Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory Mandelbaum, Maurice Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Mandelbaum, Maurice. Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.67862. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/67862 [ Access provided at 25 Sep 2021 20:07 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. HOPKINS OPEN PUBLISHING ENCORE EDITIONS Maurice Mandelbaum Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press Published 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CC BY-NC-ND ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3190-1 (open access) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3190-4 (open access) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3191-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3191-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3192-5 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3192-0 (electronic) This page supersedes the copyright page included in the original publication of this work. Purpose & Necessity in Social Theory By the same author The Problem of Historical Knowledge: An Answer to Relativism Philosophy, Science, and Sense Perception: Historical and Critical Studies The Phenomenology of Moral Experience History, Man, and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge Philosophy, History, and the Sciences: Selected Critical Essays Purpose AND Necessity IN SocialTheory Maurice Mandelbaum THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS Baltimore and London © 1987 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The Johns Hopkins University Press 701 West 40th Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21211 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Libraryof Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mandelbaum, Maurice, 1908- Purpose and necessity in social theory. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Social sciences-Philosophy. 2. Necessity !Philosophy) 3. Chance. 4. Social choice. 5. Social change. I. Title. H61.M4227 1987 300'.l 86-46283 ISBN 0-8018-3470-8 jalk. paper) TO L.B.M. with love and gratitude Contents Preface 1x PART ¢ ONE Introduction 1 The Analysis of Social Theories 3 PART ¢ TWO Individualistic & Institutional Theories 2 Individualistic Theories of Purpose & Necessity 37 ON PURPOSE IN INDIVIDUALISTIC THEORIES 37 THREE TYPES OF NECESSITARIAN EXPLANATION 45 3 Necessity & Purpose in Institutional Theories 60 DEVELOPMENTAL LAWS AND PATTERNS OF DIRECTIONAL CHANGE 60 OTHER SOCIAL LAWS 75 THEORIES OF FUNCTIONAL NECESSITY 83 PART ¢ THREE Necessity, Chance & Choice 4 Determinism & Chance 99 5 Determinism & Choice 114 THE DETERMINANTS OF CHOICE 115 THE MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF DETERMINISM 133 THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CHOICE 145 6 Necessity, Chance & Choice in Human Affairs 148 Notes 171 Index 191 Preface Originally, this book was intended to be more historically oriented than it has turned out to be. I had also intended to discuss more of the categories used in the social sciences than those with which I have here been directly concerned. I found, however, that in order to do so I would have had to forego critical discussions of how these categories have in fact been used, and it seemed to me more important to evalu­ ate some of their uses than to introduce other topics or provide fur­ ther examples. Many of the controversies with which I have here dealt reappear in new guises in much recent social theorizing, but given the range and variety of these theories I could not deal fairly with them were I to refer to them merely in passing; I have therefore not extended my survey beyond the first decades of this century. I hope, nevertheless, that the reader will see the applicability of my discussions to more recent theoretical writings, and that this book may succeed in disen­ tangling a few misapprehensions concerning the place of necessity, choice, and chance in history. During my tenure as a Mellon Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 1986 I was able to complete the text of this book, and I am grateful to the Center for its support. Owing to illness, I then had to rely on others for editorial help; Marjorie Close and the entire reference staff of the Baker Library of Dartmouth College pro­ vided essential help, as did Professor Michael Ermarth and my copy editor, Carolyn Moser. I am happy to acknowledge my great debt to each of them. ix PARTc:)ONE Introduction 1 ¢ The Analysis of Social Theories For the purposes of this study, the term social thought is construed in a broad sense, but one that is by no means all-inclusive. It is limited by the fact that I am exclusively concerned with Western thought, and within Western thought I deal only with the modern period, which I arbitrarily assume to have been inaugurated by Hobbes. Even so, the materials relevant for such a study would seem to exceed manageable bounds. They include not only the writings of political philosophers and philosophers of history but also the works of those who laid the foundations for all of the specialties which we now classify among the social sciences. To analyze this range of materials in detail would, of course, be a hopeless task. On the other hand, one can often quite clearly see that theories which arise in different fieldsof social inquiry may be based on com­ mon presuppositions, and even opposed theories within a given field may have some presuppositions in common. The task of analyzing social thought, as I conceive it, involves uncovering the presupposi­ tions that are present in the approach which all social theorists, whatever their fields, bring to bear on the concrete materials with which they work. Thus, it is with the analysis of those presupposi­ tions common to a wide variety of social theories, and not with the analyses of these theories themselves, that I am concerned. It may, I think, be taken for granted that however restricted the scope of a social theorist's investigations may be, the task he original­ ly sets himself and the methods he follows will reveal certain basic 3 4 ¢, The Analysis of Social Theories theoretical presuppositions. It is with them that I am concerned. To be sure, it has sometimes been claimed that the normative presup­ positions which a thinker brings to his work are no less important for understanding that work than are his theoretical presuppositions. While I do not deny that this is often true, I doubt that such a claim is universally applicable. Furthermore, even when true, no matter how strongly a theorist may be motivated by normative beliefs, his the­ oretical presuppositions will constitute a significant aspect of his work. Of course, the work of every social theorist will be affectednot only by his basic theoretical and normative presuppositions but also by a host of personal factors, such as his training, his relations to both his contemporaries and his predecessors, and the social or political experiences which he has undergone. I shall not be concerned with these more specific differences among different social theories, but only with some very basic presuppositions with respect to which these theories agree or disagree. Such presuppositions tend to fall into pairs of polar opposites. For the sake of convenience, I shall speak of such pairs as categories. Purpose and necessity are the cate­ gories with which this book as a whole is concerned. In the present chapter, however, I wish to single out another pair of categories which has special importance in all social theorizing and is also directly relevant to some of the problems we shall later encounter with re­ spect to the roles played by purpose and by necessity in social change. Currently, this firstpair of categories is most often referred to in terms of an opposition between "methodological individualism" and "holism." This formulation, as I have elsewhere argued, is somewhat misleading, since not all who reject "methodological individualism" accept what is labeled as "holism." 1 A more accurate characteriza­ tion of this pair of approaches would be to contrast those social theo­ ries which are based on individualistic presuppositions with those which adopt an institutional approach. This is the terminology I shall use. To be sure, any social theory has to include reference both to individuals and to institutions, and to the relations between them; nevertheless, some theories have attempted to understand social in­ stitutions in terms of the basic character and needs of individuals, whereas others have rejected this approach, attempting to under­ stand the nature of a society through a direct examination of its institutions and their relationships to one another. The opposition between individualistic and institutional ap­ proaches has been reflected in social thought in many indirect ways. For example, debates concerning the invariance or variability of stan­ dards of value have often been affected by it: those accepting an The Analysis of Social Theories � 5 individualistic approach have usually tended to hold that at least some basic values are universal and invariant, whereas those empha­ sizing institutional approaches have usually held that all values are historically conditioned and vary over time. The contrast between individualistic and institutional approaches is also sometimes re­ flected in other ways-for example, in arguments concerning the roles of "nature" and "nurture" in forming the character of indi­ viduals.