267REFLEXIVITY AND INTERPRETIVE SOCIOLOGYHuman Studies 24: 267–292, 2001.© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Reflexivity and Interpretive Sociology:The Case of Analysis and the Problem of Nihilism

KIERAN M. BONNERDepartment of Sociology, St. Jerome’s University, University of Waterloo, Waterloo,Ontario, Canada N2L 3G3 (E-mail: kmbonner@watarts.uwaterloo.ca)

Abstract. This paper addresses the problem of reflexivity in modern social inquiry in gen-eral and in sociology in particular. This problem is inherited from Weber’s very conceptionof sociology, is transformed by phenomenology and ethnomethodology, deepened by the lin-guistic turn of hermeneutics and Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and has been the centralconcern of the work of Alan Blum and Peter McHugh. The issues and spectres raised by re-flexivity are methodological arbitrariness, the need to take responsibility for one’s own talk(and the cultural assumptions embedded in talk) and, finally, the deep fear of nihilism – thesense that with regard to inquiry (along with everything else in the world) nothing matters.As such, reflexivity raises the most fundamental issue that can be raised for modern socialinquiry. Through an oriented interpretation of the work of Blum and McHugh and other con-temporary social theorists (particularly Gadamer and Arendt), this paper works through whata dialectical engagement with these issues look like.

Key words: Arendt, Blum and McHugh, ethnomethodology, Gadamer, hermeneutics, mo-dernity, nihilism, phenomenology, reflexivity

Part 1 – The Problem of Reflexivity

Reflexivity, Sociology and the Limits of Human Inquiry

The problem of reflexivity for sociology concerns the ability of the inquirerto take responsibility for what one says while simultaneously being able tosay something substantial about the phenomenon or object of inquiry. Thisissue of reflexivity is both particular and general. General, as it points to thelimit of human inquiry itself and is a problem facing all inquiry, whether philo-sophical, humanistic, or scientific: it pervades concerns with theory, episte-mology, methodology, ontology, all of which are always bound up with anyand every instance of practical research. It is also particular to sociology inso far as this capacity is central to social action and therefore constitutes the

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very subject matter of sociology. As an issue and with different levels ofemphasis, it is taken seriously by various strands of the interpretive traditionsin sociology, including the Symbolic Interactionism of Blumer (1969) andfollowers, the phenomenology of Berger and his associates (e.g., 1963, 1964,1974), the ethnomethodology of Garfinkel (1967) and his followers (seeTurner, 1974), as well as the Analytic Theory of Blum & McHugh and theirstudents. Other traditions like the structuration theory of Giddens, the Neo-Structuralism of Alexander, the critical theory of Habermas (1988) and vari-ous streams of feminist thought (Lather, 1991; Scott, 1990; Smith, 1987) indifferent ways seek to integrate the insights developed in the interpretive tra-dition into their own frameworks (see Ritzer, 1996, pp. 351–484; Wallace andWolf, 1991 for a summary). While the topic of reflexivity is very current (e.g.,Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994; Bourdieau and Wacquant, 1992) the problemof the danger of ‘vortex’ (to use Giddens’ terminology) does not occupy themainstage of contemporary sociology, as it could be argued it did in the 1970s;it is, nonetheless, one that is intrinsic to the enterprise of sociology. And, asSharrock and Anderson (1986) say about ethnomethodology, just because theproblems raised by a reflexive sociology are not fashionable does not meanthat they have been dealt with.

Weber’s (1947, p. 88) famous definitions of sociology and social actionmake the question of reflexivity central to the sociological method and con-stitutive of the discipline itself. Sociology, he says, concerns “the interpretiveunderstanding of social action” and social action is behaviour which, because“of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual (or individu-als), it takes into account the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in itscourse.”1 “On this view,” as the Collins Dictionary of Sociology states (1995,p. 550), “reflexivity is a capacity possessed by social actors which is decisivein distinguishing human actors from animals.” Thus, Weber passes on to so-ciology the problem of how adequately to take into account an acting indi-vidual whose own action is predicated on the subjective meaning the actorattaches to it. As McHugh et al. (1974) put it in their Motive paper, the Weberianlegacy concerns the issue of formulating behaviour which itself is oriented tothe very same environment it constitutes. The member is reflexive insofar ashis or her action is oriented by taking into account the behaviour of others.The sociologist, whose task it is to interpret this action, needs to reflect bothon the member’s reflexivity and on his/her own reflexivity.

In Webster’s dictionary, the etymological root of the word ‘reflex’ meansto bend back and its meaning resonates with a bending back or turning backon oneself. For example, the sentences, ‘I surprised myself,’ or ‘I thought tomyself’ are reflexive sentences because the subject and object of the sentenceare the same person. Even at this early stage in recognising the linguisticpossibility of reflexivity, a possibility which for Mead (1934) is what consti-tutes the self as social, as both an ‘I’ and a ‘me,’ we can also sense a danger

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of making reflexivity a central focus. It not only risks an excessive self-ab-sorption on the part of the inquirer but also risks getting caught up in a vi-cious and endless circle. This very real danger leads many to the conclusionthat trying to deal with the problem of reflexivity is like trying to stand backfrom one’s shadow. Adequately dealing with the problem of reflexivity, fromthis point of view, is beyond the limits of human capacity; it is, fundamentally,an impossible problem – we can reflect on the human capacity for reflection,and reflect on our reflection of the capacity for reflection, and reflect on ourreflection of our reflection on the human capacity for reflection, and so on.

The issue of reflexivity opens up a Pandora’s Box of issues which, on thesurface, seems to make it either narcissistic or foolhardy to confront this prob-lem directly. It is this danger which led Giddens (1976, p. 166) to the mockingconclusion that Blum and McHugh and their colleagues are “intrepid travellersall, now left swirling helplessly in the vortex of the hermeneutic whirlpool.” Yet,there is a cost to ignoring this issue; it lies at the very core of sociology andpervades and threatens to undermine the analytic integrity of its claims. Thus,as Heidegger (1967, pp. 3–4) says of the Thales story, ‘swirling helplessly’ iswhat those who undertake to address this important problem risk.2

In this paper I will address the work of Blum and McHugh in light of thisissue of reflexivity. Along the way I will show what their perspective shareswith, and how it differs from, other perspectives – in sociology in particu-lar (e.g., ethnomethodology) and in contemporary interpretive theory (e.g.,poststructuralism, hermeneutics) in general. This paper is not a descriptionof the work of Blum and McHugh, nor is it a response to their critics. Rather,I am going to read their work as my way of working through this issue. Thatis to say, I read their work as, in Gadamer’s (1975, pp. 325–341) terms, ananswer to a question. This requires a dialogical engagement with their textsand the sociological tradition in order to recover the question to which thatdialogue (i.e., the dialogue between the Analysis and the sociological tradi-tion) is an answer to. Thus, and in the spirit of Analysis (sometimes calledAnalytic Theory and which I [1997] have called dialectical analysis), this paperis my way of working out the problem of reflexivity as I work through theirsolution to this problem. The paper is an example or icon of what coming toterms with the problem of reflexivity looks like and so tries to do what it saysboth Analysis and Gadamer’s hermeneutics are trying to do.

