Daniel Bell Research Articles

The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University by Daniel Bell (review)

The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University by Daniel Bell (review)

Daniel Bell, Social Forecasting, and Science Fiction

Daniel Bell, Social Forecasting, and Science Fiction

Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World, written by Daniel Bell and Wang Pei

Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World, written by Daniel Bell and Wang Pei

Law Libraries in the Information Age: A Critical Perspective

AbstractThis article traces the influence of theories of the information society, originating in the post-industrial theory of Daniel Bell, on developments in law librarianship. It argues that the main thrust of this influence has been to foster a conservative professional culture that emphasizes individual professional development and technological solutions in lieu of critical engagement with the political and economic forces responsible for eroding public and collective norms.

Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy

Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy

Castells versus Bell: A comparison of two grand theorists of the information age

Daniel Bell (1919–2011) and Manuel Castells (1942–) are the grand theorists of the information age. The article provides a detailed, up-to-date, comparative analysis of their writings. It begins with their methodologies, identifying numerous commonalities in their post-Marxian frameworks. The substance of their theories is then examined, where it is shown that both plausibly explain contemporary social reality in terms of the interplay of three forces: the information technology revolution, the restructuring of capitalism and the innovational role of culture. There are found to be major similarities in their accounts (the Kantian interpretation, social stratification) but also significant divergences (role of science, the fourth world, the normative content of culture). Suitably combined, Bell’s and Castells’s thought goes a long way towards delivering a persuasive sociological theory of the global information society. However, the article concludes by suggesting that extensive further work is needed to clarify the precise relationships between the three factors and their relative weightings in the equations required to explain recent social change.

Mencius and Xunzi on the legitimate use of offensive force: A pacifistic critique of recent just war interpretations

AbstractThis essay offers a critical evaluation of competing interpretations of the early Confucian thinkers Xunzi and Mencius regarding their view of the legitimacy of war. First, I briefly describe and critique Daniel Bell's “just war” interpretation of Mencius, which is relatively permissive regarding the legitimation of war. I then consider and critique the position of Sumner Twiss and Jonathan Chan regarding Mencius' and Xunzi's ostensible support for what we call “humanitarian intervention,” which is also made from a just war perspective. Next, I describe Xinzhong Yao's pacifistic interpretation, offering a slightly qualified defense of it. I then consider reframing this view as “just war pacifism,” defending a phrase used in the Confucian context by Julia Ching. Finally, I address the question of whether the pacifistic account is too naïve to attribute to these great Confucian thinkers. I maintain that, on the contrary, it is not naïve. Indeed, it is a position we would do well to give due consideration.

Donald Trump and the Paranoid Position

This article situates Trump in the context of what Daniel Bell called the New American Right and analyzes the mass or group psychological basis of his charisma. Originating with McCarthyism, the New American Right was a reaction to the New Deal—a defense of the “real,” that is, rural, America against urban elites and immigrants. Richard Hofstadter’s famous characterization of the New American Right as “paranoid” drew on the Frankfurt School yet remained essentially descriptive. To deepen Hofstadter’s idea, I utilize Melanie Klein’s distinction between the paranoid (schizoid) and depressive (intersubjective) positions. This distinction helps clarify the difference between the mass psychologies of right-wing and left-wing movements, including in our time. By describing Trump’s relation to his followers, I explicate the paranoid basis of his movement’s violence and provide some clues to its underlying dynamics. Finally, I identify the liberal antagonism to mass movements as a weakness in the struggle against Trumpism.

Criticism of Marxism as a Proto-theory of Cultural Capital and the “New Class”: J. W. Machajski’s Theory of Intelligentsia

The article is devoted to the theory of intelligentsia developed by Jan Wacław Machajski (1866–1926) and to the history of its transfer and reception in modern Western social theories. The main thesis of the article is that Machajski’s theory directly influenced the shaping of several Western social theories in the second half of the 20th century, such as the theories of the new class and the post-industrial society. The article includes a review of modern research literature devoted to Machajski, a brief biographical sketch, and an explication of the main thesis of his theory of intelligentsia. A history of the reception and the criticism of Machajski’s theory is analyzed in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, the result being that this theory was practically excluded from the Russian conceptual and theoretical context. In the article, the history of the transfer of this theory to the Western context in which Max Nomad played the decisive part is analyzed. As the result of this transfer, these ideas became known and acknowledged by a range of social theorists of the middle of the 20th century, for example, by Daniel Bell and Alvin Gouldner. In the concluding part of the work, it is shown that Machajski’s ideas that considered access to education and knowledge as a certain type of capital can be systematically recognized in later theories, in particular, in the theory of cultural capital by Pierre Bourdieu, and in the theory of society of singularities by Andreas Reckwitz.

