American pragmatism and European social theory

Holmes, Durkheim, Scheler, and the sociology of legal knowledge

Frédéric Kellogg

in: Pragmatism and the social sciences 2, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 4 (1), 2012.

Abstract

Max Scheler followed American pragmatism in viewing knowledge as residing in concrete human acts, and both emphasized the role of social or community inquiry. How, given this insight, is knowledge to be understood? The answer must be sought within specific realms of inquiry, like science, where a sociology of scientific knowledge has emerged in the wake of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. What about law, if seen as another form of community inquiry? We may find a sociology of legal knowledge implicit in the work of pragmatism’s classical legal theorist, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Unlike Durkheim, Holmes does not hold that categories of thought reflect features of group organization and social solidarity. The nature and modes of legal classification emerge against a historical background from resolution of conflicts among disparate interests. Holmes’s model is more skeptical of progress than Scheler’s, but accepts a role for meliorative intelligence in revising embedded habits and paradigms.

Cited authors

Durkheim Emile