Society Diagnoses: An Overview

Society Diagnoses: An Overview

• The concept of society diagnosis marks semantic change, indicating a new understanding of time and human interaction, emphasizing on sociology
• Society diagnoses asks about the nature of society
• They summarize society's condition, interpreting it, and providing insights into the society we inhabit

Recognizing Societal Diagnoses

• Diagnoses construct societal global transformations from small, specific phenomena, based on the "pars-pro-toto" principle
• Individual phenomena represent the whole society

Reservations of Science Towards Contemporary Diagnosis

• Scientific community views contemporary diagnosis as overgeneralizations of societal developments
• It faces accusations of being hasty, superficial due to readability ("Bettlektüre"), and speculative

Benefits of Contemporary Diagosis

• Contemporary diagnosis shapes the perception and interpretation of society

Historical Context of Contemporary Diagnosis

• Shaped by social, political, and technological changes during modernity
• It emerged as a response to rapid changes and upheavals, especially since the Industrial Revolution
• This context includes Industrial and Technological Revolutions, Social and Political Upheavals, Scientific Progress and Enlightenment, cultural and philosophical movements.

Industrial and Technological Revolutions

• Massive changes in production, technology, and economy lead to new social structures and lifestyles
• Time diagnostics address impacts on society from these developments

Social and Political Upheavals

• Time diagnostics developed in an era marked by political upheavals, wars, the rise and fall of ideologies, and shifting social class structures
• These deeply influenced individual and collective consciousness

Scientific Progress and Enlightenment

• Increasing trust in science and belief in progress altered how people understood the world and their role
• Timely diagnosticians often criticized or questioned blind faith in progress

Cultural and Philosophical Movements

• Emergence of philosophical ideas and cultural movements provided the intellectual backdrop for time diagnostics

Aim of Early Time Diagnostics

• Early time diagnostics aimed to awaken and alarm contemporaries by pointing out critical or potentially dangerous societal developments like alienation, the consequences of technization, or the risks of political ideologies
• It sought to create awareness of the urgency for change and reform to avert or reverse negative developments
• They aimed to encourage deeper reflection and critical questioning of the status quo

Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Characterization of His Era

• Characterized by loss of willingness for self-sacrifice for a greater idea
• Viewed as a sinful, irrational era

German Idealism's Faith in a "Happy End" in History

• It credits to the idea that the existing civilization process was accomplished through the vigorous work of individual heroes

Auguste Comte's "Three-Stage Law"

• It transfers the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to history
• Comte's law posits humanity progresses through three stages of thinking/knowledge to reach an optimal state
• They include theological, metaphysical, and the positive stages, similar to human maturation
• Theological stage links to humanity's childhood, metaphysical to puberty, and positive to the "male state of mind
• Has a teleological character, assuming human history aims for a predetermined goal

Characterization of Ages and the Role of Sociology in Comte's Philosophy of History

• Age of Instinct of Reason:
  • Stage 1 involves reason as external legal constraint (laws of nature), expressing in habit and routine
  • Stage 2 involves dogmatic conveyance of reason via authorities
• Transition Times involves a liberation from reason, however without reflexive criticism, with individuals dominating
• The Age of Seeing Unreasonableness involves free reason through science
  • Stage 5 encompasses societal arrangement via reasonable modern science with individual freedom

Role of Sociology in Comte's Philosophy of History

• Auguste Comte sees sociology as an instrument to empirically confirm his conceptions of the history of society.
• Sociology, understood as "social physics", symbolizes empirical knowledge, with the aim to evidence progression of humankind and support progressive change

Nietzsche Characterizes His Own Era

• Nietzsche's era as a "superstition" due to a prevailing belief in science and rationality
• He criticized the notion that science and technology inevitably lead to societal progress and improvements
• Nietzsche viewed this as optimism lacking scientific basis

Nietzsche's Recommended Therapy for the Suffering of Hist Time

• Nietzsche recommends returning to life's cultural and creative forces, especially the Dionysian which symbolized original vitality and creative power
• Saw regenerating civilization as reviving creative forces- He understood culture as a way to show respect and saw the aesthetic development of people as important for a society.

