toys in the attic:
ideological furnishings for the
homeless mind
action theory &
the human condition
General Introduction 1
As THE LATEST IN A
SERIES of my collected essays published by The Free Press, the present
volume should be considered in close relation to its very recent predecessor, Social
Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory.1 Taken together, the two collections document
certain main trends of interest and thinking in my theoretical work that have
been salient during approximately the last decade.
The two volumes are organized about two aspects of the
same general theme, which was discussed in the General Introduction to Social
Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory. This is the attempt to help solve problems inherent at a given
system level, by systematic consideration of their relations to theory at the
next more general level. There had been
an earlier history of trying to move from the economy as a subsystem of the
society to the societal system as a whole and to relate these two levels to
each other.
After various preliminary attempts, Social Systems
and the Evolution of Action Theory documents, more fully than before, the
effort to deal seriously with the problems of the relations between the social
system and the general system of action; it was a renewed attempt after the
earlier one documented in Toward a General Theory of Action.2 Although the implications of this venture
are still very incompletely worked out, the present volume is organized mainly
about the step of theory development that seeks to go beyond even the general
system of action. Thus, the essays in
this book seek to place the general system of action in a still broader
setting, that which we have called the "human condition" considered
as a system.
1 Talcott Parsons, Social Systems and the Evolution of
Action Theory (New York: Free Press, 1977).
2 Talcott Parsons and
Edward A. Shils (eds.), Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951).
2 General
Introduction
An explicit treatment of the problem of dealing with
the human condition level in terms of technical and formal theory is made in
Part IV of this collection. As I hope
will be made clear, the chapter included therein represent a tentative attempt,
which I and a group of collaborators hope to improve upon in later publications. However, for the first time we make this
problem area explicit and try to do something about it in a formal theoretical
sense rather than engaging only in programmatic discussion of what needs to be
done. I do not think that more has to
be said either about the preliminary nature of this effort or about my
indebtedness to the group with whom I have worked on these problems at the
University of Pennsylvania since 1974.
Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory
paved the way for this volume in two particularly important
respects. Most notably, it brought to
light, especially in Part I, further developments of thinking about the
central problem of the relations between the theoretical concerns and structure
of the theory of action, on the one hand, and of theory concerning biological
systems in the organic sense, on the other.
Starting with the General Introduction and Chapter 1 of
that volume, there are several treatments of a new level of concern with the
relevance to the social scientist of biological theory, as well as examples of
the channels through which this relevance has become salient and fruitful. Accordingly, the first three parts of
the present volume include essays, to be interpreted against this background,
that are concerned with what are at least boundary problems of the
traditionally conceived action system vis-a'-vis that of the human
condition.
Part I consists of four essays that deal, from
different perspectives, with problems of health and illness and their setting
in modern societies. Appropriate
details about the occasions for their writing appear in the Introduction to Part
I. (For purposes of the present General
Introduction, however, the main point is to make clear the place of this
set in the larger outline just sketched.)
The interest in problems of health and illness grew,
for me personally, out of my interest in the professions, which in turn arose
from my concern with the nature of the modern industrial economy, referred to
as "capitalistic." The focus
of my initial interest lay in the problem of the role of what, especially in
the utilitarian tradition,3 is called
"self-interest." By contrast
with the usual depiction of the businessman, the professional has tended to be
characterized as repudiating the imputation of primary actuation by
self-interest in the relevant sense.
Pursuing my undergraduate concern with biology, I
choose medicine as the first profession to study.4 In the course of this study, I became very
much interested in the problem of self-interest in the sense associated with
economics and the utilitarian tradition, as was in the problems presented by
what was then called the "psychic factor"
in disease and its relation to the rise of psychiatry
as a branch of the medical profession.
If nothing else, the prominence of such phenomena clearly established
the importance of a subtle set of connections between social structure, on the
one hand, and the state of human organisms and personalities, on the
other.
3 For
a discussion of this tradition see Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social
Action (1937); reprint ed., New York; Free Press, 1949), chaps. 2 and 3.
4
Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: Free Press, 1951), chap. 10,
"Social Structure and Dynamic Process: The Case of Modern Medical
Practice."
