Research Catalog

Title

Models of man : philosophical thoughts on social action / Martin Hollis.

Author

Hollis, Martin.

Publication

Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

vii, 198 pages; 23 cm

Summary

All social theorists and philosophers who seek to explain human action have a 'model of man', a metaphysical view of human nature. Some make man a plastic creature of nature and nurture, some present him as the autonomous creator of his social world, some offer a compromise. Each view needs its own theory of scientific knowledge calling for philosophic appraisal and the compromise sets harder puzzles than either. Passive accounts of man, for example, have a robust notion of causal explanation but cannot either find or dispense with a self to apply them to. Active accounts rightly stress an autonomous self, but lack a proper concept of explanation. Martin Hollis takes these tensions and contrasts from the thought of sociologists, economists, and psychologists. He then develops a model of his own - one which seeks to connect personal and social identity through an ambitious theory of rational action and a priori knowledge, proposing a sense in which men can act freely and still be a subject for scientific explanation.

Subject

• Human beings
• Social action
• Homo sapiens (species)
• Psychologie sociale
• Action sociale

Note

• Includes index.

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. 191-195.

Contents

1. Two models -- Part I. Plastic Man -- 2. Nature and nurture -- 3. The regularity of the moral world -- Part II. Autonomous Man -- 4. Life's short comedy -- 5. Personal identity and social identity -- 6. Elements of action -- Part III. Other Minds -- 7. The rational and the real -- 8. Ideal understanding -- 9. Envoi: actor and context.

ISBN

• 0521215463
• 9780521215466
• 052129181X
• 9780521291811

LCCN

76049902

OCLC

• ocm02598435
• 2598435
• SCSB-103504

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library