Part I: Continental Perspective
Volume 51 No. 1 (Spring 1984)
Arien Mack, Editor
Joe Greenbaum, Guest Editor
|
50TH
ANNIVERSARY (1934-1984)
Part I: Continental Perspective Volume 51 No. 1 (Spring 1984) Arien Mack, Editor Joe Greenbaum, Guest Editor |
Special Introduction Foreword to the First Issue of Social Research (1934) Table of Contents Notes on Contributors Ordering information
Editor's
Note
Although I have been a silent
editor for 13 years and this is probably not the most appropriate occasion
to suddenly become audible, a few words do seem to be called for.
The task of assembling an anniversary issue from the 50 years of Social
Research was simultaneously pleasing and painful. Pleasing because
it provided the occasion for rereading and becoming more familiar with
the entire 50 years of the journal--painful because I was constrained by
the limitations of space to select only a handful of articles. In
fact, the task of selection was so difficult, it quickly became clear that
I could not publish a single anniversary issue as planned, since that would
have limited me to no more than ten or eleven articles, and that I must
devote at least two issues to this celebration. Even at that, I was
able to choose only about 1% of the more than 2,000 articles that have
appeared since the journal began.
Clearly some fairly well defined principles of selection were necessary if I was going to succeed in selecting a very limited yet representative group of articles for this issue. Since, from its founding by the small group of emigre scholars who made up the first Graduate Faculty in exile, Social Research has been an international quarterly, it seemed natural to try to roughly divide the sections between those by authors who wrote primarily out of a continental-European context and those by authors whose experience and frame of reference was primarily Anglo-American. It also seemed obvious that a 50th commemorative issue should contain articles from the journal's first and second quarter centuries, and, as an interdisciplinary journal, should have at least one article from each of the main areas of inquiry with which the journal has been concerned" sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology, political science and philosophy. Finally, with this is mind, I then attempted to select articles which are of as much interest today as when they first appeared, which, had they arrived in the journal office this year, I would have been delighted to print.
Fortunately for me, I did not have to make these decisions alone. I had the invaluable help and advice of my co-editor for this issue, Joe Greenbaum, whose familiarity with the earlier years of the journal, acquired over the many years he served as Dean of the Graduate Faculty, was particularly welcome. But, even with articulated principles of selection and the full collaboration of Joe Greenbaum, painful choices were inevitable. There were simply many more articles by distinguished scholars, some of whom were our friends and colleagues, then we had space for. We therefore must hope for the sympathetic understanding of those who may have been offended by our failure to include them in this issue.
As the editor of Social Research, my hope for the future is that whoever is Editor at the 100th anniversary will have a much more difficult task than I had. I am sure he or she will.
Arien Mack
Editor
Introduction to the 50th Anniversary Issue of Social Research
This anniversary issue sums up a half century during which Social Research has been the voice of the Graduate Faculty of the New School. Few scholarly journals maintain their permanence for so long a period. Why Social Research? I think because it has remained faithful to its founders--emigre scholars in America who rigorously maintained the commitment to an historical, theoretical, and above all a critical approach to social science that was their European heritage. In short, Social Research has had character.
From the outset, it was international and interdisciplinary. Spreading so wide a net, it encountered all the intellectual and political currents of five decades. Nonetheless, as this issue attests, it has never yielded to any single current or mindlessly battled another. This it owes to the deep values shared by its editors, who, though drawn from all of the social sciences and two continents, have been unified by their membership in the Graduate Faculty and their devotion to its purposes. From its early editors, Alvin Johnson and Leo Strauss, on through Hans Staudinger, and Peter Berger, and Dennis Wrong, to its editor of the past 13 years, Arien Mack, Social Research has reached out to scholars on both sides of the Atlantic who stretch the substantive and methodological boundaries of the social sciences., and who have sought to make social research useful in the quest for a better human condition.
Fifty years ago, Alvin Johnson's introduction to the first issue observed, "The methods are obviously continental, the material is of the world at large." His recitation of the subject matter that the fledgling journal would explore contained no topic that today is "out of date." To be sure, subsequent volumes of Social Research gradually enlarged its subject matter to include philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, but always in a way that builds upon the original focus of the emigre founders.
