Classical Social Theory
Fall 2012
Graduate Faculty
GSCO 5101
Carlos A. Forment
Graduate Faculty---New School for Social Research
Dept. of Sociology, 6 East 16th Avenue, Room 917
E-Mail: formentc@newschool.edu
Course Meetings: Monday, 4.00 to 5.50 pm
Office Hours: Monday 6.00 to 8.00pm
(for appointments: sign your name on the sheet that is affixed to my office door. i do not
take appointments by phone or email).
Course Description
This course seeks to explore the relationship between the emergence of 'modernity' and
the invention of 'social science.' Our readings include selections from a range of modern
thinkers who created some of social sciences most memorable and influential narratives;
we continue to use them today to make sense of our own world and each other’s place in
it. We will focus on the following four thinkers and the various narratives that they used
to make sense of modernity: Adam Smith on the impartial spectator and market society;
Alexis de Tocqueville on the development of the state and democratic life; Karl Marx on
alienation and exploitation; Max Weber on social action and rationalization; Sigmund
Freud on the libido and unconscious; and Georg Simmel on individualism and group life
in the metropolis.
Smith, Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Freud and Simmel, perhaps more than any other single
set of thinkers, were responsible for instituting the modern academic disciplines of
economics, political science, radical criticism, sociology and psychology. These
disciplines and the grand narratives that we now associate with each of them were far
more than simply a mirror-like reflection of modernity; they were also constitutive of it
and as such have contributed to giving contoured shape and recognizable form to our own
daily practices and forms of life.
Course Requirements
I will provide you with a detailed and lengthy set of reading notes and study questions to
help you make sense of each text.
You will be asked to write a memo each week on the assigned readings. In addition, you
are required to write an essay (approx.. 5 pages) on 3 of the 6 authors studied in class.
The subject of each essay will be distributed several weeks in advance of the deadline.
The memos will constitute 30% of your grade; the essays will account for 50%; and the
remaining 20% will be based on your contribution to the class discussion.
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Course Protocol and Etiquette
There is a Blackboard site that contains important information about the course including
a copy of the syllabus, several photocopied readings (see below) as well as a complete set
of reading notes for each author. You are responsible for retrieving this material and also
for checking Blackboard daily in case we have posted any announcements.
If you bring a laptop to class be considerate of your colleagues and make sure that you
use it only for taking notes (not for internet surfing, email exchanges, etc.). Remember to
turn off your cell-phones before you enter the class.
I rarely answers emails (unless they are urgent and important), though I heartily welcome
each of you to visit me during my office hours. This will provide us with the opportunity
to become acquainted.
Written work must be submitted as a hard copy in class on the due date. Do not send it to
Dan Sherwood or myself via email. Extensions will be granted only in exceptional cases
and must be requested well ahead of the deadline.
Availability of Readings
Required Books:
The books listed below are required and must be purchased, borrowed from the library or
downloaded from the Internet.
Note: Purchase the edition (publisher) that appears below. The reading notes that I am
providing you are based on this edition. If you decide to work with a different editionpublisher you will need to repaginate my notes so that they correspond to your book.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Liberty Classics)
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Liberty Classics)
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer (Harper Perennial)
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Peter Smith)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Marx/Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (W.W.
Norton and Co.)
Karl Marx, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Vol. I, ed. Ernest
Mandel (Vintage)
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Scribner)
From Max Weber; Essays in Sociology (ed.) Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, (Oxford
University Press)
Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (W.W. Norton)
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (W.W. Norton)
Georg Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations (Free Press),
Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms ed. Daniel Levine (University of
Chicago)
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Marie Cardinal, The Words to Say it (Van Vactor and Goodheart)
Readings Uploaded to Blackboard:
The Hobsbawm, Nisbet, Wagner How and Hawthorne (marked with **) readings for the
first week as well as the Weber readings (marked with **) assigned for weeks eleven and
twelve can be downloaded from Blackboard.
Readings and Themes
Session 1 (27 August) Introduction: Freedom, Equality and Modernity
**E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution chapters 1-3.
**Robert Nisbet, “The Two Revolutions,” The Sociological Tradition, (Basic Books,
1966) 21-46.
**Peter Wagner, "Modernity: history of the concept." International Encyclopedia of the
Social & Behavioral Sciences, eds. N. J. Smelser and P. B. Baltes (Oxford: Elsevier
Science Ltd) pp.
(Download from: <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WVS-46RMNYS2/2/95c81cde0f00cf2228d4e4736eaa5212>
**Alan How, "Hermeneutics and the 'Classic' Problem in the Human Sciences'," History
of the Human Sciences, 24:3 (2011) 47-63
**Geoffrey Hawthorne, "Introduction," and "Enlightenment and Doubt," Enlightenment
and Despair: A History of Social Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1987) pp. 1-27
HOLIDAY. 3 September, Monday-Labor Day
Session 2 (10 September) Justice and the Minimal State
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Part I, pp. 9-26, 50-66
Part II, pp. 67-71, 82-92
Part III, pp. 109-113, 149-150, 171-178
Part IV, pp. 179-193
Part VI, pp. 212-217, 227-237
Part VII, pp. 265-266** (**NOTE: You might want to read these two pages first)
HOLIDAY. 17 September, Monday-Rosh Hashanah
Session 3 (24 September) Origin and Nature of Market Society
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Introduction
Book I, Chas. 1-10; Ch. 11 (Conclusion only)
Book II, Introduction, Chas. 1, 3
Book III, entire
Book Four, Chas. 1 and 2
Book Five, pp. 708-723; 758-788
Session 4 (1 October) State Centralization and Revolutions
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution
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Part One, Chapter 5; Part Two, Chapters 1-3, 5-9; and Part Three Chapters 1-3, 8
Session 5 (8 October) Associative Life and Civic Democracy
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Volume I
Introduction
Part I, Chapters 2 to 4; 5, pp. 61-70, 86-99
Part 2, Chapter. 4; Chapter. 5, pp. 196-202, 218-231; Chapters. 6-9; Chapter 10, pp.327332, 340-363
Session 6 (15 October) Democratic Despotism and the Paradoxes of Liberty
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Volume II
Preface
Part I, Chapters 1, 2
Part II, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 20
Part III, Chapters 1, 5, 8, 9, 17, 21
Part IV, all chapters
Session 7 (22 October) Religion, Liberalism and Alienation
The Marx/Engels Reader
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” pp. 26-52
Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:
Introduction,” 53-65
Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” pp. 70-105
Karl Marx, “Theses on Fuerbach,” 143-145
Session 8 (29 October) History and Class Politics
The Marx-Engels Reader
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The German Ideology,” pp. 146-200
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” pp. 473-491
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte
Session 9 (5 November) Structure and Dynamics of Capitalism
The Marx-Engels Reader
Preface to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” pp. 3-6
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I,
Preface to the First Edition
Part One: Commodities and Money
Ch. 1, pp. 125-39, 163-77
Part Two: Transformation of Money into Capital
Ch. 4; Ch 5, pp.266-269 (take note of footnote 24); Ch. 6
Part Three: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value
Ch. 7; Ch. 8, pp. 316-19; Ch. 9, pp. 320-27; Ch.10, pp. 340-46, 411-416; Ch. 11, pp. 424
426
Part Four: The Production of Relative Surplus-Value
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Ch. 12; Ch. 13, pp. 447-54; Ch. 14, pp. 480-91; Ch. 15, pp. 517-20, 530-34, 544-553
Part Five: The Production of Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value
Ch. 18, pp. 668-72.
Part Seven: The Process of Accumulation of Capital
Ch. 23; Ch. 25, pp. 762-772.
Part Eight: So-Called Primitive Accumulation
Chs. 26-28; Ch. 32.
Session 10 (12 November) Protestantism and Capitalism
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Introduction,
Part I, 35-92,
Part II, 95-128, 155-185
Session 11 (19 November) Meaningful Action, Rationalization and Disenchantment
**Max Weber, "Basic Sociological Terms,” Economy and Society, Vol. I pp. 4-11, 1938, 53-55
The Social Psychology of World Religions," From Max Weber, pp. 267-295
Max Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions,” From Max Weber,
323-357
Session 12 (26 November) History, Politics and Economics
From Max Weber
“Politics as Vocation,” pp. 77-128
**“The Types of Legitimate Domination,” Economy and Society, Vol. I,
pp. 212-231, 241-254
“Class, Status, Party,” pp. 180-195
“Bureaucracy,” pp. 196-245
**“Socialism,”
Session 13 (3 December) Libido, Sublimation, Repression and Psychic World
Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Pyschoanalysis
Part I, Lecture 1
Part II, Lectures 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14
Part III, Lectures 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23
Marie Cardinal, The Words to Say it
Session 14 (10 December) Eros, Thanatos and Historical Progress
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
Session 15 (17 December) Individuality, Group Life and the Metropolis
Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations
TBA
Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms
TBA
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