1/18/23

I bought this book because the subtitle states that it's an essay on psychology, society and politics. I've never had any interest in the "philosophy of mind", but I figured that the chapters on society and politics might still be interesting. This was unfortunately not the case.

Chapters 1-4 contain an essay on the human mind which is then expanded to a simple model of social life where "individualism" is weighed against "collectivism", and "holism" against "atomism". The author submerges himself in abstract philosophical theory and I can't say that his excessively long analysis (200 pages) really kindled any enthusiasm in myself. I assume the "holistic individualism" which the author champions as the best theory might be of interest to other professionals in this field, but it seemed far too abstract and simple to be of any interest to a broader audience or to have any implications for the real world.

I was happy to finally move away from the bog of philosophy of mind in chapters 5 and 6. There I hoped to find at least some insights on how societies function or how they can be understood. But in chapter 5, which I suppose could be categorized as philosophy of social science, the framework of "holistic individualism" leads the author to argue that human action can be explained by intentional explanation: by assuming that a person is rational and by observing what she does and how she responds to us, we can explain her actions. Clearly there is some truth in this conclusion, but it shouldn't take hundreds of pages of analysis to reach such a simple point. Many classical works in ethnography and cultural anthropology demonstrated this form of explanation a century ago (in much more interesting fashion).

Even the early ethnographers understood that the anthropological route to explaining human behavior - putting yourself in another person's shoes - only works in very special settings where the researcher can participate in the daily life of her research subjects. This simple fact seems to be lost on the author, who never indicates that the scope of "intentional explanation" might be limited. He does recognize "structural and historicist theory" as alternative and equally valid routes to understanding social phenomena, but the long-winded theorizing he provides on these alternative modes of explanation leads to a very murky picture of social-scientific understanding. I've read about 50 books on the philosophy and methodology of social science and this one ranks at the very bottom of that list as far as informative insights are concerned. Perhaps analytic philosophers are happy to write stuff like this for other analytic philosophers without bothering to consider how social science is actually done, but it can hardly be of interest to anyone else.

The final chapter discusses political philosophy. The author claims that his "holistic individualism" has implications also in this realm, but that claim falls apart immediately. In practice he just ignores his preceding theories and proceeds to discuss various aspects of contemporary political philosophy. Chapter 6 is certainly much better than chapter 5 because the author knows what he is talking about and has interesting things to say. The problem is that it doesn't really make any sense to include this material in a book where the first 200 pages were spent on the philosophy of mind. The pieces just don't fit together.

In conclusion, the author took on an ambitious project when he decided to write a book where the philosophy of mind is integrated with the philosophy of social science and political philosophy. It should in my opinion have been clear from the start that it would be impossible to conclude this project successfully. The author can perhaps be commended for giving it his best shot, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. His later works in political philosophy ("Republicanism" and "On the People's Terms") are clearly superior to this one, so I highly recommend you devote your time to them instead.