Truth and Social Science: From Hegel to Deconstruction

The noble aim of sociologists to "tell the truth" has sometimes involved ignoble assumptions about human beings. In this major discussion of truth in the social science, Ross Abbinnett traces the debate on truth from the "objectifying powers" of Kant through more than 200 years of critique and reformulation to the unraveling of truth by Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida. Truth and Social Science gives students an exciting and accessible guide to the main sociological treatments of truth and can also be read as an account of the collapse of modernity and the rise of new forms of thought, which treat difference and ambivalence as positive values. The book will be of interest to students of sociology, social theory, and philosophy.