Capitalist Totality and Developmental Explanation

Dados Bibliográficos

ID13085573
AutoresTad Skotnicki (0000-0002-8050-027X, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume12
Fascículo1
Páginas51-78
Data de publicação2025-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCritical Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2326-4462 • E-ISSN: 2326-4470
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/734865
OpenAlexW4411637116
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas42

This article proposes that social scientists have not appreciated how argumentative practices—the way we make claims with the aid of concepts and distinctions—can assume an invariant form. This invariant form raises difficulties for arguments that appeal to totality and other broadly critical notions. To illustrate and critique this state of affairs, the article sketches this invariant form and contrasts it with a form of argument involving appeals to capitalist totality. This effort relies on the account of capitalist totality in the work of Moishe Postone. But the article includes reasons that this analysis of totality and forms of argument can yield lessons for other treatments of totality as well as for the broader effort to forge a coherent and robust alternative to methodological positivism

Cognitive science · Epistemology · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Policy and Reform Studies