Part I of
the present volume begins with what I called a
"reconsideration" of my approach to the problem of the "sick
role" and that of the physician as these had been set forth in my most
general statement in the field more than twenty years earlier.5 In the light of justified criticisms and
further consideration, a number of qualifications of the earlier statements
were introduced, but I think it is fair to say that the essentials of the
earlier position are reaffirmed in Chapter 1. Perhaps the most succinct way of making this point is to express
my conviction that the states we define in our culture as illness, and
the social structures in which sick people are placed, constitute
a subtle and complex set of articulations between structures and processes at
the level of action in our technical sense (including personality and
behavioral systems and the states and vicissitudes of human organisms.)
Chapter 2
shifts the focus of attention to a development in the health complex that had
become much more conspicuous in the period between my original study and the
recent concern, namely, biomedical research.
The latter area has in critical ways to deal with human "subjects"
in order to carry out its functions. My
main concern in the article reprinted as Chapter 2 of this volume was to show
that the social structures in terms of which this extension of function had
been accommodated to were above all understandable against the background of
development in the "professional complex" analyzed in earlier
studies.
Chapter 3 is
written on a more general level. It
deals with the problems of defining health and its negative, illness (or, as
the editors preferred to say, "disease"), as a human - that is,
action-concern in general and in the context of our theoretical interests in
particular. It was in this connection
that, for the first time, it seemed appropriate and feasible in examining such
a problem to invoke the formal paradigm of the human condition, which is
explicated in Chapter 15 of this volume.
The problem of defining health and illness has proved to be a difficult
one in the frame-
work of our
culture. Most conspicuously, there has
been a strong tendency toward ambivalence and ambiguity with reference to the
category of "mental" health and/or illness. This has frequently been associated with a tendency to give up on
the problem and to settle for defining health and illness as
"physical" conditions, which must be taken to mean
"organic" in the sense of drastically downplaying the
"mental" component.7
5 Ibid.
6 Renee C. Fox, "The
Medicalization and Demedicalization of American Society," Daedalas, vol.
106, no. 1 (1977): 9-22.
4 General
Introduction
Needless to say, this so-called solution is radically
unsatisfactory from the present point of view in that it constitutes a rather crude case of reductionism in a
field of paramount concern in the current human bioethical context. I think that the alternative presented in Chapter 3 is greatly preferable to the reductionist
position. The notable feature of this
alternative, theoretically speaking, is precisely that in
dealing with mental health, it does not invoke considerations internal
either to the action system or to the organic but steps to a level of generality
higher than either, namely, that of the
human condition. The important point is
that this level embraces both the organic and the action level and defines their relations in terms of a third level
that is still higher than either in the scale of generality. I agree
in advance with
skeptical commentators that this is a "radical" solution of the
problem, but is anything less radical of sufficient promise to merit serious
consideration?
Chapter 4 is
on a different theme. It presents some
considerations relevant to relating psychoanalytic
theory to that of action. There
seemed, in spite of its brevity, good reason to include it in this collection,
but the question was where? The
decisive criterion was the intimate relation of Freud's theoretical work
generally to problems of mental health and illness. Since, as has just been noted, in dealing with problems of heath
and illness in the present context, I was concerned with emphasizing strongly
the importance of a positive theoretical treatment of problems of mental
health, it seemed useful to include an indication of the lines of theoretical
work that are available to give a sound theoretical underpinning to that
endeavor.
In the revisit to Freud's The Interpretation of
Dreams,8 which is documented in this chapter, I was in
particular impressed with how strongly Freud, in this his first major
theoretical work, emphasized that he was dealing with the structures and
processes of a "psychic" system, the term he himself used, and was
not treating neurosis primarily as disturbance of the organism in the sense of
somatic medicine. Insights based in
considerable part on this revisit to Freud's work figure prominently in the
discussions in Part IV of
the modes of articulation of the individual's personality and the organism,
that is, his own body. Without insight
going well beyond the level common in our generation, long after Freud's own
works, the essential articulation could not be worked out.
7 “The Concept of Health," Hastings Center Report,
vol.1 no.3 (1973). The issue contains five essays on health and illness; see
especially the paper by Daniel Callahan.
8 Sigmund Freud, The
Interpretation of Dreams, in vols. 4 and 5 of The Standard Edition of
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press and
the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953; first published in German in 1900).