Blum and McHugh are most often treated as sociologists who aim to pushfurther the reflexive developments initiated by ethnomethodology. Sharrockand Anderson (1986, p. 110), for example, say that they “show some com-prehension of and sensitivity to the concerns” of ethnomethodology and assuch “are aware of places at which it is vulnerable.” Analysis, Sharrock andAnderson say (p. 111), understands ethnomethodology as “misrepresenting astheoretical and empirical problems, what are in fact problems of community andauthority, of seeking sounder sociological investigations when what is needed

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is a reconstruction of a whole form of intellectual life, of pursuing methodo-logical objectives when an authentic relation with others should be sought.” Indescribing Analysis in this way, Sharrock and Anderson remark that this attemptto push the “examination of the assumptions” of one’s own inquiry to the rootsis more radical than ethnomethodology’s expression in this enterprise.

As well as showing a recognition of the intellectual influences on Blum andMcHugh (in particular, ethnomethodology and Heidegger’s hermeneuticaltransformation of Husserl’s phenomenology), Sharrock and Anderson alsoshow an understanding of the focus of Analysis. For Analysis, the examina-tion of the assumptions of one’s own inquiry (reflexivity) requires that onedeal with problems of community and authority as against just theory and em-piricism, reconstruct intellectual life as against just seek sounder sociologi-cal investigations, and seek an authentic relation with others as against pursuemethodological objectives. To anyone familiar with the writing corpus of Blumand McHugh, this description resonates with what Analysis is about.

Yet, it raises as many questions as it answers. Is there something aboutmodern sociological investigations which requires the reconstruction of in-tellectual life? What does social inquiry have to do with community and au-thority or with an authentic relationship with others? Are these not substantiveand practical concerns rather than matters concerning the place of reflexivityin social inquiry? What does understanding the way acting individuals taketheir own action into account have to do with community, authority or authenticrelationship with others? It seems that the problem of reflexivity is as much amatter of practice (community, authority, authentic relationship, and recon-structing intellectual life) as it is of theory.

This paper will show that the problem of reflexivity, inherited from We-ber’s very conception of sociology, is transformed by phenomenological andethnomethodological developments in sociology. To demonstrate, I will takeup the everyday example of motive talk and Blum and McHugh’s analysisof this practice. The influence of the linguistic turn of hermeneutics andWittgenstein’s (1958) later philosophy enables another transformation in theunderstanding of what is involved in taking responsibility for our own talk,bringing to the fore the issue of nihilism. The paper argues that by taking intoaccount the problem of nihilism, we can gain a better understanding of thework of Blum and McHugh and, more importantly, understanding the devel-opments in dialectical analysis can help to recognise and understand the sig-nificant problem of nihilism.

Reflexivity as methodological arbitrariness: motive talk

As stated, the problem of reflexivity is intrinsic to the being of sociology, asthis has been articulated by Weber’s concept of Verstehen. Essential to the act

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of understanding social action involves understanding the self-understandingof social actors because the self-understanding of social actors constitutesaction as social in the first place. Motive talk is one example of the way ordi-nary people go about making sense of their environment. Weber (1947, p. 98)defines motive as follows: “A motive is a complex of subjective meaning whichseems to the actor himself or to the observer an adequate ground for the con-duct in question.” (This fits with his earlier definition of social action.)Webster’s, (1975) dictionary defines motive as “something (as a need or de-sire) that causes a person to act.” If motive talk is an omni-relevant feature(see any daily newspaper) of the way ordinary social actors understand eachothers actions – whether it be doing greetings, raising children, organizingfamine relief or the pope’s visit to Cuba – then to understand this discourse isto understand a paradigmatic example of the reflective practices of socialactors.

While acknowledging that ordinary social actors do motive talk as a wayof making sense of actions, scientists and theorists of science like Abel (1977)and Rudner (1977) argue that such a procedure could not be relied upon bysociologists because it depended too much on the “personal experience andintrospective capacity” of the sociologist.” (Dallmayr & McCarthy, 1977, p.79) For example, in order to understand what is going on inside of Castro’smind to account for his invitation of the pope to Cuba, observers have to relyon their introspective capacity. This reliance has two problems. Because theobserver sociologist needs to recreate “psychological states” (Rudner) in or-der to make the “observed behaviour comprehensible” (Dallmayr & McCarthy,p. 79), the discipline of sociology becomes dependent on psychology (and theway the science of psychology provides verified knowledge about motivationalstates). More importantly, this procedure introduces a sense of arbitrarinessconcerning the connection between the behaviour and the ascribed motiva-tional state. How can we know for sure what is going on inside of anotherperson’s head? We ask them, but do people know their own motivations?Drawing on the resources of empathy and sympathy, as Weber (1947, pp. 88–115) suggests we do, can help the sociologist imagine what is going on. But,again, this also seems arbitrary.

Initially then, Weber’s idea of Verstehen was commonly accepted to meanthat sociologists make use of “personal experience” and the capacity for “in-trospection” as a way of getting inside peoples heads.3 The problem with thisidea of reflexivity, is that it renders the sociologist’s account arbitrary, anaccount as much imposed by the sociologist as belonging to what the soci-ologist is talking about. “So,” argues Abel, “introspective capacity . . . couldnot be a method of verification” but, at best, a heuristic “aid in preliminaryexplorations of a subject.” (p. 79). Reflexivity may aid in speculating aboutand exploring a subject but it could not be relied upon to produce knowledgeof the subject. In the last analysis, the probability of a connection between

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the action and the source of its impulse can be established only by means of“objective, experimental, and statistical tests” (Dallmayr & McCarthy, p. 79).

This formulation of motive follows the conventional positivistic tradition.That is, motives are conceived “as private internal characteristics of personswhich impinge upon and coerce these persons into various behaviours. In thisview, motives are seen simultaneously (1) as ‘causal’ antecedent variables . . .,and (2) as characteristic of ‘states’ of persons engaging in behaviour” (McHughet al., 1974, p. 33). For example, Castro’s motive is seen as going on inhis mind and as a cause for the action of inviting the pope to Cuba. WhenMaclean’s (January 19, 1998, p. 41) magazine says that Castro’s motive forinviting the pope is to “help to counter American efforts to isolate Cuba,” suchan explanation may be an adequate ground for the ordinary person but it can-not be treated as reliable sociological knowledge.

Under the influence of phenomenology, Alfred Schutz was the first to chal-lenge this reading of Weber’s Verstehen. Schutz critiques the positivist inter-pretation of Weber and the positivist understanding of reflexivity as introspectionbecause it excludes much of social life from sociological investigation (Schutz,1977, p. 229). Reflexivity, he says (p. 220), “involves neither mere observa-tion of external behaviour, nor private introspection, nor a process of psychicidentification.” Rather, as a method peculiar to the human sciences, it refersto the what Husserl calls the Lebenswelt, or the life-world, “within which allscientific and even logical concepts originate.” This is to say “that any knowl-edge of the world, in common sense thinking and in science, involves mentalconstructs, syntheses, generalizations, formulations, idealizations, specific tothe level of the thought organization.” (Schutz, p. 232) This kind of knowl-edge forms the basis of the life-world and is taken-for-granted by both com-mon sense and science.

