Societal Structures and Processes

tions, but piecemeal analysis of specific ideas and movements in intellectual history. The specific thesis of this paper is that by and large empirical and experimental philosophies are more congenial to social movements which are interested in changing the social and political status quo in a direction of shared power than are organic, idealistic, or transcendental philosophies. All governments and power elites tend to be on the side of eternity, while those which seek to make power more responsible to those affected by its exercise tend to be empirical and temporal minded. Some objections to and difficulties in this view are considered. The position taken in this paper expresses a pluralistic theory both of history and of intellectual history. GEORGE P. CONGER

Epistemology · Sociology · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Theory and Influence · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought