Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought: Talcott Parsons

Preface. 1. Theoretical Controversy 2. The Early Period: Interpretation and the Presuppositional Movement Toward Multidimensionality 3. The Middle Period: Specifying the Multidimensional Argument 4. The Later Period (1): The Interchange Model and Parsons’ Final Approach to Multidimensional theory 5. The later Period (2): Socialization, Social change and the Systemic and Historical Bases of Individual Freedom 6. The Methodological Error (1): Neopositivism and the Formalization of Parsons’ Theory 7. The Methodological Error (2): Neopositivist Strategy and the Conflation of Presuppositional Logic with Specific Commitments 8. The Presuppositional Error (1): Sociological Idealism and the Attack on Instrumental Order in the Early and Middle Work 9. The Presuppositional Error (2): Idealist Reduction in the Later Writings 10. Conclusion: ‘Paradigm Revision’ and Parsonianism. Appendix: Conflation and Reduction in the Interpretation of Parsonian Theory. Notes. Works of Parsons. Indices.