The “Motive” paper examines motive from this life-world perspective. Thus,motive talk is treated as (to use a Foucauldian term) a discursive practice.When competent everyday actors engage in motive talk they are followingvery precise communal rules about what is to count as adequate motive talk.So we would not expect to read in Macleans some reporter speculating thatCastro invited the pope to Cuba because he (Castro or the pope) had a soreleg; such a speculation would invite us to question the competence of the re-porter because it would show that he or she did not seem to understand whatis involved in doing adequate motive talk. In the idiom of Blum and McHugh(1974) motives are not a stimulus going on in somebody’s head but rather showmembers formulating themselves and their environment. In order to be ableto do this kind of formulating and to demonstrate to each other that we areable to do this, we, as competent everyday members of society, are requiredto follow specific rules and grammar.

Life-world theorizing, both done and taken-for-granted by ordinary actors,provides the substance that positivism both investigates and also takes for

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granted. The “Motive” paper (McHugh et al., 1974) argues, that in acceptingmotive as a ‘causal’ antecedent variable characteristic of a person’s internalpsychic state, social scientists take on the very assumptions of the everydaylife-world that need to be examined. The very reasonability and intelligibilityof motive talk, the fact that there are very specific rules for doing the practiceof motive talk, which, in turn, provide a sense of a world composed of peoplewhose actions are understood in terms of their motive, are all taken for grantedin the positivist understanding.

Thus, the “social life-world” (see Berger et al., 1973, p. 63 for a descrip-tion of this notion) is the starting point of all investigations, a starting pointwhich is both unacknowledged and required by science, natural and social,because (as ethnomethodology has shown in many detailed ways) it is thesocial life-world which provides for a world to be investigated in the very firstplace. Motive talk is an instance of an ordinary member’s reflexive practice,a practice which provides for a world of persons (e.g., Castro) who are for-mulated as owning their experiences (e.g., a history of opposing the U.S.)which, in turn, is seen as providing the ground or grammar for connectingevents (inviting the pope) with available designations (counteracting). In shortform, what life-world analysis demonstrates is that everything known requiresa knower and that knowledge is the product of a transaction between a knowerand a known. “What mediates between a knower and a known, then, is a per-spective, and knowledge is always coloured by that perspective.” (Littlejohn,1989, p. 9).4

It is now clear that, far from introducing a methodological arbitrariness intosociology (as positivists like Abel and Rudner argue), reflexivity must be partof a rigorous social analysis. If any social scientist excludes from examina-tion the way the social life-world structures how a phenomenon is recognisedin the first place, he or she unreflectively takes on the taken-for-granted as-sumptions of the everyday member precisely when these are what need to beexamined. From the perspective of the recognition of the shaping power ofthe Lebenswelt, it would be fundamentally incomplete for a sociologist not tomake reflexivity an essential component of social analysis. This recognition,therefore, is the first step in taking responsibility for what one says while si-multaneously establishing knowledge about the ordinary practices of every-day members. Would it not be irresponsible if the sociologist were now toignore the reflexive practices of the ordinary social actor, practices whichthemselves constitute the world which all social scientists investigate?

Reflexivity, practical accounts and the responsibility of the inquirer

When the “Motive” paper was reprinted in the book On the Beginning of SocialInquiry, an “Addendum” was added, where Blum, McHugh and their collabo-

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rators Raffel and Foss, point to the limitations of this version of reflexivity.They say that despite the epistemological advance which phenomenologyrepresents on conventional social science, their analysis is not self-reflectiveenough because they exempt their own talk about motive from a rigorous re-flexive examination. They critique themselves for not examining the inquir-er’s interest in accounting for the self-reflective practices of the member. Thus,they say, a more fundamental question remains to be asked: “What kind ofworld would make motive talk intelligible and interesting?” That is, a morecomprehensive and stronger version of reflexivity should include the require-ment that (1974, p. 44) “we address our own interest in motive talk, that weaddress the fact that we find such talk interesting.” Their interest in reflexiv-ity is now being pushed to another level and includes another kind of “bend-ing back.” At this level, the inquirer asks after the inquirer’s own interest inaccounting for the reflexive practices of the member. While their descriptionof members’ practices (e.g., motive talk) are more adequate and complete thanthe discourse which operates from within a positivistic epistemology, they donot account for why this should be done in the first place. (Are we now peer-ing into the “hermeneutic vortex” again?).

In specifying their self-critique, they say (p. 44), motive is interesting be-cause it “represents an occasion of collectability” and so the interest incollectability needs to be theorized. That is, the very idea of motive can beinterpreted as an everyday attempt to provide for a reasonable world. To usethe language of their later work, it is a solution to the problem of the need anddesire to live in a reasonable world. Yet, this problem was not theorized bythem. The problem with the “Motive” paper, they now say, is that the interestin the talk is conflated with the member’s interest but that interest is not ad-dressed or critically examined.5 The issue here is that while motive talk col-lects and therefore appears to make sense of various instances of behaviour,is such sense-making deeply reasonable? Might not motive talk, as an exam-ple of finding a cause (e.g., Castro’s need to counter the American embargo),be as much an attempt to bring thinking and theorizing to an end as it is to dotheorizing. Just because members, through the doing of competent motive talk,reasonably collect the invitation by Castro with (the reason of) his interest incounteracting the American economic embargo – and through such theoriz-ing constitute a world of ‘types of persons’ with biographies such persons aresaid to own, and so on, – just because theorizing is done in this way does notmake such theorizing deeply reasonable.

The bending back of reflexivity now raises a deeper, a more problematic,and a more fundamental problem, that is, the very idea of reasonability itself.Can the reasonability of the inquirer’s theorizing be provided for as the theo-rist seeks to understand the reasonability of the phenomenon being addressed?The idea of inquirers taking responsibility for their own talk now involves re-flecting on the socio-historical situation which privileges some forms of in-

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quiry over others. For example, if the idea of cause connotes a powerful butdumb force (e.g., the law of gravity), is it deeply reasonable to be fascinatedwith a powerful but dumb force? – to be satisfied with a world (McHugh etal., p. 45) “where there is a continual process of clarifying the things one iswith by making reference to things outside of them (things that are before,after, or external)”? What does this say about us as social inquirers if this iswhat dominates our theorizing? Of course, in calling into question the deepreasonability of an inquiry which seeks to find the causes of action, they arecalling into question the reasonability of science itself as a form of life. And,in doing that, one is simultaneously calling into question the modern life-world which gives such a version of theorizing the appearance of eminentreasonability.

It is interesting to think of a similar development Gadamer makes inTruth and Method, which was translated into English around the same time.Gadamer’s (1975) notion of “effective history” makes the same general pointof the process of understanding. Gadamer’s idea (1975, p. xix) that “under-standing is never subjective behaviour toward a ‘given object,’ but towardsits effective history – the history of its influence; in other words, understand-ing belongs to the being of that which is understood.” A perspective (e.g., sci-ence) is not just conceptual (Gadamer, pp. 5–39) but is also existential in thatit reveals a way of action and a way of life, that is, a way of being in the world.This means that “observation, reason and understanding are never objectivelypure; they are always coloured by history and community” (Littlejohn, p. 140).Blum and McHugh, in a more aggressive and polemical (should I say – moreAmerican?) way, are now raising the issue of science’s way of being in theworld. They push the problem of reflexivity to the need to question the con-ventions which support the scientific mode of inquiry. They ask, are these con-ventions, these assumptions worth agreeing with?

It is at this point in my narrative that the need to go behind their texts be-comes an issue.6 What deep question moves the Analysis project to raise theseconcerns? The deep question animating the rigorous pursuit of the problemof reflexivity in social inquiry is, I suggest, the problem of nihilism. In the“Introduction” to the 1974 book, McHugh et al. specifically address the issueof the adequacy of inquiry by reflecting on the adequacy of their own inquiry.They say (3): “In speaking we are denying that we are doing an inadequateactivity. Otherwise our speech would be no different that chatter, than silence,than what Rosen calls nihilism.” What if the world of science, though it maybe epistemologically consistent, is a feature of and contribution to the sensethat nothing, neither talk nor action, makes a real difference? This very dis-cursive move (questioning the conventions which support modern inquiry)may seem to put Analysis outside of sociology (insofar as the latter under-stands itself as a science); yet, it has a continuity with the questions Weber(1946) first raised in “Science as a Vocation,” questions that pervade much of

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Weber’s work, especially his famous Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capi-talism (1958). That is, what can sociology offer to the Tolstoyian questions,“What should we do?” and “How should we live?” Weber recognizes thatthe role of science is limited to clarifying the goals and purposes one hasalready, but is not able to otherwise substantively contribute to the issue ofthe good. And this, according to Weber, is the fate the scientist must bear.Yet, can clarity be conceived as an ultimate purpose and how can this beprovided for?

Part 2 – Reflexivity and the Problem of Nihilism

The Problem of Nihilism

The interest in pursuing the problem of reflexivity is (I interpret) a responseto a deep concern with the question of nihilism.7 This theme is noted passinglyin the Dallmayr (1988) and Roche (1988) reviews of Self-Reflection in the Artsand Sciences and it helps us understand why in that book (1984, pp. 138–139),the actions of Camus’ Meursault are taken to be “a good example” of the prob-lem of modern theory. They quote Meursault as follows: “Nothing, nothinghad the least importance . . . all the ideas that people had tried to foist on me.. . . What difference could they make to me.” What is interesting about thisstatement taken from fictional literature is that it mirrors a very similar ques-tion Dallmayr and McCarthy (1977, p. 1) ask in another context:

While man’s empirical knowledge in our century has expanded at an ex-ponential rate, however, his sense of purpose or direction seems to haveatrophied: although more knowledgeable about the world than any of hisforebears, man today is more ignorant or at a loss as to what he and his ac-cumulated knowledge are all about. Confronted with a rationally function-ing but ultimately silent universe, he asks the question: what is the point?Viewed in this context, contemporary methodological issues reveal theirsalience and underlying agony: the concern with ‘understanding’ as a typeof inquiry results from a crisis of human understanding.

The question and problem of developing an inquiry which can take responsi-bility for what it says while saying something substantial about the world hasnow deepened. In order to take responsibility for one’s inquiry, one must beable to give a sense of its purpose or point. To claim that it is a more rigorousaccount of members’ accounting practices than positivistic sociology (asethnomethodology does), merely raises the question of the purpose of account-ing for the rigorous accounting of members accounting practices. In otherwords, inquirers need to show a taking of responsibility for their own prac-tice of inquiry, a responsibility which involves, at some point, raising the is-sue of point or purpose. To fail to raise such a question is to fail to live up to

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the demand inherent in the notion of reflexivity, a demand that now meansaddressing the issue that “nothing, nothing has the least importance.”

Meursault embodies the spirit of an age which, though it has greater em-pirical knowledge than any age previous to this, is, in the words of Dallmayrand McCarthy, more “at a loss as to what this knowledge is all about.” Nihil-ism, as embodied by Meursault, is the positive embrace of the recognition ofa universe which is “rationally functioning but ultimately silent.” Nihilismembraces futility and treats such an embrace as strong insofar as it has thecourage to face the recognition of the pointlessness of the universe. We arenow beginning to glimpse why questions of sound sociological investigationsrequire the reconstruction of social life and why questions of sociologicalprocedure connect with questions of authenticity. They do so when the atten-tion to reflexivity demanded of all social inquiry by phenomenology is reflex-ively turned on the one who would put forward this demand.

This focus adds an ethical and political element to what should, from aframework which accepts the epistemological implications of science, benarrowly theoretic and methodological. And while such a developmentmuddies the identity of sociology, that is, its conventional place as one morediscipline among many (with its own intellectual territory mapped out), self-reflexive integrity means that such boundaries can no longer be passivelyaccepted. But, as Sharrock and Anderson say about the impulse which sus-tains ethnomethodology, to now ignore these questions would be an act of badfaith, a denial of scholarly standards and reflexive integrity. Of course, to putthe whole tradition of sociology to question does not, as some have suggested,have to mean that one has put oneself outside the discipline. Rather, I argue,it expands the parameters of the discipline in the same way as asking whatdoes it mean to be human expands the parameters of humanity. Again, thisdevelopment in Analysis mirrors the “extension of hermeneutic proceduresto the domain of social inquiry” which also involves “a rethinking of accepted[disciplinary] boundaries.” (Dallmayr and McCarthy, 1977, p. 285).

Reflexivity, science and morality

If nihilism is the deep question raised by Analysis, in what way can their textsnow be interpreted as responses to this question? In On The Beginning of SocialInquiry, McHugh et al. (1974) examine various cultural practices like Snubs,Bias, Travel and bring to the fore the tensions and negations revealed andconcealed by those practices while simultaneously showing (and taking re-sponsibility for) the grounds which makes their own analysis possible. In theirown words, to do analysis is to serve as a reminder “of the ways in which theconventions of ordinary thought have become segregated from their grammati-cal grounds” (McHugh et al., p. 11). Analysts question the worth of standing

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or holding onto such grounds while simultaneously calling attention to thegrounds which make their own analysis possible.

For example, the “Bias” paper (drawing on the influence of Wittgenstein)shows that the practice of finding bias is a specific move in a language game,in particular, the language game (or life-world) of science. However, fromwithin the perspective of the (taken for granted) positivist life-world, bias isthought of as a particular and identifiable thing which flaws research, a thingwhich, it follows, should be eliminated in order for the research to be accept-able. In turn, the criteria of validity and reliability are the socially sanctionedways to ensure the elimination of bias from practical sociological research.The question is: what are the epistemological and cultural assumptions thatare embedded in and ground this intellectual practice?

To invoke bias is to name a trouble, because, from within the life-world ofscience, speech and knowledge are assumed to be about a world which is in-dependent of knowers. The self-understanding of science is that its own speechis a thing which copies nature. Ideal speech is therefore anonymous speech,the speech of any person. The “intelligibility of bias as a charge or accusationmakes necessary reference to the rule which the charge violates, and the rulein this case is a notion of objectivity which is itself grounded in an ideal ofcommunality and of impersonal speech.” (p. 56). Because the reality of theworld is assumed to exist independently of mind, of language, or of theknower, bias as a thing is identifiable because the speakers or knowers canbe identified in what they say? “To see bias” therefore, “is to see the pur-ported inquiry as more intelligible by making reference to the contingentpersonal position of the inquirer than to the nature of the objects he claimsto describe.” (p. 59).

