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9781421431918 Academic Inspection Copy

Purpose and Necessity in Social Theory

  • ISBN-13: 9781421431918
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Maurice Mandelbaum
  • Price: AUD $69.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/12/2019
  • Format: Paperback 210 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Philosophy [HP]
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Philosopher Maurice Mandelbaum offers a broad-ranging essay on the roles of chance, choice, purpose, and necessity in human events. He traces the many changes these concepts have undergone, from the analyses of Hobbes and Spinoza, through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Mandelbaum examines two contrary tendencies in the history of social theories. Some thinkers, he shows, have explained the character of institutions in terms of their individual purposes, whereas others have stressed relationships of necessity among society's institutions. Mandelbaum discusses chance, choice, and necessity at length and reaches some provocative conclusions about the ways in which they are interwoven in human affairs.

""Students of the humanities and social sciences who want to see the relevance of philosophical debates over free will versus determination and individual versus social causation can do no better than consult this book.""

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