How Has a Post-Philosophical Sociology Become Possible? A Response to Philip Walsh

Abstract

This article responds to Philip Walsh’s defence (in the March 2014 issue, Vol. 44 (2): 179-200) of the traditional Lockean “underlaborer” conception of the role of philosophy against Norbert Elias’s sociology of knowledge. The article argues, contra Walsh, that the “post-philosophical” status of sociology is already a historical fait accompli. The author challenges Walsh’s contention that Elias’s perspectival sociological theory of knowledge is fatally flawed by its improper use of the concept of process as a central principle. The response concludes that Walsh’s article is a formidable mobilization of logical, conceptual, analytical, and other theoretical resources tacitly designed to save the autonomy of philosophy at all costs in the face of the advanced sociology of knowledge of Elias.