Bias, therefore, is a charge that the knower did not overcome self-inter-est, by transforming what he or she knows into that which anybody couldknow. By virtue of that inability or unwillingness, the claims of the knowerwill not be accepted by the community of scientists. The charge of bias, isa rule-guided charge ground in the theoretic community of science with agrammar of the unnecessarily private. It is seen as a public claim which isactually based on a private interest that could not be shaken off. Thus, as ispointed out, the charge of bias has moral overtones and it demonstrates thatthe scientific orientation not only references conformity to a certain episte-mology but also, more deeply, references an ontology, i.e., a moral commu-nity. Thus, as with every other form of inquiry, the observation of a problematicbias in research shows that “observation, reason and understanding are neverobjectively pure; they are always coloured by history and community.”(Littlejohn, p. 140).

To summarize, as a move in a language game, there are certain rules whichhave to be followed if the process of finding bias is to be recognised as thenormative intelligible activity it is. The process of identifying bias in a speech

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is no longer seen as merely conforming to an epistemology for correctly pro-ducing knowledge but also as a cultural practice. Reflexive analysis requiresanalyzing the relevant (culturally and historically specific) life-world (in thiscase, modern science) of the phenomenon (Bias) being investigated. Yet, giventhat all knowledge production (including Analysis and hermeneutics) is groundin cultural practices what is the particular problem with the positivist life-world?

The problem with the positivist mode of inquiry is the way the ontologicalimplications and the moral claims it carries are concealed by the attempt ofthe epistemology to treat its own claims as neutral and objective. The furtherproblem with this orientation (as George Grant, Hannah Arendt and Gadamerhave, in their different ways, also brought to light) is that by requiring thatinquirers treat themselves as messengers and neutral instruments, the very ques-tion of the authority for the speech and its appearance as a socio-historical ac-tion is rendered invisible. Science, as a community, requires a commitment tothe apparent non-commitment of method and then it treats that commitment asthough it were not a commitment at all.

Scientific method is now understood as an oriented (if unreflective) avoid-ance of taking responsibility for one’s own talk, an avoidance which can onlybe sustained by an unwillingness to face the contradictions embedded in one’sinquiry.8 Thus, it is not an accident that the scientific life-world makes a con-cern with reflexivity appear both unproductive and (if we accept the revolu-tion brought about by the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) morallyirresponsible. From the scientific life-world, self-reflective analysis appearsas unnecessarily self-aggrandizing, compared with the acceptance of “an ef-facement of self in the search for understanding” (Berger, 1963, p. 166) re-quired by scientific methodology. Yet, the irony is that the self-effacementrequired by science is actually a concealing from awareness, of the way itsown procedures influence the production of the truth, by making its conclu-sions seem like a neutral description of what is. McHugh et al. conclude (p.75), that their analysis seeks to draw attention of others away “from a [nar-row] concern with facts and details to which the talk [of science] is oriented– the question of practical decisions and constraints – to a concern with thecommitments underlying all speech and with their rational and moral status.We have tried to make the commitment underlying biased speech show itselfintelligibly as a concern to protect this very question (the question of com-mitment) from being explored. In this sense we have asked whether such alife is worth living, whether such a world is worth our commitment, and wehave brought an alternative world to view.”

The correlation of the advance in scientific knowledge and the atrophyingof a sense of purpose (noted by Dallmayr and McCarthy, 1977, p. 1) is nownot sheerly coincidental. Science and the enlightenment ideal which supportsand promotes science, protects the question of commitment from being ex-

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plored – including and especially its own commitment to impersonal speech.The lack of oriented reflexivity, which is a crucial feature of the empiricalmethod, is now not just itself methodologically arbitrary (with regard to thestudy of social life): it contributes to the ongoing deferral of questions ofpurpose and point. Thus the enlightenment prejudice against prejudice(Gadamer, 1975, pp. 241–253) or the scientific bias against bias, while use-ful in establishing precise empirical knowledge, has dangerous political andethical implications. Given the spread of Western science in this age of glo-balization, such political and ethical dangers are now more pressing.

Science and Nihilism

After the influence of the post-structuralism of Foucault and Derrida, thehermeneutics of Gadamer and contemporary post-structuralist feminisms (e.g.,Lather, 1991; Scott, 1990), it is now more plausible to understand science asa kind of moral community, even though that violates science’s own self-un-derstanding (as neutral and detached); it also sounds less extreme to say thatresisting the dominance of positivism involves one not only in epistemologi-cal battles but also in ontological battles. As Lather (1991, p. 14) states, “con-temporary history and philosophy of science, sociology of knowledge, andmovement in science itself, all have combined to impress upon us the inter-dependence of method, theory and values.” The dominance of positivism,which is now struggling to deal with the onslaught of the post-modern cri-tique (Lather, pp. 102–122), was much more pervasive, and pervasively ac-cepted in the early 1970s. Remembering Gadamer’s claim that understandingis necessarily intertwined with history and community and now with the ben-efit of the superiority of subsequent understanding, we can recognize whysome of the writing in On the Beginning of Social Inquiry polemically over-states in an either/or way the line in the sand between science and AnalyticTheory.

As stated, Blum, McHugh and colleagues’ pursuit of the issues surround-ing reflexivity can be usefully interpreted as struggling with the problem ofnihilism. They are not alone in their concern here. “The elimination of the ideaof final purpose from the scientific study of the human and non-human things”according to George Grant (1969, pp. 37–40) “not only led to the progress ofscience and the improvement of conditions but also had consequences on thepublic understanding of what it was to live. . . . Consequently, the corrosionsof nihilism occur in all parts of the community. . . . For those who stay withinthe central stream of our society and are therefore dominant in its institutions,the effect of nihilism is the narrowing to an unmitigated reliance on technique.”In going on to analyze the cultural interconnection between the modern uni-versity curriculum and modern technological society, modern theory has led,

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he says (Grant, 1969, p. 131), to a tight circle: “The tight circle then in whichwe live is this: our present forms of existence have sapped the ability to thinkabout the standards of excellence and yet at the same time have imposed onus a standard in terms of which the human good is monolithically asserted.”That one standard monolithically proclaimed is the desire to master humanand non-human nature. Such a mastery, furthered through scientific knowl-edge and technology, both assumes and defers the question: “what is thepoint?”

Blum and McHugh, on the other hand, show that the tight circle is onlytight and vicious (and therefore the ground for pessimism and lament) whenone is not reflective with regard to what makes one’s own analysis possible.Unlike other social inquirers addressing the same problems (e.g., Arendt,Grant, Weber), Blum and McHugh’s work does not seem overwhelmed by thepervasiveness and depth of the problem of modernity. Rather, they reflexivelyacknowledge that the Language which allows for the life-world (languagegame) of science also enables a dialectical resistance to the contradictionsinherent in that life-world, thus enabling a confident if even aggressive con-frontation with a dominant modernity. If they show a confident confrontationwith the contradictions inherent in a dominant modernity, in what way canthis theoretic development be used to help address the spectre of nihilism?

The nihilism of Meursault does not defer but rather embraces the recogni-tion that “nothing, nothing makes a difference.” Meursault can be appreciatedbecause of his apparent lack of ‘bad faith.’ When he says (1961, pp. 118–119)“What difference could they make to me, the death of others, or a mother’slove or his God; or the way one decides to live, the fate one thinks one chooses,since one and the same fate was bound to ‘choose’ not only me but thousandsof millions of privileged people, who, like him, called themselves my broth-ers”- he is facing the only ‘point’ in life that humans can be certain about, ourmortality. This nihilism of Meursault is strong because, instead of fearfullydenying the increasing sense of pointlessness, he embraces the “privilegedequality” which his acknowledgement creates. “Every man alive was privi-leged; there was only one class of men, the privileged class. All alike wouldbe condemned to die one day.” We can recognise a display of honesty andcourage in his acknowledgement that “nothing, nothing had the least impor-tance” even if we want to disagree with the acknowledgement.

