellectual situation, but I would say that he overgeneralizes something that is true for France, but not true for other countries. And this is important, because the traditions on which my own thinking is based do not really fit into his description. I think neither Pragmatism nor Hermeneutics are extreme subjectivism or extreme objectivism. I think his claim for originality has a lot to do with his description of the intellectual situation in France, as being the general situation. I mean if you look at his work, I see it as much less innovative than others see it, because I think many things he says were already articulated by the American and German traditions long before Bourdieu was even born. For example, his emphasis on habit may be something new within the French debate, but it is certainly not new in the American debate, where you already have that in the 19th century. So my third point is that Bourdieu emphasizes the habitual character of action and he emphasizes corporeality, no question. I would say that we share that, but I doubt that he has an understanding of the creativity of human action. For example, an interesting case is to look at his book on art, Les règles de l'art.12 In that book he has a lot of interesting things to say about the conditions for the production of art. For example, how a man writing a novel anticipates the conditions for his success, when he publishes a book or how he distinguishes himself from other writers and all these things. But I think that when you read that, you also realize, that although all these conditions may be true and although they are all important and all interesting, they are clearly not at the core of what artistic production is. You may have a complete knowledge of the conditions for the success of a novelist, but still be completely unable to write a good novel. Because, to write a good novel or to create an important new painting, you need certain creative abilities that are totally different from all these external conditions of success. I think that right at that point, you can see that Bourdieu had a sociological approach to analyze what happens to creative innovations, but has no understanding of the action that is adequate for these creative processes themselves. P. B.: We come back to the concept of action... I think it is a broad concept that —as Talcott Parsons and then Niklas Luhmann pointed out—, crosses the boundaries of sociology. Every human action is intertwined with biological, psychological, social and cultural phenomena, which makes action a category of interdisciplinary study. We could go even further and think that all sciences, in describing aspects of the world, also describe conditions of action. What then distinguishes sociology from other sciences? Must sociology study a specific problem? Is there a social object that should 12 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. Les règles de l'art: genèse et structure du champ littéraire. Paris: Seuil.
be fully investigated by the sociologist (social action, social fact, interaction, intersubjectivity, communication, relationship, social network, etc.)? H. J.: The first thing is that for a long time sociologists tried to define the subject matter of their discipline as society and I am very skeptical about that. I think that had something to do with the fact that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in Europe above all, one could really identify societies with clear cut borders and imagine, like in the case of Durkheim, that sociology in France studies French society and that French society somehow is a self-‐contained whole. Now, this was not the case in the age before the rise of the nation-‐state and it is certainly much less the case in the contemporary world, where so many economic, political and cultural processes transcend borders. In that sense, I think society should not be the defining word for the discipline of sociology. Now, you could say there are two different levels: one that is more comprehensive and one that is more elementary than national states and their societies. On the one hand, you can say global processes, and on the other hand, the elementary processes of social life. And so, our book Social Theory13 uses the term social theory and not sociological theory for that reason. If you think social processes are the subject matter of sociology, then —as you said— knowledge from other disciplines has to come in to analyze these social processes. So, for me, Sociology is not defined by the subject matter of society, but by social processes. Of course, in order to explain what that means, you have to introduce a specific understanding of sociality. When you use the term social action, it is difficult, because this concept is understood in very different ways by different authors. In Max Weber, social action is just one part of human action —those actions that are more or less directly addressed to other actors—, whereas in George Herbert Mead, social action means a rich group process. In this sense, I am more on the Meadian than on the Weberian side. In other regards, I am much closer to Max Weber, because I think that contemporary sociology has to renew itself through historical analyses, something that Weber and Durkheim did. Mainly, Sociology should not restrict itself to the analysis of contemporary social processes, but to bring in the whole of world history and use universal history as the basis for its theoretical claims. This is really something that both Weber and Durkheim did, they did not just speak about their own times, but about human history in the long run. And I think that is one of most important contemporary developments in Sociology, to get truly historical again. P. B.: So the difference between sociology and other sciences would be one object, and that object is the social process. Or is there not really an important difference between disciplines? H. J.: I mean I understand your question —mainly is it a perspective or is it a subject matter, that is how I understand your question—. Now I should tell you that in a
13 Joas, Hans and Wolfgang Knöbl. 2004. Sozialtheorie: zwanzig einführende Vorlesungen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
