Thinking the Unthinkable

Charles Lemert is Andrus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. He is the author of Durkeim's Ghosts (2006).

“An often profound, sometimes melancholic, and always elegant meditation on classical social theory, which is defined, according to Lemert, by its courageous and insistent effort to comprehend the irrationality that has threatened modern humankind.” —Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University “Charles Lemert has already given sociologists great books that have profoundly changed how we teach social theory. He has done it again. With Thinking the Unthinkable he offers a concise but rich review of the riddles that engaged classical social theorists and which confront us still today. The reader is introduced to a diverse group of classical social theorists, given a sense of the expanse of their thought and a taste of their writings. There even is a glossary of the most important of their concepts. Just right for the classroom. Just right for these times.” —Patricia Ticineto Clough, Queens College and The Graduate Center - CUNY “Vintage Lemert. There is sophistication underlying his literary flair for down to earth writing. This book is an erudite and engaging meditation on the lessons Lemert has derived from his sustained engagement with a diverse array of writers who have changed how we think about social things.” —Peter Kivisto, Augustana College

• Part I What Is Social Theory?; Chapter 1 The Impossible Reasons of Modern Civilizations; Chapter 2 Social Theory and Modernity’s Unthinkable; Chapter 3 Social Violence as the Bead Lust of the Unthinkable; Chapter 4 Five Ways to Skin a Cat; Part II Unthinkable Social Things; Chapter 5 Revolutionary Reasons; Chapter 6 Rationality’s Double-Bind; Chapter 7 The Reasonable Hope of a Social Bond; Chapter 8 Perverse Reasons; Chapter 9 Unreasonable Differences; Part III The Exiled Others Think the Unthinkable; Chapter 10 Beyond the Double-Bind; Chapter 11 A Revolutionary Social Bond; Chapter 12 The Strange Social Benefits of Conflict; Chapter 13 The Social Structure of Meanings; Chapter 14 The Unfolding of Social Theory in the Unraveling of the Twentieth Century into the Twenty-First;