Yet, openly “apprehending” and acknowledging “what is as chaos” (Grant,1969, p. 38), assumes the worth of that apprehension and acknowledgment.The raw, unironic honesty of nihilism does not take into account that, in speak-ing in this way, one’s actions show that something matters (e.g., the act of ap-prehending and acknowledging, the honesty and courage of facing a rationallyfunctioning but ultimately silent universe) while one is saying that “nothinghad the least importance.” Contemporary nihilism is a risk of those who thinkdeeply and honestly about our contemporary situation yet, in concluding that

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nothing matters, nihilism denies the thinking and honesty needed to come tosuch a conclusion. An embrace of nihilism does not adequately account forits own need to speak, to apprehend, to acknowledge. In this sense, nihilismis self-contradictory. On the other hand, Analysis acknowledges (1974, p. 3)that: “In speaking we are denying that we are doing an inadequate activity.Otherwise our speech would be no different than chatter, than silence, thanwhat Rosen calls nihilism.”

Nihilism: The Risk of Reflexive Thinking

Much of what McHugh et al. say in the 1974 book exudes a sense of moralsuperiority. In the “Bias” paper, they show that positivism has a shallow rela-tion to the principles which authorize its knowledge-production. In “Travel”they say: “The concretisation of self and consequent identification of comingto know with an exchange of place presupposes a nihilistic actor as the para-digmatic social participant.” (McHugh et al., p. 153) In “Snubs” they showhow a snub denies the collaboration which a greeting invites but it needs tocollaborate in order to deny that collaboration. Thus, it too is self-contradic-tory. They conclude (p. 136): “The same form of life that is bothered by snubsallows them to occur. Suffice it to say that it is possible to conceive of otherworlds.” That is, if one really understood snubs one would recognize thatthey don’t and therefore should not hurt. Similarly, Lather arguing from apostmodern feminist position (1991, p. 116) says that the problems of rela-tivism “and its seeming attendant, nihilism” become a “non-issue” when it isrecognised that they are the “mirror twin of totalization in the ideologies ofobjectivity.” Thus, showing the interrelation of theory and ethics, which bothpostmodern feminism and Analysis do, enables the issue of nihilism to beconfronted and exposed rather than deferred.

However, the problem with this solution (i.e. a reflexivity which privilegesthe superiority of theorizing and the inevitable and necessary recognition ofone’s own ethical and political standpoint) is that it appears as though theexamined life is not vulnerable or subject to the limits of social life and cul-ture. Reflexive theorizing does not seem to have any life-world problem ofits own. Correspondingly, it seems that the life-world of positivism is trappedin a demonic and un-redeeming unreflectiveness. In Gadamer’s terminology(1975, p. 331), the dialectic of the 1974 book acknowledges the power of acommitted reflexivity but the latter does not appear as if it is itself subject tothe fundamental finitude of human understanding.

The 1984 book, Self-Reflection in the Arts and Sciences, can be read as aresponse to some of these problems. In this book, self-reflection is now botha topic and a problem. Developing a solution to the problem of self-reflectionis no longer a matter of showing the way practices and various social theories

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are forgetful of, or in contradiction with, the grounds that make them possi-ble. The 1974 stage affirms theorizing and through that affirmation shows howthe lack of reflexivity of science (everyday life, modernity) can be defeatedby its own self-contradiction; their 1984 work seeks to show the vulnerabil-ity of theorizing. If this is so, then the problem of nihilism developed here needsrevising. As I have argued here, the problem of nihilism, a problem which isendemic to modern social theory, makes one self-conscious about the dangerthat reasoning and analysis itself may be seen as pointless. Perhaps nihilism,rather than being an interlocutor defeated by an oriented reflexivity (Analy-sis) or standpoint theory (feminism), is actually a feature and risk of a com-mitment to such inquiry. That is, is it a risk of the life committed to theexamination of life.

The key development in their 1984 work is that all theorizing, whethereveryday, scientific or classical, is seen as a solution to the problem of need-ing to speak reasonably about what cannot be captured by reason. The prob-lem of taking responsibility for one’s own inquiry while simultaneously sayingsomething about the world, is now addressed of self-reflection itself. Theo-rizing is no longer the privileged and secure phenomenon which enables theexposure of the contradictory commitments of others; rather, it is itself sub-ject, it is itself a response to a need of sociality and simultaneously vulner-able to the very sociality to which it responds.

The question they themselves pose to the practice of self-reflection is: “isthere a reasonable basis in nature for responding to the unreasonable.” In otherwords, can they, through an examination of contemporary social and socio-logical theory, find a way of reasonably speaking about things like point,purpose, principle, or spirit in a way which is reflective about the point, pur-pose, principle, or spirit needed for this very enterprise. The concern of thebook is, intellectually and theoretically, not only to work through this prob-lem but, in doing so, to be an exemplary display of what a reasonable relationto spirit or principle would look like.

Nihilism, Analysis and Hermeneutics

At this stage, their work converges with Gadamer’s notion of the finitude ofhuman understanding. Their dialectical interest in engaging contemporarysocial theory as if it were representative of different solutions to the deep needfor self-reflection mirrors Gadamer’s dialectical interest in requiring that wesee a text as if it were an answer to a question (1975, pp. 325–341). In bothcases, what is required of self-reflection is allowing of one’s thinking to enterone’s understanding of the object, which is done by comprehending the waywe have comprehended the object. What Blum and McHugh are doing isworking out a solution to this now very deep problem, through an examina-

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tion of various solutions offered by classical and contemporary social theo-rists.

Yet, Gadamer’s hermeneutics, while intersecting with the Analysis project,does not see the reflexive demand as so demanding. He argues that if we havea lively relation to tradition, i.e., to all that is handed down through language,then the phenomenon of nihilism need not be seen as so intractable. In thePreface to Truth and Method (1975, p. xxiv), Gadamer acknowledges that “thedemand for a reflexive self-grounding, as made from the viewpoint of thespeculatively conducted transcendental philosophy of Fichte, Hegel andHusserl is unfulfilled.” He then rhetorically asks “is the discourse with thewhole of . . . tradition in which we stand and which (as philosophers) we are,purposeless? Do we need to justify what has always supported us?” That is,the very tradition of philosophy makes reflexive self-grounding less urgent.Gadamer (1992, pp. 111–123), in a later hermeneutic analysis of two pre-emi-nent German poets, Benn and Celan, acknowledges in the title of this essay(“Under the Shadow of Nihilism”), that nihilism is a dominant twentieth-cen-tury worry. Yet, he does not see this issue as intertwined with reflexivity – per-haps because he theorizes out of a philosophical rather than a social sciencediscourse. Yet, from the vantage point of theorizing out of a human sciencediscourse, his appeal to tradition remains problematic.