certain sense, I do not really believe in the possibility of drawing totally clear-‐cut boundaries between disciplines. I do not think that the world is by itself structured according to the system of scientific disciplines, but that we have a kind of negotiation process here. I think the interesting things are unsolved intellectual problems. It is totally secondary whether this is done by this or that discipline. For example, my discipline is Sociology, but I think I bring in a lot of knowledge from other disciplines —Anthropology, History, Philosophy, Psychology, even Theology— . So, it is a constant negotiation process of people claiming the right to deal with this or that topic within their discipline or denying that right to others. I think that would be a sociological perspective on the question of what the subject matter of different disciplines is. P. B.: In War and Modernity14 you criticize the myths of progress and differentiation theory, trying to rescue the social historicity and the contingency of social processes. Similarly, you suggest that «we should become accustomed to considering "modernization" simply as a collective name that indicates a series of historical changes».15 If so, the difference between modernization and any other historical process vanishes. Does it make sense to speak of modernity? If it made sense: what social events could identify this process? H. J.: Let me say first, I always distinguish between two different concepts of modernization. The first one is a rather innocent concept of Modernization, something like technological and scientific progress and economic growth. If this is what we mean by Modernization, you are of course right, there has been modernization in human history all the time, at different rapidity of course. There can be long periods of economic stagnation or without much scientific and technological progress, but on the other side there can be at least slow progress. For example, we could say there was a certain modernization of agricultural technology in the Middle Ages in Europa. This is rather innocent and has to do with the fact that we use the adjective “modern”: something is more modern than something from the past and we call this process of change “modernization”. I have no problem with that. The other way to use the word modernization, the concept Modernization, is to think it is the process of transition from an old epoch to a new epoch called Modernity. I have problems with that for two reasons: first, when we say that, the crucial question is when did this new epoch called Modernity begin. For example, when you ask students this question in class, you get all sorts of answers: from 1453, when the Turks defeated the Byzantine Empire, to 1492, when Columbus
14 Joas, Hans. 2000. Kriege und Werte: Studien zur Gewaltgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Metternich: Velbrück. (English translation: War and Modernity. Studies in the History of Violence in 20th Century, Oxford: Polity Press 2003.) 15 Translation from the Spanish version: Joas, Hans. 2005. Guerra y Modernidad. Estudios sobre la Historia de la Violencia en el Siglo XX. Barcelona: Paidós, p. 32. The full quote is: “Debemos acostumbrarnos a la idea de que las discrepancias entre ámbitos sociales parciales son algo normal y que el concepto de “modernización” tal vez sólo sea un nombre colectivo para indicar una serie de eventos de cambio, cuyas variables resultan posibles y reales”.
discovered America, or 1517, when Martin Luther published his 95 theses for the Protestant Reformation; then, from all possible phases in between the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, or major changes in Art like the development of abstract painting in the early 20th century, or 1945, 1968 and 1989. Now, from a scientific point of view, a concept is just useless when it has so vague contours. Of course, we could just make an agreement on what we mean by Modernity in the future. For example, it could be the age after the Industrial Revolution —or something like that—, and that may make sense. I am not saying that all these different dates are unimportant or that it does not make sense to speak about them as indicating major historical changes. I am just saying that maybe it does not help very much to call the time after that change Modernity. My second reason to be very hesitating is mainly because Modernity sounds as if there is a very close connection, what I call a “tight coupling” —as the organizational sociologists say—, between different processes. For example, as if Democratization is necessarily a part of Modernity. This has often been the claim of the people who speak like that. Now, are all modern societies democratic? No, of course, they are not all modern democracies, but they are modern in the chronological sense. Now what do you do with that? You call this a special case and you need a special explanation for that. I say: this does not make sense, this is smuggling a certain normative meaning into a chronological concept. P. B.: That could be a problem in the writings of Ulrich Beck… H. J.: Beck really has this problem, but he solves it by inventing a term like Reflexive Modernity, making the claim that there was a kind of first modernity and now comes the second modernity. I do not buy that at all. I think there was much reflexivity in this earlier modernity and that many things he says about this Second Modernity are exactly the same things that the modernization theorists of the 1950s and 1960s said about Modernity. So, he just follows the same logic the modernization theorists follow, but introduces a new historical step here. I make a totally different proposal, mainly to treat the alleged subprocesses of Modernization as separate processes, to understand —for example— that Democratization is a process and there is no inherent logic of Modernity that helps Democratization. And, of course, since one of my main areas is the Sociology of Religion, I am particularly competent in elaborating on that point with regard to Secularization. Many modernization theorists have always assumed that Secularization is a necessary part of modernization. I think that is empirically not true, from the United States to South Korea, which are very modern societies that are not very secularized. It is more fruitful to analyze the dynamic of Secularization, for example, or to analyze the dynamic of Democratization, without such a unitary notion of Modernity that ties these things together into a kind of integrated whole. P. B.: You touch the issue of contingency in social processes, and the ways of reducing it, which suppose a "tight coupling" of the different dimensions of change in the Modernization theory. In my view, Niklas Luhmann is one of those sociologists who has