Social Research is a barometer for the scholarly interests and achievements of this university, and for the social science community at large. Let the intellectual contributions of those remembered in this compendium of 50 years challenge all of us, as we lay the foundation for another half century of distinctive and provocative scholarship.
Jonathan F. Fanton
President of the New School for Social Research
Special Introduction Back to the Top
Table of Contents
Part I: Continental Perspective
| HANNAH ARENDT | Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture |
| JURGEN HABERMAS | What Does A Crisis Mean Today? Legitimation Problems in Late Capitalism |
| HANS JONAS | The Practical Uses of Theory |
| EMIL LEDERER | Social Control vs. Economic Law: An Old Dogma and a New Situation |
| ADOLPH LOWE | The Classical Theory of Economic Growth |
| HANS MORGENTHAU | Thought and Action in Politics |
| JEAN PIAGET | The Attainment of Invariants and Reversible Operations in the Development of Thinking |
| PAUL RICOEUR | The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text |
| ALFRED SCHUTZ | Mozart and the Philosophers |
| HANS SPEIER | Treachery in War |
| LEO STRAUSS | The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right |
| MAX WERTHEIMER | Gestalt Theory |
Table of Contents
Special Introduction
Back to the Top
Notes on Contributors
(at time of publication)
Alvin Johnson was principal founder of the New School for Social Research, the University-in-Exile, which became the Graduate Faculty, and Social Research. He was President of the New School for Social Research from 1921 to 1945, and President Emeritus until his death in 1971.
Hannah Arendt was University Professor of Political Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research from 1967 to 1975. Her works include Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, The Human Condition, On Revolution, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and The Life of the Mind.
Jurgen Habermas is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in West Germany. His most recent work in English is The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One. Among his works are also Knowledge and Human Interest, Theorie und Praxis, and Legitimation Crisis.
Hans Jonas is Alvin Johnson Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research. His works include The Gnostic Religion, The Phenomenon of Life, Philosophical Essays, and The Imperative of Responsibility.
Emil Lederer was the first Dean of the University-in-Exile and Professor at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research from its beginning until 1939. He wrote Technical Progress and Unemployment: An Inquiry into the Obstacles to Economic Expansion and State of the Masses: The Threat of the Classless Society.
Adolph Lowe was Professor of Economics from 1941 and is now Professor Emeritus at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research. Among his works are On Economic Knowledge: Toward a Science of Political Economics and The Path of Economic Growth.
Hans Morgenthau was University Professor of Political Science at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research from 1970 to 1980. He also held Distinguished Professorships at the University of Chicago and the City University of New York. He is autor of Science: Servant or Master?
Jean Piaget was Professor of Psychology, Director of the Institut des Sciences de L'Education, Director of the Psychological Laboratory of Centre International de L'Epistemologie Genetique, and Director of the International Bureau of Education, all at the University of Geneva. His works include The Child's Conception of Space and The Child and Reality: Problems of Genetic Psychology.
Paul Ricoeur is currently John Nuveen Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago (Divinity School, Department of Philosophy and Committee on Social Thought) and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris. Among his works are The Rule of Metaphor and Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation.
Alfred Schutz was Professor in Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research from 1943to 1960. He was well known for his phenomenological studies, among which are On Phenomenology and Social Relations: Selected Writings and The Phenomenological World.
Hans Speier was a founding member of the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, where he taught until 1942. He is currently Robert M. MacIver Proessor Emeritus of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Among his recent works is Die Angestellten vor dem National Sozialismus: Ein Bietrag zum Verstandnis der Deutschen Sozialstruktur 1918-1933.
Leo Strauss was Professor at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research from 1938-1939, and then Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Among his works are The Gnostic Religion, The Phenomenon of Life, Philosophical Essays and The Imperative of Responsibility.
Max Wertheimer was a founding member of the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, where he taught until 1944. His works include Productive Thinking and Drei Abhandlungen zur Gestalttheorie.