Nihilism is a problem made urgent by a very specific relation to language,history and community. It is very much a modern problem as it involves com-ing to terms with the energies released by the development of modernity fromthe Reformation through to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution andthe technological innovations of the twentieth century. Modernity, in turn, hasdecisively shaped the formation and identity of the social sciences. (Arendt,1958; Foucault, 1977; Grant, 1969) The social sciences, following the natu-ral sciences, are defined by their break with tradition. Through recent develop-ments in contemporary theory (feminism, poststructuralism and hermeneutics),the humanities and natural sciences have been now shaped by this break withtradition as well. Thus, the very being of the discipline of sociology, as one ofthe social sciences, cannot as easily have recourse to reliance on tradition,9

because of our awareness (through the sociology of knowledge or genetic psy-chology, for example) that (Blum and McHugh, 1984, p. 26) “the rules foraccomplishing self-reflection seem to formulate self-reflection itself . . . as es-sentially particular and irrational.”

Therefore, rather than, like Gadamer, taking recourse in a tradition that thesocial sciences have defined themselves as having broken with, is there nownot a need (1984, p. 38) to “provide an argument for the supposition that someconventional needs are better (more rational) than others and hence that some‘deep needs’ are good and not just arbitrary?” If the latter is true (and notehow uncomfortable we moderns feel with the bold and bald articulation ofthe claim that “some conventional needs are better (more rational) than oth-

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ers”), it is especially true of inquiry and so the issues of self-reflection andnihilism demand to be dealt with again. (That old “hermeneutic vortex”again!!!). Reflexivity, therefore, is a problem which exercises who we are atthis moment in history, that is, as modern social theorists who need to takeour own reasoning processes and its foundation seriously. I will now use thisdevelopment to re-engage the problem of nihilism.

A self-conscious nihilism is not a risk of the banal, of those who are notinclined to reflect on social life. Whatever may be said about Eichmann, be-ing an oriented nihilist was not one of them. Rather, Arendt (1978, p. 4) was“struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer that made it impossible to tracethe uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives.. . . it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness.” To those caught up in the con-ventions of everyday thinking, nihilism appears to be an irrational or an elit-ist indulgence, much in the same way the Annette Benning character viewsthe Kevin Spacey character in the recent movie American Beauty. But it is notmerely the intellectual disease of those who are excessively self-absorbed orthe 1990s fad of adolescents who espouse anarchism. Neither is it merely theself-interested fear of “Western, white male, class-privileged arrogance – ifwe cannot know everything, then we can know nothing” (Lather, p. 116). Ironi-cally, it is a temptation made real by the practice of self-reflection itself. AsArendt (1978, pp. 176–177) acknowledges, “all critical examinations must gothrough a stage of at least hypothetically negating accepted opinions and ‘val-ues’ by searching out their implications and tacit assumptions. In this sense”she goes on to say, “nihilism may be seen as an ever-present danger of think-ing . . . [and] thinking is equally dangerous to all creeds.”

The only way to eliminate this danger of nihilism would be to eliminatethinking from everyday life. On the other hand, and as Arendt (p. 177) has soeloquently witnessed, “non-thinking, which seems so recommendable a statefor political and moral affairs, also has its perils. By shielding people fromthe dangers of examination, it teaches them to hold fast to whatever the pre-scribed rules of conduct may be at a given time in a given society. What peo-ple then get used to is less the content of the rules . . . than the possession ofrules under which to subsume particulars. . . . I am alluding, of course, to whathappened in Nazi Germany and, to some extent in Stalinist Russia.”

The problem of nihilism is that it can neither be embraced nor avoided. Toavoid thinking is to get into the habit of forgetting the content of creeds andrules and to be satisfied with their mere possession. If at any given time asociety is corrupt, then possessing the creeds or rules of that society will nothelp anyone avoid doing evil. “When everybody is swept away unthinkinglyby what everybody else does and believes in, those who think are drawn outof hiding because their refusal to join in is conspicuous and thereby becomesa kind of action. . . . The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowl-edge; it is the ability to tell right from wrong.” (pp. 192–193). However, “think-

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ing is equally dangerous to all creeds and, by itself, does not bring forth anynew creed.” A rejection of all creeds, as exemplified by Meursault, is the “ever-present danger of thinking.” The deep problem of nihilism is intertwined withthe deep need for thinking.

“Nihilism . . . is a perennial human danger: it cannot be ‘solved’ withoutthe dissolution of human nature.” (Rosen, 1969, p. xx) Rosen goes on to showhow much of contemporary philosophy, whether Heidegger’s ontology orWittgenstein’s ordinary language philosophy, has nihilistic roots. Rosen’s“protective inoculation” against the otherwise “fatal results of this perennialpestilence” involves pointing out that any claim for embracing the arbitrari-ness of ‘what is,’ must acknowledge the significance of making the claim andthus stand in opposition to the content of the claim. Much (in thrust) like the1974 stage of Analysis, the argument is that if nihilism is a risk of thinking,protection from this risk is gained through rigorous reflexivity.

In the 1984 stage of Analysis however, Blum and McHugh’s (sometimestortuous) re-engagement of the problem of self-reflection flows from therecognition that theorizing is not affirmed by merely pointing out the self-contradictory nature of the claims of its enemies. Rather, precisely becausethinking and social life are inextricably intertwined, self-reflection must workand work constantly to demonstrate its connection and its difference. Theintertwining is expressed by the claim that self-reflection is a moral enterprise.As Dallmayr, in his (not uncritical) review of their 1984 work, remarks (1988,p. 9) “perhaps the most significant strength of the study” is the “linkage ofreflection and ethics and the revalorization of moral excellence and virtue.”In their presentation, he says (pp. 7–8), “principled action overcomes or side-steps the dichotomy of rule-conformity and deviance – because ‘need’ is al-ways particular and not subsumable under general rules, but without beingarbitrary. . . . In the context of both action and speech, the hallmark of self-reflection for Blum and McHugh resides in ‘irony’ or the ironic insinuationof principle into discourse.” That is, theirs is a self-reflection which is “mor-ally oriented” to the principle which grounds the inquirer’s reflection. ‘Whatis,’ is conceived as Good, as ultimate truth or as Absolute, in order that thediscourse of self-reflection can work itself out in relation to the deep need forself-reflection. The deep need for self-reflection is ironically insinuated intodiscourse as an instance of the deep need of discourse “to comprehend whatis” as ultimate.

That the ultimate truth needs discourse and is absolute points to a sourceof irony in my recognition that I am needed by the ultimate truth as muchas it is needed by me. In this recognition, irony differs first from those whodo not acknowledge the ultimate truth, and secondly those whose acknowl-edgement only concedes how they need the ultimate truth. In contrast, ironyenjoys its limit, it enjoys unfolding of the in-itself, because it enjoys beingneeded and used by the ultimate truth (1984, p. 148).

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Self-reflexive inquiry (thinking) is not undertaken because it is strong andgrounded (though it is that too) but because it is needed. Without recognisingthat inquiry participates in the mutual need (and desire) of discourse and theultimate truth for each other, humans end up being “confronted with a ration-ally functioning but ultimately silent universe.” In turn, the spectre of nihil-ism (“what is the point?”) haunts the age and inquiry. The “ironic insinuationof principle into discourse,” recognises the mutuality of the need of the in-quirer for discourse and the ultimate truth.

