Filosofisociologi - ett sociologiskt perspektiv på filosofiskt tänkande

Sammanfattning: The subject matter of the present doctoral thesis is the sociology of philosophy, a sub-discipline within the general field of sociology. As the term clearly indicates, the sociology of philosophy concerns the sociological study of philosophy. As this domain is still, to some extent, virgin territory, my thesis is mainly explorative in nature. Viewed as a whole, it aims at investigating what a sociological study of philosophy might entail. The thesis consists of six chapters divided into three parts. The aim of Part I is to closely scrutinize the contributions to the sociological study of philosophy of two pioneers: Émile Durkheim and Karl Mannheim. In two chapters, I examine the sociology of knowledge of Durkheim and Mannheim, respectively, in order to seize upon those elements of their thought that may be used today to pursue the sociological study of philosophy. Thus, my problem is the following: What may be used from the classical tradition of the sociology of knowledge (Durkheim and Mannheim) to shed light on philosophical thought? In Part II, I turn my attention to contemporary sociology of philosophy. The contributions to the discipline of two prominent sociologists, Randall Collins and Pierre Bourdieu, are discussed in two chapters. I focus here on how they deal with the relationship between philosophical thought and its existential basis in their empirical works. To investigate this problem, Robert K. Merton's analytical scheme for the sociological study of knowledge, ?Paradigm for the Sociology of Knowledge?, is used. The problem in Part II may be formulated thus: How is the relationship between philosophical thought and its existential basis understood in the sociology of philosophy of Collins and Bourdieu, respectively? In the third and final part, I sketch a short programme for the sociological study of philosophy. Among other things, I stress that such a field of research must seize upon the main conceptual innovations of Bourdieu and Collins: the notions of philosophical field and attention space, respectively. The principal lesson to be learnt from Collins's and Bourdieu's sociology of philosophy is that philosophical thought cannot normally be reduced to socio-political conditions outside the attention space or the philosophical field. This methodological orientation leads to a focus on contextual factors rather than on socio-political conditions at the macro-level. However, a Bourdieuian sociology of philosophy would also consider how philosophy is indirectly linked to political conditions. This wider context is worthy of note, as philosophy has no absolute autonomy with respect to society.