Modernity and morality: A study on the moral foundations of modern societies in the works of Durkheim, Weber, Foucault, Habermas and Kant (Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Michel Foucault, Juergen Habermas, Immanuel Kant)

The major theme of the dissertation concerns the moral aspect of modern social life in terms of the impact that the moral consciousness of individuals has on the formation and survival of a social order. It is a crucial contention of the work that the modern phenomenon of morality has been remarkably neglected in contemporary sociology resulting in a serious curtailment of the scope and relevance of the discipline and, as a consequence, in a widespread perception of its devaluation in the last decades. Thus the aim pursued here in delineating the moral condition of modern societies is to advocate for sociology a role in public debates as a critical and valid enterprise.; Part I begins by examining the work of Durkheim and his conception of society as fundamentally involved in the normative justification of sociology. It concludes that the Durkheimian tradition, which has underpinned the sociological outlook, has led to the undermining of the relevance of a distinct sociological analysis of morality. Accordingly, the subjective meaning of morality is derived from the internalization of the externally given and socially sanctioned rules of conduct. Correspondingly, individuals are conceived as entirely passive recipients of strategic planning or as imposed upon by some particular dominant groups in society or by society in general. The subsequent analysis of Weber's interpretive perspective shows that there is an inconsistency between his sociological view, predicated on the individuals' subjective meaning and motivation, and his account of the moral condition of rationalization in modern societies. It will be argued that, contrary to the current consensus among sociologists, Weber's analysis of modernity entails a conception of the human condition in which the individuals' are substantially deprived of the capacity for genuinely active and autonomous social action. Foucault and Habermas works, studied in the remainder of Part One, constitute two prominent contemporary attempts to obviate the moral lacuna which characterizes the prevalent sociological view of modernity. It will be maintained that, despite insisting on the crucial significance of morality, their analyses of modern societies come short of articulating historically pertinent and deductively sound explanation of the origin and endurance of the modern social order.; In Part II, Kant's idea of morality is invoked both as a major point of reference for and, at the same time, as an alternative view to, classical and contemporary sociological theories. Kant's insistence on autonomy as the moral endowment of human beings shows convincingly that we should ground the normative validity of the social mores and rules of conduct on the universal principles of morality adopted by each individual as the determining basis of her action. This allows us to redeem both the theoretical relevance of the sociological understanding of morality, and at the same time the critical vocation of our sociological endeavour, grounded in the dignity and the value of humanity inferred by Kant from the individual's capacity for freedom and the autonomy and from their ability of rational self-determination. In the concluding chapter it is suggested that the analyses carried on by the sociologists on the moral condition of modernity can be re-inscribed within the framework of the Kantian model of moral inquiry.