put great emphasis on contingency. This is shown, for example, when he points the "improbabilities of communication" or when he states the existence of "functional equivalents" (opening functionalism to a historically variable content). However, you have criticized the theory of functional differentiation in general and specifically Luhmann for not fully accepting contingency. Could you explain this problem that you see in Niklas Luhmann's theory? H. J.: Luhmann puts strong emphasis on Contingency, stronger even than Parsons. We should not forget that Parsons already had emphasized the role of what he called Double Contingency in human interaction very much, but Luhmann made this stronger and stronger. That is a great achievement, but my point is to say that the ironic thing about Luhmann is that he can see every social phenomenon as contingent, with one exception, which is the process of functional differentiation itself. For him, the process of functional differentiation is not contingent. This is the one guiding thread of his theory, whereas in my theory, I say that there is not a necessary process of functional differentiation, because functional differentiation itself depends on very specific presuppositions. There are social conflicts about the degree and the specific character of differentiation. And, it is simply not true that by emphasizing functional differentiation we have identified the one master trend of history. And again, if I refer to my two empirical research areas, Religion and War, I think both cases are very clear in this regard: Religion leads to innovations that cannot simply be subsumed under the logic of functional differentiation and the same is true for wars. One of my favorite examples is the origin of Italian Fascism in the experience of the First World War. It just does not make sense to describe Fascism as the result of an ongoing process of functional differentiation. It was a process of dealing with something that happened in the War, you may say the War was the result of certain processes of differentiation, but in itself it was something totally different, which had its own effects on human action. P. B.: It is my understanding that your emphasis on contingency has led you to use a genealogical approach. Both in your article on universalism16 as in the book The sacredness of the person,17 you try to create an alternative to approaches based on Nietzsche and Kant for the study of values. With a similar interest, you propose the analysis of the war an alternative between Realpolitik and pacifist utopia. What is the "affirmative genealogy"? How can we link philosophy and history in the sociological study of values? H. J.: Let me explain both elements of this expression. Genealogy is a term that was invented in its philosophical sense by Nietzsche and was then very famously used by Michael Foucault. And, in both cases —that is a good thing— they speak about Genealogy because they want to do justice to the contingency of human history. 16 Joas, Hans. 2008. “The emergence of Universalism: an affirmative Genealogy”. Frontiers of sociology. 17 Joas, Hans. 2011. Die sakralität der Person: eine neue Genealogie der Menschenrechte. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. (English translation forthcoming: Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.)
They want to reconstruct historical processes, but in a spirit that shows that these processes, in a certain sense, were not necessary: that they happened, but that something else could have also happened. That is this perspective of Contingency. There is always a certain inclination in people to see the things that happened as if they were the only things that could have happened, but that is not true. Sometimes, in a war, it is very open who will gain the upper-‐hand, who will win. And then, a lot depends on whether the Greeks or the Persians win in Salamis, or whether Hitler wins the Second World War or not; a lot depends on that. So, I like the genealogical approach because of its ability to reconstruct history as contingent. But, in Nietzsche and Foucault the idea was that when we do a genealogical study of values, this kind of study liberates us from these values. That is a positive way to put it; the negative way to put it would be that it destroys our naive commitment to these values. Nietzsche clearly assumed that by showing how —as he says— the Jewish value of Justice or the Christian value of Love have come into being, we would lose somehow our commitment to the values of Justice and Love. In his perspective, this would be a good thing, because it would make us more tolerant. Now, I am saying that that is not true. I can be fully aware of the contingency of the emergence of my values, but this awareness does not destroy my commitment to them. I as a postwar German can be fully aware that, for example, my interest in Human Rights has something to do with the German past, with the Nazi crimes. In that sense my interest in Human Rights is contingent; had there not been the Nazi crimes, maybe I would be a totally different human being, with different interests. But this insight does not weaken my commitment to Human Rights, not at all, it even strengthens it to some extent. I say: “Well, these Nazi crimes happened, it was contingent that they happened”. If the Nazis had never seized power in Germany, they would not have been able to commit their crimes. So, all this is contingent, but my insight into that contingency might even strengthen my commitment to certain values. This is what I call affirmative, therefore, as the counter notion to destructive. I try to write human history in a way that there is full justice to the contingency of that history, but, at the same time, I try to strengthen the commitment to universalist values. That is what I call affirmative genealogy and the book on Human Rights is an attempt to practice this approach. And, it also contains a 50 page methodological chapter on which I explain how such a method could work. P. B.: In your genealogy of Human Rights you propose as an alternative to the "Enlightenment myth" and Foucault's disciplinary narrative, a focus on the sacredness of the person (in other writing, you have shown that it is also an alternative to the "charisma of reason" proposed by Weber).18 Why are both alternatives inadequate and what are the benefits of your proposal? H. J.: The question you are posing refers to one of six chapters of the Human Rights book: chapter two, where the empirical problem is how do we explain the abolition
18 Joas, Hans. 2002. Creatividad, acción y valores. Hacia una teoría de la contingencia. México D. F.: Biblioteca de Signos, chapter IV: “El carisma de los derechos humanos”.
of torture in Europe in the 18th Century. In the book on Human Rights, I deal with four empirical cases: the late 18th century declarations of Human Rights, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the abolition of torture and the abolition of slavery and this particular chapter deals with the abolition of torture. I analyze why in the year 1700 all European states had torture as part of their punitive justice system and in the year 1800 none of them had it. Something must have happened between 1700 and 1800. What was that and why did it happen? In the literature you have two dominant interpretations. One is that it was the initiative of certain courageous enlightened male intellectuals to abolish torture and there are different candidates for that role: one is the Italian intellectual Cesare Beccaria and another one is the Prussian King Frederick II, who in 1740 made also some steps to abolish torture. I try to empirically show why both descriptions are not correct. I say that the process of the abolition of torture in Europe had already set in, had already begun before Beccaria published his book. Actually, he even refers to those cases in his book, so he cannot be the lonely innovator here. And also —I do not want to get into all these details now, because you can find them in the book— Frederick II's initiative was much less courageous and not as crucial as some people have been tempted to assume. So, this is one of the conventional descriptions and it is clearly empirically not correct. The other one is this Foucauldian description, where actors do not play a role at all and where the abolition of torture is not even described as a kind of progress, it is just a switch in the organization of power. This is something that I find already from the outset not very appealing, but I try to show why what Foucault describes in several of his books with regard to the 18th century as a process of exclusion is in fact more a process of inclusion, in the sense that more human beings were seen as fully human beings. This has something to do with the formation of the asylum, for example: it may look as an exclusion and it is a physical exclusion, but it is a logical inclusion, because you treat human beings as curable, as people who can act differently. And, with regard to torture, I try to show that the true cultural transformation here is what I call “sacralization of the person”, namely an increased sensitivity with regard to the fact that even the most brutish criminal remains a human being, and that even if we find his crimes horrible, it does not imply that we can treat the criminal as horribly as the criminal treated his victims. So I say that this sacralization dynamic sets in and leads to a sensitization of the population and of lawgivers with regard to the brutal nature of punishment. P. B.: You share with some authors (like Castoriadis, Giddens, Bourdieu and Sennett, maybe Touraine and Etzioni) a critique of the philosophy of consciousness and of the teleological action theory, which leads them to raise an alternative base of action to overcome dichotomies such as individual/society, culture/materiality, agency/structure, rationality/normativity. You and these authors also point out an important opening to historicity. Do you think that this is a new paradigm of social science?
H. J.: I would have to speak about these authors individually. I knew Cornelius Castoriadis very well, I mean also personally, and I am certainly very much influenced by Castoriadis' philosophy of creativity, but I am not influenced very much by his politics. I would like to add that, because there are some people who mostly love his politics, I do not love his politics so much, but I love his philosophy. On the other hand, Castoriadis' philosophy was very far from being professional social science, so I could get some philosophical inspiration from him, but not the elaboration of a theory of creativity of the action. Giddens was important for me in the 1980s, both with regard to the understanding of action and with regard to the nation-‐state and violence, as one of his books was titled.19 But, I think Giddens after about 1990, more or less, lost interest in sociological theorizing. His later publications are either on the journalistic level or this political advisory genre and not very systematic theory. About Bourdieu: I see him as very different, as I have said before. And Sennett, interestingly had a kind of change in his orientation, in the direction of pragmatism, in the last ten years or so has began calling himself pragmatist. You mentioned Touraine and Etzioni, they should be definitely on the list. Now perhaps, in concluding, you ask if this is a new paradigm or not. Since I believe that so much in this paradigm has old historical roots in Pragmatism, Historicism and Hermeneutics, I am hesitating to call it new. But, I think that there are contemporary attempts to continue a tradition that certainly goes back to the 19th, if not the 18th century, and that if we see the commonalities of these authors and we see the systematic quality of that approach —creativity of action, contingency of social change—, then we see that there is indeed a very serious competitor to these economic rational models that are so influential in the contemporary world and to the Kantian-‐Habermasian models. So, yes, in that sense I would say yes. P.B.: Thank you very much, Professor Joas, for receiving me so kindly and sharing your ideas with me.
19 Giddens, Anthony. 1985. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. (Vol. II: The Nation-‐ State and Violence). Cambridge: Polity.
