Module overview
Contemporary thought typically depicts human beings as profoundly shaped by their social, cultural, historical and linguistic contexts. In doing so, it rejects earlier visions of us as capable of a disengagement from such ‘embedding’—the ‘social contract’ picture of autonomous individuals opting into, or rejecting, social collaboration being a classic example. But the ‘embedded’ vision poses problems of its own: it may seem to lead to a relativism that is repugnant—perhaps even incoherent—and to render us what Harold Garfinkel called ‘cultural dopes’. This module will explore these tensions and the various ways in which they manifest themselves: for example, as tensions between self and society, nature and nurture, and our behaviour and the norms—moral, political, aesthetic, epistemic, etc.—that we demand they meet. The module will explore various forms that these tensions take across the humanities and social sciences, and the prospects for their resolution.