General
Introduction 5
The
selections included in Part II turn to an area
that is peripheral to the system of action in one sense, especially to the social
system within it. The focus of this
section is higher education. Higher education in this respect is part of
both the modern type of social system and the cultural system within the action
system. However, the aspect of the
cultural system that is most directly relevant to Part II is that which we have
previously called "cognitive symbolization." This in turn of course has ramified
articulations with aspects of the human condition other than the action system
itself. In the first instance both the
physical world and the organic are the objects of ramified clusters of
scientific disciplines. Yet they also
consist of objects that are of a variety of other types of significance to
human beings. Since the modern phase of
the development of higher education, the physical and biological sciences have
constituted a major, and perhaps until recently, growing part of its curriculum
and research concern.
More recently there has been a notable growth of a
third set of intellectual disciplines, often called the social sciences. Because this group includes psychology, I
prefer to use the term "sciences of action." These sciences have developed especially
closely in connection with the system of higher education. Substantial development has also occurred in
a fourth area - that which is ordinarily called the "humanities" in the sense of a set of
disciplines that in German are grouped with what English speakers call the
"sciences" under the concept Wissenschaft.
Not only are the intellectual disciplines
characterized as clearly including three of the four primary
subsystems as objects (and I think in a slightly modified sense the fourth) but
also knowledge of all three categories must clearly be grounded in
considerations deriving from sources other than the relevant externalities
themselves. Whatever other
philosophical positions may be possible, I have explicitly taken one in the Kantian tradition.
Starting
with the objects of science in the strictest sense, this position maintains
that the sense data that constitute the empirical
components of knowledge (for example, of the physical and organic
worlds) must be articulated with the categories of the understanding
that are independent of the raw data.
My collaborators and myself further maintain that this consideration
applies also to knowledge of the phenomena of action. The relevance of the Kantian epistemology to our treatment of the
human condition and, in articulation with that, of higher education, is explored
in Chapter 15.9
9
Figure 1, Chapter 15 of this volume.
General
Introduction 6
The
relation of the action system to the telic
system, the fourth primary subsystem of the human condition that we have
postulated, is the subject matter of the essays in Part
III. That this relation is
in some respects subject to "objectification" is indicated by the
fact that not only have such problems been treated philosophically ever since
men have philosophized but also that there are important scientific treatments
of problems in this area, such as those in the history, sociology, and
psychology of religion. When examined
in these ways, the phenomena of religion - or, to quote William James's title,
"the varieties of religious experience" 10 - must be
treated as involving nonempirical objects of some sort unless such experience
is held to be totally "internal" (not experience "of"
anything). This, therefore, is not to
imply that there is no input to the action system from the telic, and that
there is "nothing" beyond the boundary of the action system in this
direction.
It
is not my present concern to discuss the complex philosophical problems of this
area but only to indicate that this is an area that the action scientist, who
takes seriously the importance of the action system's relation to the larger
human condition, cannot afford to neglect.
We would contend that structuring the problem of the nature of
appropriate cognitive orientation in this area sets the stage for consideration
of some of what in the light of Western cultural tradition are still subtler
problems of the nature of the noncognitive components.
The nature of and occasions for writing the essays
included in Part II are explained in the
Introduction to that part. However, it
should be remembered that all these selections come from a period in which I
was very much concerned in general with problems of the nature and status, in
modern societies, of the phenomenon of higher education and its emergence as a
salient feature of such societies. The
most important documentation of this interest for me is The American University.11 The present set of essays, however, explore some of the important
aspects of the subject such as the conditions of the growth of the system in
American Society, an aspect of the relation of its structure to that of the
larger society (Chapter 7),12 and the question of stability and
change in the system.
Just as dealing with the social status of biomedical
research in Chapter 2 formed something of a bridge to the treatment of higher
education as an essential part of the cognitive complex in Part II, so dealing
with the relations of the cognitive complex 13 especially the
intellectual disciplines treated as a system and particularly as including the
intellectual treatment of religion, forms a bridge between the subject matter
of Part II and that of Part III. The
latter section deals with a variety of problems in the sociology of
religion.