IS DANIEL A MONSTER? REFLECTIONS ON DANIEL A. BELL AND WANG PEI’S “SUBORDINATION WITHOUT CRUELTY” THESIS

Daniel Bell and Wang Pei’s recent monograph, Just Hierarchy, seeks to defend hierarchical relationships against more egalitarian alternatives. This paper addresses their argument, offered in one chapter of the book, in favour of a hierarchical relationship between human and nonhuman animals. This relationship, Bell and Pei argue, should conform to what they call “subordination without cruelty:” it is permissible to subordinate and exploit animals for human ends, provided that we do not treat them cruelly. We focus on three aspects of their view: their argument for a hierarchical view; their understanding of cruelty; and their account of the heightened duties they claim we owe to nonhuman animals who are intelligent, domesticated, and/or “cute.” We argue that the reasons that Bell and Pei offer fail to support their conclusions, and that, even if one accepts a hierarchical view, the conclusions that Bell and Pei draw about the permissibility of practices such as killing animals for food do not follow. We conclude by emphasizing philosophers’ responsibility to thoroughly test their arguments and to engage with existing debates, especially when the practices they seek to justify involve harms of great magnitude.

Sungmoon Kim’s Democracy After Virtue

Sungmoon Kim’s <i>Democracy After Virtue</i>

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

New Pythagoreanism, Complexity, Artificial Intelligence

Leibniz defined mathematics as the “science of possible worlds.” But what worlds were assumed as the possible ones by thinkers of different eras? It is this question that is considered in this article. According to Einstein, development of science requires “external justification” (observations and experiments that should be explained or predicted) and internal perfection (following the internal logic of this discipline). Mathematics has no “external justification” and experiment cannot refute mathematical theory. In this sense, mathematics is closer to creativity, to art than to natural science. Its connection with culture turns out to be more complex and mediated. To explain this connection, Daniel Bell, within the framework of his theory of social development, puts forward the “axial principle,” according to which the role of science is considered as the main characteristic of society. From this point of view, we single out traditional, industrial and post-industrial societies. Each of these phases has its own ideals, norms, and types of mathematical creativity. In traditional society, following the Pythagorean tradition, mathematics is focused on finding harmony in nature, on identifying unity on the basis of universal relationships determined by the numerical characteristics of the objects under study. As the industrial era approaches, the constructivist, or “project-based,” approach becomes increasingly important. And unity emerges at a higher “meta-level.” The forerunner of this direction is Descartes, who raised the question of finding a single, universal method for solving all mathematical problems. The work traces the change in the formulation of a number of “invariant,” “eternal” mathematical problems as well as the evolution of the concept of “complexity” in the historical retrospective. Close attention is paid to the post-industrial phase of civilizational development and to “computer mathematics,” which has become the basis for formation of virtual reality, which in many respects changes the very direction of progress. As a result of this, the “extraverted orientation” of humanity, the course toward new horizons was replaced by the “introvert” one, which prioritizes tasks associated with comfort, convenience, and consumption. The “change of milestones” that has taken place is traced in a comparison of “big projects” related to mathematics that were put forward in the 1960s, and those that are considered as priorities at present. In fact, we are faced with a “crisis of expectations.” We see a way out of this crisis in a revival of the “Pythagorean tradition,” at a new level. But if in a traditional society the goal of the development of mathematics in alliance with other sciences and arts was to reveal harmony in the natural world, then at the post-industrial phase, the priorities are different. They are associated with computer modeling, understanding, and identifying the foundations of harmony in the human world.

Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World, written by Daniel Bell and Wang Pei

Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World, written by Daniel Bell and Wang Pei

Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case by Tongdong Bai

Reviewed by: Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case by Tongdong Bai Zhuoyao Li (bio) Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case. By Tongdong Bai. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2020. Pp. xxv + 316. Hardcover $39.95, ISBN 978-0-69-119599-5. The rise of populism and the decline of western liberal democracies in the recent decade have pushed many contemporary Confucian political theorists to re-examine the relationship between Confucianism and liberal democracy. On the one hand, whether or not Confucianism and liberal democracy are strictly compatible with each other is no longer important to many. Instead, it is theoretically more interesting and practically more urgent to try and explore the best of both worlds. On the other hand, if the relationship can be understood in such a way as to pivot the question from what liberal democracy can do for Confucianism to what Confucianism can do for liberal democracy, then it seems that political Confucianism will finally break free from its East Asian setting and offer universalizable guidance to all under Heaven. Tongdong Bai’s Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case aims to do both by proposing a Confucian hybrid regime that overcomes the theoretical divide between Confucianism and liberal democracy and that at the same time transcends the cultural divide between the east and the west. According to Bai, his model of Confucian hybrid regime has three key features. First and foremost, the rule of law and human rights are endorsed and firmly established. Second, the government is considered responsible for the material and moral well-being of the people. Third, in addition to the institution of one person one vote, the hybrid regime introduces and strengthens the role of the competent and morally superior people, or the “meritocrats” (pp. 68-70). The second feature is justified by drawing perfectionist support from teachings of both Confucius and Mencius, and the third feature is justified primarily through outlining the drawbacks of democratic ideals and institutions. The idea of a Confucian hybrid regime is not new. As a matter of fact, both Daniel Bell and Jiang Qing have proposed their respective models that share the latter two features and similar justifications.1 What makes Bai’s model stand out is its affinity to liberal values exhibited by the first feature. Unlike comprehensive Confucian perfectionists, Bai does not wish to reject liberal democracy in toto. Instead, his Confucian hybrid regime is supposed to better revise liberal democracy for East Asian societies and beyond. As Bai puts it in the book, the [End Page 1] overall strategy is “to revise the democratic part of liberal democracy with Confucianism-inspired ideas and institutions, while defending the compatibility between Confucianism and the liberal part of liberal democracy, especially the rule of law and rights” (p. 257). Once again, this two-part strategy is not exactly new. The first part of the strategy should be quite familiar to anyone who has followed recent Confucian criticisms against democracy, while the second part has been adopted by Confucian theorists who are sympathetic to liberal values.2 What strikes me the most, however, is how Bai carries out the second part of the strategy. In the opening chapter, Bai goes through the intricacies and nuances of Confucianism in order to address the contemporary relevance of Confucianism and narrow his focus to classical Confucianism, particularly the works of Confucius and Mencius. Somewhat controversial is his suggestion that the Zhou-Qin transition can be understood as an early modernization comparable to the transition from the Middle Ages to western modernity. The primary reason for this comparison is that similar to the transition to modernity in the west, the Zhou-Qin transition effectively led to the collapse of nobility-based feudalism that used to serve as the bond that held previous political entities together, supplied the source of legitimacy for the political order, and served as the mechanism for dealing with entity-entity relations (p. 23). What emerged from the transition was a uniquely modern phenomenon: meaningful pluralism that could weaken the bond between people in a large society, threaten the political legitimacy of the ruling entity, and overwhelm the relationship between states. Classical Confucianism, in Bai’s view, tries to...

Planning the American Future: Daniel Bell, Future Research, and the Commission on the Year 2000.

This article examines the sociologist Daniel Bell's interest in future research. Future research, to Bell, had as its particular purpose to ensure forms of coordination and steering acceptable to a liberal society. By examining Bell's interest in future research and the activities of the Commission on the Year 2000, the essay proposes that future research played a role in Cold War intellectual history as a particular form of planning for the liberal polity. This idea of planning a liberal society changed decisively, however, between 1965 and 1975.

Outlines of a New World Order

The article discusses the transformations of the world order in the context of the development of socio-economic relations and scientific and technological progress. It is shown that in the course of scientific and technological development, which is the main factor of global transformations, there are the changes of social and economic relations, forms of statehood, and management systems. It is noted that since the beginning of the New Age, the philosophical basis of the world order began to be determined by market relations, which stimulated intensive scientific and technological progress and the development of the financial and credit system. Capital itself was originally seen as a service. As capitalism evolves, the function of money changes fundamentally, turning from a resource into a mean of management. This led to an increase in the differentiation of the socio-economic development of countries as well as to the stratification of society. An attempt to build a unipolar world as a result of economic globalization gave the opposite result. Exhaustion of the possibilities of capitalism models to provide socio-economic development in spite of scientific and technological progress, led to a cascade of economic, political, and military crises. The observed trends prove Daniel Bell’s forecast about the transition to a postindustrial society, that is, to a society where the priority is to improve the quality of life based on new technologies. Therefore, defining the contours of a new world order is on the agenda. The new (post-industrial) world’s way of life will be formed as a result of the humanitarian and technological revolution, the essence of which is the synchronous development of science, technology, and culture, focused on meeting human needs. The basis of the post-industrial technological paradigm will be convergent technologies. Moreover, the directions and trajectory of human development will be determined by the level of interaction between society, business, and government. However, as historical experience shows, there are currently no mechanisms for effective control of government and business by society. Therefore, it is concluded that at this stage, a consensus is needed, which at least will ensure a balance and global security, and ideally will give a new impetus to the development of mankind.

