History Of Social Theory In the Light of Intercivilizational Perspective

About the Book

          Travel through time is in a sense like travel through space to different countries. Exposure to different social theories helps to put our own in perspective, allowing us to see what is distinctive about it and helping to bring our unconscious assumptions to light. Aspects of social life we take for granted take on a different hue against a backdrop of social theories in which they do not appear. Comparing different theories, moreover, is especially striking when they represent different stages in the evolution of our present views. It is a gigantic task to define what social theory is, when one is reminded that there are powerful forces within modernity that attempt to separate philosophy and metaphysics from social theory and the latter from religious thinking altogether.

         Theorein is defined as “to look at, to behold, to contemplate” a symbolic picture of an ordered whole. Social theory in the sense of a metaphysical philosophical reflection is called the “master science”. In the words of Dante Germino social theory is:

“That intellectual tradition which affirms the possibility of transcending the sphere of immediate practical concerns and ‘viewing’ man’s societal existence from a critical perspective.” (1967. 7)

“Theoretical knowledge is knowledge for its own sake rather than for some utilitarian end, and the bios theoretikos, or theoretic life, because it is most akin to the divine, is the highest form of human existence.” (1967. 8-9)

About the Author

Seyed Javad Miri graduated from Goteborg University in Sweden and got his doctor degree from Bristol University in England and has been a Visiting Professor in England, China and Russia at the departments of Philosophy, Sociology and Social Anthropology respectively and he has been working on the relation between social theory, religion and philosophy and soon shall move to Sharif University in Iran.