As I have frequently noted, the sociology of religion has been a central concern
of my work, starting forty years ago with The Structure of Social Action,14
indeed earlier with exposure to the teaching of Bronislaw Malinowski. The first intensive work I did in the field,
however, was aimed at understanding the contributions of Emile Durkheim and Max
Weber, and the first major stage of this inquiry was documented in The
Structure of Social Action.
10 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
(New York: Longnians, Green, 1902).
11 Talcott Parsons
and Gerald M. Platt, in collaboration with Neil J. Smelser. The American University (Cambridge
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973).
12 Ibid., chap.
7.
13
lbid., chap. 2.
14 Parsons, Structure
of Social Action.
General
Introduction 7
It does not seem to be too much to say that in this
as in other aspects of my theoretical work a new phase began about 1965. The essays presented in Part III all prepare the way for the intellectual
venture of systematic exploration of the human condition. Thus, Chapter 9, "Christianity"
(which appeared in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences),
served greatly to clarify my historical perspective on the role of religion in
Western society. Chapter 10 was based
on a revisit to Durkheim's work in this field.
Perhaps the most important result of that reconsideration was the clear
conception that what Durkheim meant by the social environment (milieu social) can
be interpreted to define the internal environment of the general
system of action. That the
distinction between an external and an internal environment should apply to the
action system as well as to organic systems has proved to be an immensely
illuminating idea. Not only has it
served to unify theoretical conceptions of the field of action and of organic
systems but also it has
served greatly to clarify a whole series of problems at the action level. To cite only one of these clarifications,
this distinction makes it possible to integrate, in the same theoretical
analysis, Durkheim's famous discussion of "social facts" as exterior
and constraining and his later analysis of the nature and sources of
"constraint by moral authority," which was based on a theory of the internalization of moral norms in
individual personalities.
The final theoretical interest that is documented in
Part III is the interpretation of the religious
situation in contemporary "secularized" society. This theme is central to Chapters 11 and 13
and is prominent in Chapter 12. The
latter selection, however, also is connected with the themes of Part I in its
concern with the relation of death to what has come to be thought of as the
bioethical complex. Chapter 12 also
bears on themes of evaluation of the significance of the cultural history of
the contemporary situation. Indeed, how
relevant is the symbolic structure of the Christian tradition to the formation
of attitudes in very "practical" situations in the modern world? My
own view, and that of my collaborators in that paper, is "much more than
is usually thought."
The theoretical climax of the present volume, indeed
of both it and its predecessor, is Chapter 15, "A Paradigm of the Human
Condition." Chapter 14,
"Death in the Western World," was written immediately after
completion of the first draft of the essay preceding it. Essentially Chapter 14 builds on the theoretical
analysis of the more general treatment, "A Paradigm of the Human
Condition," and attempts to relate that analysis to a theme clearly
associated with both the biomedical complex and religion.
8 General
introduction
From
my point of view today, more important than the substantive problems and
contributions toward their solution that may result from this theoretical
attempt (namely, Chapter 15) is the promise that such a venture will in the
long run prove to work precisely at the theoretical
level - by this I mean its potential contribution to the cognitive ordering of
areas of human experience, which has attracted an immense amount of attention
from many sorts of observers of the human situation over the centuries.
The intention of this venture is in no sense to
derogate the insights of these various interpreters of things human. Indeed,
without many of them the present attempt would not have been possible at
all. What is distinctive about our
approach here to the problems of the human condition, however, is not the
substantive insight it may immediately provide but rather the question of the
adaptability and usefulness, in cognitively “looking at" it, of a
particular theoretical scheme that has served well in the analysis of a number
of aspects of the enormous subject matter of relevance.
Analysis of the system of action itself in terms of a
unified theoretical scheme has proved complicated and difficult enough; indeed
to many it has seemed a vain and hopeless undertaking. As I have, however, suggested at a number of
points in this General Introduction and in the introductory materials in Social
Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory, there seems to be a built-in
cognitive pressure to attempt to improve understanding of one sector of the subject
matter of action by seeking better understanding of
the framework in which it is located in a more comprehensive
system. Witness the incentives for
supplementing the study of social systems by paying systematic attention to
psychological and cultural problems.
The logic that accounts for this long
experienced cognitive pressure, as I am calling it, is what underlies
the present attempt to go a major step further in trying systematically to
place the general system of action in a paradigm of the human condition.