Political meritocracy and its betrayal

Some Confucian scholars have recently claimed that Confucian political meritocracy is superior to Western democracy. I have great reservations about such a view. In this article, I argue that so long as political meritocracy – be it Confucian or non-Confucian – does not commit itself to the ideal of democracy, it has the dangerous tendency to become politically oppressive in the hands of authoritarian rulers. To illustrate the problem, I first revisit Isiah Berlin’s classical discussion of the idea of positive liberty; he is deeply concerned about the abuse of this idea in the hands of dictators. Next, I examine Daniel Bell’s model of meritocracy in relation to China’s present form of governance. While Bell’s model and China’s present form of governance may not show political meritocracy at its best, they help to show that any version of political meritocracy that lacks a strong commitment to democracy tends to be political oppressive and, ultimately, may betray the ideal of political meritocracy.

The Truth Will Make You Free: The New Evangelization for a Secular Age, a Study in Development by Robert F. Leavitt

Reviewed by: The Truth Will Make You Free: The New Evangelization for a Secular Age, a Study in Development by Robert F. Leavitt Frank DeSiano, CSP, DMin Leavitt, Robert F. The Truth Will Make You Free: The New Evangelization for a Secular Age, a Study in Development. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019. 332 pages. Paperback. $34.95. ISBN: 9780814646687. The key to Robert Leavitt’s very helpful review of the present state of the New Evangelization lies in the second part of this book’s title: “A Study in Development.” Leavitt has taken upon himself to review most of the major documents and literature in this area, along with the multi-layered dynamics of several centuries which have led us to our present situation. If you have ever been stumped when asked, “What Is the New Evangelization?” this book explains why answering that question is often so difficult. After providing a synopsis of the development of evangelization/new evangelization (33–37), Leavitt, in the rest of this book, elaborates on his theme, an elaboration that underscores the context of broader philosophical and cultural ideas. Right from the beginning, Leavitt positions the discussion of New Evangelization in the context of secular culture. The early chapters present the long-range framework for the secularism and religious indifference we see today, much of it rooted in a totally proper rejection of the violence that has been associated with religion (82 ff.); “the gift of tongues for a secular age requires a contemporary translation of the Gospel of Christ that can move the apathetic disciples and the religiously indifferent” (104). He then reviews “the long nineteenth century,” with its stark confrontation of the newer manifestations of secularity and the Church’s drawn-out reaction to it. The Second Vatican Council sought to move the Church beyond the impasse that had arisen between church and world. He reviews the council documents that caused the greatest negative reaction in some church sectors, notably the Declaration on Religious Freedom (124). This sets up the framework for the chapter, “The Mission to the Courtyard of the Gentiles,” in which the term New Evangelization emerges during the ministry of St. John Paul II. “In the chapter that follows, Leavitt addresses how Pope Benedict openly deals with this tension. He cites at length Benedict’s address to [End Page 237] the Pontifical Council for Culture in 2008 along with a 2009 speech in which Benedict references the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” (153–4). Benedict’s emphasis had moved to reflecting on the ways in which Christian and secular humanism might be open to each other. Benedict convened the “Synod on the New Evangelization” in 2010 and presided over it in 2012. His retirement that year meant that this apostolic emphasis would now devolve to his successor, Pope Francis. “One thing, however, is clear about it. Secularism was parsed more carefully in The Joy of the Gospel than before” (155). Leavitt reflects deeply about secular culture, using the thought of Paul Ricoeur, Daniel Bell, and Charles Taylor. To talk about secular culture as if it was a simple thing with which faith could readily deal becomes, upon Leavitt’s treatment, a rather naïve idea. “Modernity is far from the simple concept and identity we like to imagine it is. It keeps shifting in meaning” (185). In other words, to the extent that New Evangelization might define itself against modernity and secularity, it can also overlook both the many layers of modern life as well as potential ways of dealing with it. Needless to say, the argument of this book offers an important contribution to our thinking about faith and culture, Church and world, New Evangelization and secularity. After looking at the nuances of secularity in Chapter 8 by presenting the thinking of Charles Taylor, Leavitt moves on to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel.” He uses this document to create positive direction for the development of the theme he is treating. In the conclusion of this book, Leavitt offers six directions for evangelization and modern life. In the end he asserts, “In this book I have argued that only by broadening our idea of what secularism means...

Consumption as an Althusserian Ideological Apparatus

The end of ideology has been declared for several times by different writers like Raymond Aron, Daniel Bell and Francis Fukuyama. However, ideology still has an important role in the social order even though its structure has been adapted to the contemporaneous material conditions. Consumption, the consumptive production of labour power, has turned into a new language of socio-symbolic meanings in the twentieth century. In this way, consumption overshadowed its material basis, the needs, and obtained a new duty in the ruling ideology as an ideological State apparatus, keeping the masses in line. This article aims to investigate this aspect of the modern consumption practice in accordance with ideology approach of Louis Althusser.