Horkheimer and Adorno's Core Thesis in "Dialectic of Enlightenment"

• Enlightenment, meant as human emancipation, marks a decline from the start
• Attempts to master nature led to a world viewing everything instrumentally
• Culminates in totalitarianism and the industrial extermination of people in the 20th century

Horkheimer and Adorno's Understanding of "Enlightenment"

• They saw a form of thought founded on objectification based on mastering nature
• Form of thought reaches back to the early history of humanity and peaks in positivistic thinking and scientific progress

Historical Context Motivating Horkheimer and Adorno's Time Diagnosis

• Their analysis and criticism were influenced by, fascism, Second World war, totalitarism.
• These events show how efficiency overshadows autonomy, and how technological controls control the human autonomy

Heidegger's Understanding of "Subjectification"

• He defined it as a process where humanity became a part of nature and history
• Humanity shifts to becoming the measurement to all things

Heidegger's Issue With Subjectivization

• Heidegger sees subjectification as a loss of a deeper understanding of the world, which leads to humanity alienating itself.
• Heidegger saw subjectification as humanity seeing nature as a resource to be used up.

Heidegger Views Modernity

• The modern human now has a connection to the world as something to control

Heidegger's Views on Humanism

• He saw it as not progressive because the modern human now views the world as something to be used.

Jaques Ellul's Views on Technological Society

• Jacques Ellul describes technological society as a society that rose up without democracy and only through technology
• The imperatives of society now force human beings to relate to each other and nature through actions, degrading political actions.
• Technological restraints affect politics, changing the very structure of institutions to only technology

Helmut Schelsky's View on the Role of Politics in a Technological Society

• He argues that politics is about allowing technology to flourish.
• In this frame of belief, technology replaces any restraints, norms, and politics

Arnold Gehlen's "Crystallization" in the Technical-Industrial Age

• Gehlen defined that the structure has stayed the same despite innovation

Ulrich Beck's Concept of Risk Society

• modern society is characterized by new risks primarily by environmental issues that question the assumptions that guide modern society
• Science should not only describe the events, but also should let society reflect and be self aware of the consequences that are to come
• The Risk Society depends on science

Individualization in Beck's Sense

• Beck claims people are being removed from tradition.
• This has the people create individual identities on their own while in social situations

Beck's Term of Subpolitization

• Subpolitization is when traditional norms move into the range of politics.
• Politicizing technology and also the lives that exist outside the norm
• As society progresses, normal traditions fade away, leading to political polarization

Reflexive Scientification and Scientification

• Processes that are critically reflected on based on products and methods of science, as well as practices. Beck states it's because the public are now seeing the risks of an ever progressive science.

View of Criminality in Security Society, and its Resulting Crime Control

• Society's view of criminality understood as a normal issue that is rationally calculated. Seen through a pragmatic criminology.

Surveillance Model Behind Video Surveillance and the Panopticon

• Control over a population through observation.
• Conceived by Jeremy Bentham and by Michel Foucault as an architecture principle, but a prison
• This leads the populus to regulate each other

Distinguishing Features of Control Culture vs Welfare Models of Crime Control

• Welfare used rehabilitation
• The public welfare thought crime was because of social injustice

Alteration of Place, and Purpose of Punishment

• The welfare focused on rehabilitation and social competence while security relies on criminal elimination

Amitai Etzioni's "Active Society"

• active society is a society where people free from control and consumerism have an active role in making the economy better
• Etzioni wants social movements to create value as well as political freedoms, and also encourage voters to cast ballots.

Problem With Political Power

• Criticism over state intervention which diminishes individual growth
• The state should only guarantee legal certainty and freedom

Boltanski/Chiapello's "New Spirit of Capitalism'

• Defined by responsibility and flexibility

McDonalization of Society

• The process is largely based off of speed, and predictable factors in society

Late - Modern Society

• Logic focuses on making individuals more unique

New Societal Characters

• In his lonely book, David Riesman Describes a new character.
• David Riesman explains it as someone adaptable, who is driven by peers.

The Experience of "Inwardly Orientated"

• Self-awareness can affect society from the inside

Social Stratification Of Society

• Milieu in stratification is based off of taste and aesthetics

Down Sizing/ Upsizing

The answer is simply to stop doing more things. Read more, and less information.

Belief Regarding the Resource of Knowledge

• Knowledge would be a resource in all aspects of life

Understanding Industrial Society

• Knowledge now is an important thing

Jean Fouaste Defines Tertiary

• The service aspect of how people are treated

Knowledge Societies of Drucker

• Central focus on effective knowledge

Explore the concept of society diagnosis, a semantic shift reflecting a new understanding of time and human interaction, with emphasis on sociology. These diagnoses delve into the nature of society, summarizing and interpreting its condition to provide insights into our inhabited world. They construct societal transformations from specific phenomena, based on the 'pars-pro-toto' principle, where individual phenomena mirror the whole society.