Continental Philosophy of Social Science

Yvonne Sherratt is British Academy Researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. She has taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh and Wales, and is the author of Adorno's Positive Dialectic.

This ambitious and wide-ranging book asks what recent continental philosophy can contribute to our understanding of the social sciences. Yvonne Sherratt argues that continental thought since the late nineteenth century offers a distinctive way of reflecting on social science. She sets out to explain what is unique about the continental approach, to distinguish its main strands, and to show that it is a promising alternative to Anglo-American work in the field. Sherratt's subject is important, and a discussion of it is long overdue....We should be glad that someone has written a book on continental philosophy of social science. The figures Sherratt discusses have a great deal to teach us about the social sciences. Her book will provide a valuable service if it provokes further discussion of this important but neglected topic. Sherratt also identifies a promising way of thinking about this topic. The notion of humanism is a helpful frame for making sense of continental philosophy of social science, and for explaining what is distinctive about it. --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2006.09.08

• Introduction; Part I. The Tradition of Hermeneutics: 1. Ancient hermeneutics; 2. Biblical hermeneutics; 3. German philosophical hermeneutics: Enlightenment and Romanticism; 4. German philosophical hermeneutics: phenomenology and Existentialism; 5. Continental philosophical hermeneutics post-war; Part II. The Tradition of Genealogy: 1. The history of genealogy: Nietzsche; 2. The theory of genealogy: Foucault; 3. Application of genealogy; Part III. The Tradition of Critical Theory: 1. The history of critical theory; 2. Critical theory I; 3. Critical theory II.