Suchergebnisse

Durkheim hat in seinem Werk versucht, die Spannung zwischen Zwang und Selbstbestimmung in einer modernen säkularisierten Moral zu überbrücken. Dazu entwickelte er erstens die Idee einer moralischen Teilautonomie, bei welcher die Individuen aufgrund der Komplexität der modernen arbeitsteiligen Gesellschaft die vorgegebenen moralischen Regeln selbst kreativ auslegen müssen. Durkheim entwickelte zweitens die bekannte Idee der sozialkulturellen Individualisierung, die mit dem Begriff vom "Kult des Individuums" zusammengefasst werden kann. Um den Gegensatz zwischen Zwang und autonomem Handeln zu überwinden, setzte Durkheim drittens die moralische Autonomie mit rationalem Einverständnis gleich und postulierte viertens die These, dass die modernen Menschen der Illusion einer moralischen Autonomie folgen müssen. Durkheim machte mit seiner Gleichsetzung von Selbstbestimmung und dem individuellen Einverständnis in die moralischen Regeln insgesamt einen zentralen Weg deutlich, auf welchem die Autonomie-Illusion entsteht. Betrachtet man gleichzeitig Durkheims Thesen zu den Gelingensbedingungen von Zwang, können ferner Erkenntnisse darüber gewonnen werden, warum diese Autonomie-Illusion in der modernen Gesellschaft genauso notwendig ist wie der Zwang, der hinter ihr steht. (ICI2)

(Originally published in John A. Hall & Ian C. Jarvie [Eds], Transition to Modernity, 1992, see abstract 93c01707.) Max Weber's essays Science as a Vocation (1917) & Politics as a Vocation (1919) raised themes that Ernest Gellner later addresses with a more sanguine attitude. Weber seeks a morality specific to the pursuit of science & politics in the distinction he draws between vocation & profession. Weber's conception of the multiplicity of values leads him to vacillate between ethical pluralism & nihilism. This moral indeterminacy leads Weber to embrace nationalism & its symptomatic conflicts such as WWI. Gellner finds a moral meaning in science & scientific rationality that mediates the value pluralism of modernity. Gellner has a more thorough understanding of religion & nationalism in the modern world & accommodates them in his multilateral vision of the world without embracing them as means to salvation. 10 References. H. von Rautenfeld

Does the result of the discussion that there is more than one rationality at stake in environmental policy-making imply a relativistic methodological conclusion? There are three reasons that could pull us toward a relativistic notion of rationality: (1) The existence of competing cultural models of nature forces us to abandon the idea of nature as something outside society. Nature exists for us only through culture. To the extent that we have to accept that nature is a cultural construction, the notion of 'hard facts' vanishes. Nature is - like all social facts - a soft fact. This will open our way of 'regulating nature' through environmental politics and policies to moral claims and moral discourse. (2) Environmental policy cannot be based on the authoritative nature of 'hard facts'. Nature as a collective good is a soft fact that will increase communication and argumentation about what should be done because of the possibility of competing claims of these facts. A political culture of communicating 'as-if-facts' develops. Groups begin to argue as if there were 'hard facts'. To free political communication from 'hard facts' will accelerate communication - and the remaining problem is to guarantee communicability and solve the problem of emerging communicative power. (3) Cultural analysis leads us to question the very basis of modern rationality: the idea of bare facts. Policy analysis as the most advanced form of rationalizing the reproduction of modern societies has given us the possibility to explore the cultural basis of this advanced form of formal rationality. When environmental policy analysis can no longer be based upon this type of rationality we are forced to base the rationality of policy decisions on soft facts. Thus policy-making will be drawn into the communication of 'as-if-facts' (which are soft facts) using institutional power to validate them. That there are no hard facts, that we can talk about everything, that everything is a social construction: all these claims come close to a relativistic position. We do not, however, have to draw such a relativistic conclusion from these arguments. There are again at least three reasons that limit this potential relativism: (1) As long as there is a struggle over 'as-if-facts', rationality lies in the process of communicating such soft facts. The institutionalization of procedures of negotiating and communicating interpretations of facts contains the possibility of procedural rationality. This does not imply a return to absolutism, but rather an 'anti-antirelativism' (Geertz 1984). The purity model is not only a second type of rationality developed within the European tradition that competes with others but also creates the conditions of arguing about the relative weight of each. (2) The observation of two traditions in one culture is an argument against the hegemonic role of one culture and also an argument against relativism. Therefore the purity model becomes the key to an understanding of new and so far suppressed elements of rationality in environmental policy-making. Since this model is the dominated one its thematization not only lays bare the suppressed model but also lays the bare fact of suppression as such which has repercussions on the legitimacy of the dominant model. (3) To conceive nature - in line with what we have called the Jewish model - as an indivisible, holistic entity justifies the construction of nature as a collective good to be shared equally by all. Thus a new ground for fairness and justice can be laid in the modern discourse of a just and fair society. The reconstruction of cultural traditions regulating the relationship of man to nature allows us to identify the forms of symbolically mediated relationships between the two. We do not only use nature for instrumental purposes, we also use it to 'think' the world (to use an expression of Tambiah (1969)). We use natural differences to make sense of social differences, which in turn gives meaning to natural differences (Douglas 1975). Nature, in a sense, gives lessons on how to conceive differences. Moving our focus from justice to purity gives us a better understanding of the differences underlying the emerging modern European culture of environmentalism. The analysis of cultural movements carrying counter cultural traditions thus forces us not only to broaden our theoretical notion of the cultural 'code' underlying European culture, it also forces us to see the carriers of counter cultural traditions as more than movements of protest against modernity and modernization. I claim that the two competing models relating man to nature have become the field of a new emerging type of social struggle over two types of modernity in advanced modern societies. It is my contention that the culture of environmentalism contains the elements for an alternative way of organizing social relations in modern society.

In der Literatur findet sich eine breite theoretisch ausgerichtete Diskussion über moralischen Universalismus, moralischen Kontextualismus und moralischen Relativismus, wobei sich im Laufe der Zeit eine Vielzahl von Standpunkten unter den Vertretern der verschiedenen Positionen herausgebildet hat. Ganz im Gegensatz zu der Fülle theoretischer Abhandlungen ist die Anzahl empirisch ausgerichteter Beiträge, die sich systematisch und damit nicht nur exemplarisch anhand von Einzelfällen mit der Frage interkultureller
moralischer Unterschiede bzw. Gemeinsamkeiten auseinandersetzt, doch eher bescheiden. Diese Feststellung gilt insbesondere für quantitativ ausgerichtete Arbeiten. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Untersuchung besteht in erster Linie darin,
anhand der kombinierten Europäischen und Weltwertestudie zu analysieren, inwieweit sich für ausgewählte Themenbereiche bedeutende kulturelle
Eigenheiten nachweisen lassen, die sich nicht auf systematische und damit theoretisch zu erwartende Unterschiede zwischen den Befragten oder den
einzelnen Ländern zurückführen lassen. Mit der vorliegenden Untersuchung soll somit ein Beitrag dazu geleistet werden, bestehende empirische
Forschungslücken zu verringern. (Autorenreferat)