Social Being

by Rom Harré

The turning point in the growth of a genuinely scientific social psychology, marked by the publication of The Explanation of Social Behaviour, by R. Harre and P.F. Secord, was the realization of the pointlessness of most attempts at an experimental study of social action. Further development of the original insights has led to much deeper interest in the structure of social events and the meanings of which they are composed. This interest has led to theoretical advances and novel empirical investigations. If social psychology is a nodal point for the sciences of man, it has been as singularly blind to the need for an explicit examination of the social conditions of action, and the methods by which they could be explored, as it has been to the need for a theory of persons with which to investigate the ways an individual can act as a competent member of a collective. Social Being is an attempt to remedy these deficiencies in a systematic manner. However, explicit attention to the social settings of human action brings to light the almost wholly neglected temporal dimension of individual lives and changing societies. detail supported by wide ranging empirical observations. The work is rounded off with a brief exposition of the political consequences of taking the ethogenic approach to psychology, an approach in which men are seen as acting along two major practical reason directs their actions towards the maintenance of life, while the demands of the expressive dimension prompt them to act in such ways as to promote other images of the selves they hope to be taken to be. philosophy of psychology and theoretical psychology.

Genres: Psychology, Sociology

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Rom Harré was Distinguished Professor in the Psychology Department of Georgetown University in Washington DC, and the Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science in London. He was for many years the University Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at Oxford and Fellow of Linacre College. He began his career in mathematics and physics, turning later to the foundations of psychology. His research was directed to the use of models and other kinds of non-formal reasoning in the sciences, as well as a long series of studies on the role of causal powers and agency concepts in both natural and human sciences. He held Visiting Professorships in many places, including Australia, Spain and Japan. He was Honorary President of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry.