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diff --git a/_posts/go_deeper.rst b/_posts/go_deeper.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..31b466d --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/go_deeper.rst @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +category: + - research +title: Kant and Living Waters +date: 2005-04-26T18:10:00 +--- + +While reading this morning next chapter of Carey (1989), I again hit +some of my familiar spirits. I was thinking yesterday about the symbolic +interactionism (the first chapter of Carey is actually a thorough +explanation of the background of ideas feeding into the symbolic +interactionism and similar constructivist sociological tradition), and +it came to me that I should write into my dissertation proposal about +the relation between the symbolic interactionism and the tradition of +those who (following `Kant`_, among others) considered “the real world” +impossible (or hard) to understand directly. Actually, I am really not +that interested in Kant’s philosophy itself (it is tempting to write “in +itself” :-)) — I have never read any of his `Critics`_ — I use him more +as a symbol of a whole line of thinking, which includes also +`Wittgenstein`_ and the whole bunch of postmodern thinkers. + +That is obviously just a small (and not that important) note, that could +be added to the proposal in a minute. However, much more important is +that I was actually thinking about this whole relation between “Kant” +and the symbolic interactionism (and I was certainly not the first one, +who thought about that — I wonder, what has been written on this theme +in the “Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism” (2003)). I was actually +saying to myself, that these things I found about SI remind me of +discussions with my brother about Kant. And yet, I have not thought that +I could actually use it for my dissertation, because what I really tried +to do was to create a work which would resemble other scientific works I +have read. However, the path to truly interesting stuff and to finding +out something new goes exactly in the other direction — to use my own +resources and thoughts as much as possible. The dissertation (especially +with qualitative methods) should be as personal as possible — I don’t +mean personal in terms of sharing my personal issues, but I have to go +deeper in finding out what I actually think, what really matters to me, +etc. + +Actually, somewhere here may lie a root of my father’s dissatisfaction +with sociology. Citing (again, there are more cites here than my own +thoughts :-), oh well) my advisor Len Buckle, “real sociological truths +are either common sense or nonsense”. Except that it sometimes requires +a lot of uncommon thinking to discover common sense. And unless we go to +the personal depths and appreciation of the artistic dimension of +science, we don’t find anything that really matters. + +Citing (indirectly) Markus Hoffmann, whenever we are insecure in our +world, it is a reliable sign that we should go deeper in our healing. +Whenever I feel bored and drained by the routine work, I should go +deeper as well. + +.. _Kant: + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant +.. _Critics: + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Pure_Reason +.. _Wittgenstein: + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein |