This paper contends that technical progress, from automation in industry to artificial intelligence, might involve the risk of a humanly impoverished society. Instrumental values could overcome final values and determine the end of meaning.

The main contention of this paper is that, no matter whether one is a true believer or a professed atheist, religion remains a relevant social phenomenon. Serious scholars have written about an eclipse of the sacred in industrial societies through a sad confusion between «sacred» and «religious». …

We live in a technical age. That is to say, modern societies have adopted technological innovation as a guide-principle. But technique is a perfection without an aim. It can only control its internal operations. It is the eternal return of the identical. Hence, a general feeling of social disorienta…

This essay tries to show the scientific validity of the biographical approach in social research. In a sense, it is the realization that nobody would talk about his or her intimate existential experiences, or Erlebnisse, to a tape-reading machine. The object of sociology is not an obj…

The main contention of this paper is that the eventual decline of ideology would pave the way to personalism and piece-meal policy-making. In this respect, sociology should analyze the process of social evolution while the ideological goals tend to concentrate on the middle-range and distant future.

Arriving to the «new world» across the Atlantic Ocean from England, the Founding Fathers, as an act of thankfullness to God’s guidance, called the United States the «God’s Country». On the other hand, serious scholars would call them the «unfinished country» and quite a few political scientists woul…

The main contention of this essay is that sciences can be seen as belonging to two broad categories: a) demonstrative; b) interpretative. Demonstrative, or «tough», sciences are «natural» sciences; interpretative sciences are philosophy, history, all the social sciences, different as thy are (for in…

In a situation in which the market economy is regarded as so important and decisive as to induce the emergence of a market society, the notion of the «sacred» becomes essential. The market is perfectly legitimate as a forum of negotiations, but it has a purely instrumental value. A market society is…

The author contends that any contestation or countercultural movement, no matter how generous, is bound to failure unless it develops as a rational project. Violence, as such, might help visibility, but, in the last analysis, it amounts to nothing more than self-gratifying narcissism, incapable to p…

The concept and the term “industrial revolution” are far from being universally accepted. Historians and economists with a conservative inclination tend to criticize them more or less severely. My general theses is that the “industrial revolution” has been, in the first place, a true revolution, tha…

In July 1973, at the age of 78, Max Horkheimer passed away In the Swiss town of Montagnola. If not the founder, he has at least the most important director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, from which the famous name “Frankfurt School” is derived. Actually, if we ca…

A curious paradox must be faced at the very outset: nothing is perhaps more culturally inclined than the various counter-culture movements. In other words, writing and working against the prevailing culture amount to an essentially cultural enterprise. Culture seems to be inescapable. A supposedly d…