This Blum and McHugh solution to the problem of reflexivity can be con-trasted with Gadamer’s notion of the finiteness of human knowledge. ForGadamer, the experience of finiteness introduces a necessary negativity andlimit to the tendency of the human hope and desire to soar to unreasonableconclusions. (1975, pp. 320–321) It provides a necessary antidote to the dan-gers of modern dogmatism and ideology. For Blum and McHugh, on the otherhand, need and desire ground the interest in theorizing in the first place. Theneed and desire for discourse, as a need of the human condition, grounds thecommitment to reflexive inquiry. While, according to Gadamer, the dangerof an inquiry based on need and desire would be a tendency to dogmatismrather than “reasonableness” (Gadamer, 1986) or phronesis – and some likeRoche (1988) and Wolf (1988) see this dogmatism expressed in the work ofBlum and McHugh – the danger of an inquiry based on awareness of the “ex-perience of human finitude” (Gadamer, 1975, p. 320) may be a tendency todispiritedness. Both Analysis and hermeneutics can serve as antidotes to theexcessive tendencies of the other. (Bonner, 1997).

Again, in what way can we use these theoretical developments to address theproblem of nihilism. Meursault and others who raise the question of whetheranything matters (“what is the point?”) do not represent the true danger of ni-hilism: such questions call the inquirer to recognize the moment of nihilism thatis part of the commitment to thinking. Rather, the real danger of nihilism is thosewho in ordinary and methodical ways seek to exclude the question of principlefrom inquiry. “This is to say that what is unconditional about principle is that italways raises the question of the relation between self and rule as a necessaryquestion. The principled actor questions (his own integration) uncondition-ally. His deepest failure would be to annihilate that question, whatever hisfailures of competence, errors of interpretation or lowliness of spirit” (Blumand McHugh, 1984, p. 137). The danger of nihilism, therefore, grows with theannihilation of the question of principle from inquiry which, in this case, meansexcluding reflexivity. Thus, the danger of nihilism may be represented by thosewho are “the most respectable pillars of society, the least likely to indulge inthoughts, dangerous or otherwise.” (Arendt, 1978, p. 177).

Blum and McHugh (Dallmayr, 1988, p. 9) are not alone in “the linkage ofreflection and ethics and the revalorization of moral excellence and virtue.”Arendt (1958), Gadamer (1986), and Taylor (1991), among others, share this

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understanding and commitment. Yet, as Dallmayr (p. 9) points out, Blum andMcHugh:

emphasize an aspect of moral conduct which is perhaps understated in theworks of others: the fact that virtue requires not only reflectiveness (whichit does) but also frequently a good deal of tenacity, courage, and ‘spiritness,’especially in the face of inner or outer obstacles and adverse conditions.As portrayed in the [1984] study, such spiritedness derives again not merelyfrom an abstract ‘rule competence’ or familiarity with moral codes but ratherfrom a concrete learning process of moral seasoning in which reflectionand need (or desire) are peculiarly linked.

Dallmayr notes the peculiarity of the link between reflection and need anddesire. It is a peculiarity which both risks and confronts nihilism and a pecu-liarity which needs to be further engaged and specified. It is not as fully en-gaged as it needs to be because Blum and McHugh make reflexivity rather thannihilism their topic.10 Yet, it is the argument of this paper that their explorationsof this topic help us understand one of the most fundamental issues that can beraised for the theory and practice of modern life. And vice versa. Reflexivity,at its core, is an ethical, political and pedagogical enterprise. The Analyticperspective therefore, calls on social inquirers to raise the question of the worthor excellence of the action being studied while simultaneously taking respon-sibility for the worth of asking such a question. It also reminds us of the “spirit”needed for such an enterprise. Thus, to restate Sharrock and Anderson’s de-scription (p. 111), “theoretical and empirical problems,” are also “in fact prob-lems of community and authority,” sound investigations into social life requirean oriented reflexivity, and the pursuit “of methodological objectives” raiseissues of “authentic relation with others.” The Analytic element of all socialinquiry includes an examination of the ethical and political implications builtinto assumptions while simultaneously raising for reflection the ethical andpolitical implications built into its own assumptions.

Notes

1. As is well established, Weber’s definitions are full of tensions in terms of their dual fo-cus on both interpretive understanding and sociology as the scientific study of causes.(See Dallmayr and McCarthy, 1977, pp. 19–74, for an elaboration of this tension anddebate.) These issues are not central to this paper, though the conclusions of the paperprovide one way to critically read Weber’s work.

2. Plato “tells the story of the Thracian peasant girl who bursts out laughing when she sawThales fall into a well while he was watching the motions of the heavenly bodies abovehim, ‘declaring that he was eager to know the things in the sky, but what was . . . just athis feet escaped him.’ And Plato adds: ‘Anyone who gives his life to philosophy is opento such mockery. . . . The whole rabble will join the peasant girl in laughing at him . . .[as] in his helplessness he looks like a fool” (Arendt, 1978, pp. 82–83). It seems that the

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issue of reflexivity generates the kind of mockery which philosophy did in ancient Greece.3. This acceptance was shared by both orthodox critics and advocates of Verstehen (see

Dallmayr and McCarthy, 1977, pp. 4–7, for a summary of these positions).4. See Bonner (1997, pp. 71–104) for an evaluation of the discovery and interpretive posi-

tions with regard to the creation of knowledge.5. In asking this kind of question, Analysis puts modern social inquiry up for question in so

far as they do not rely on the tradition of science to provide an answer to such a funda-mental question. As Michael Brown (1988) says, they are engaged in a radical re-ques-tioning of the tradition of sociology and, as such, show an inconoclastic characteristic. Iwill return to this issue later but for now it can be pointed out that a serious grapplingwith the problem of reflexivity means that one cannot rely on ways of doing researchwhich, though validated by convention, have not been subject to a radical questioning.

6. See Bonner (1994, 1998) for an elaboration and exemplification of the hermeneutic pro-cedure of interpreting texts as answers to questions.

7. It is a theme in the Analysis project from On the Beginning of Social Inquiry (1974) toSelf-Reflection in the Arts and Sciences (1984) where, for example, Rosen’s book, Ni-hilism, is referred to in both the early and the later work.

8. This theme of responsibility has recently been addressed by Beck. “For Beck, responsi-bility is involved in the ‘insurance principle’ of simple modernity. In reflexive moder-nity the insurance principle no longer holds, as responsibility for dangers runs into spatial,temporal and social unpredictability . . . What Beck means . . . is that the coalition ofbusiness firms, policy makers and experts who create the dangers of contemporary soci-ety then construct a set of discourses of disavowal of such responsibility” (Lash, 1994,p. 201). Blum and McHugh, on the other hand, demonstrate that disavowal of responsi-bility is not a Machiavellian move of self-protection but is intrinsic to the very practiceand method of science (see also Bonner, 1997, pp. 71–104).

9. Though, as both Gadamer notes and Blum and McHugh show (through their interpreta-tion of the Socratic tradition of inquiry), the break with tradition is not as thorough andcomplete as it is often portrayed.

10. In some ways their more recent work (e.g., Blum, 1991, 1994, 1996, 2001; McHugh, 1993,1996), in different and individually independent ways, address the problem of the link-age between reflection and ethics in a world challenged by a concern with lost founda-tions. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada hasrecently sponsored a $2.5 million five-year project, led by Alan Blum, on the Culture ofCities, Montreal, Toronto, Berlin, Dublin. It, too, addresses the former problem in rela-tion to the tension between globalization and the city.

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