Bourdieu Scholastic Point of View

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The Scholastic Point of View

Author(s): Pierre BourdieuSource: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 380-391Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656183

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The Scholastic Point of ViewPierre BourdieuCollegede France

[Note:Thistext s thetranscriptionf Bourdieu'sinaladdress ndrejoindero hiscritics,Conferencen "Geschmack,trategien,raktikerinn" "Taste,StrategiesandtheLogicof Practice"),held at the FreieUniversitat, erlin,23-24 October1989.Translatedrom heFrench yLoicJ. D. Wacquant.]My scientifichabitushasbeenexposedto so manystimuliby everything hathasbeen said that I would have a lot to say, perhaps oo much, andthatI run therisk of beinga bit confused andconfusing. I would like to organize my reactionsto whatI have heardaround wo or three themes.I would like firstto analyzewhat, borrowinganexpressionof Austin, I willcall the "scholasticpoint of view," the pointof view of the skhole, thatis, theacademicvision. What does the fact of thinkingwithin a scholasticspace, an ac-

ademicspace, imply?What does ourthinkingowe to the fact thatit is producedwithinan academicspace?Isn't our deepestunconscious related to the fact thatwe think n such an academicspace?This wouldbe the firstquestion.Fromthere,I will tryto give some indicationson the particularproblem(itwaspresent hroughouthe discussion, particularly round he notionof mimesisbut also, obviously, this morning, in the presentationof Jacques Bouveresse[1989]) that the understanding f practiceposes andwhich makes for such a dif-ficult task for the humansciences. Does theveryambitionof understanding rac-tice makeanysense?And what is involvedin understanding ndknowinga prac-tice with an approachhatis intrinsically heoretical?Then, if time allows, I would like to raise the issue thathas been up in theair since the birth of the social sciences: the problemof the relations betweenreasonandhistory.Isn'tsociology, whichapparently ndermineshe foundationsof reason andthereby ts own foundations,capableof producing nstruments orforginga rationaldiscourseand even of offeringtechniques or waging a politicsof reason,aRealpolitikof reason?The scope of theproblematic adumbrate ereis disproportionateo the time at my disposal. This is why I welcome the idea of"workshop,"whichfitsperfectlywhatI want to do and can do today.

Firstpoint:the "scholasticview." This is an expressionthatAustin(1962)uses in passingin Sense and Sensibilia and for which he gives an example:theparticular se of languagewhere, insteadof graspingandmobilizingthemeaningof a wordthat s immediatelycompatiblewith the situation,we mobilizeandex-380


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SCHOLASTICPOINT OF VIEW 381

amine all the possiblemeaningsof thatword, outsideof anyreferenceto the sit-uation.This exampleis very significantandI think that one can tease out of it theessentials of what the scholastic view is. The scholasticview is a very peculiarpointof view on the socialworld, on language,on anypossibleobjectof thoughtthat s madepossibleby the situationof skhole, of leisure,of whichthe school-a wordwhich also derives from skhole-is a particularorm, as an institutional-ized situationof studious eisure. Adoptionof this scholasticpointof view is theadmission ee, the customrighttacitlydemandedby all scholarlyfields;the neu-tralizingdisposition(in Husserl's [1983] sense) is, in particular,he conditionoftheacademicexercise as a gratuitousgame, as a mentalexperiencethatis an endin andof itself. I believe indeedthatwe shouldtake Plato's (1973) reflectionsonskholevery seriouslyandeven his famousexpression,so often commentedupon,spoudaiospaizein, "to play seriously." The scholasticpoint of view of whichAustinspeakscannot be separated rom the scholastic situation,a socially insti-tutedsituation n which one can play seriously and take ludic things seriously.Homo scholasticus or homo academicus is someone who is paid to play seriously;placedoutsidetheurgencyof apractical ituationandoblivious to theends whichareimmanent n it, he or she earnestlybusies herself with problemsthatseriouspeople ignore-actively or passively. To producepracticesor utterances hat arecontext-free,one mustdispose of time, of skhole andalso have this dispositionto play gratuitousgameswhichis acquiredand reinforcedby situationsof skholesuch as the inclination and the abilityto raise speculative problemsfor the solepleasureof resolvingthem, andnot becausethey areposed, oftenquiteurgently,by the necessities of life, to treat anguagenot as an instrumentbut as an objectof contemplationor speculation.Thuswhatphilosophers,sociologists, historians,andall those whoseprofes-sion it is to thinkand/orspeakaboutthe worldhave the mostchanceof overlook-ingarethe socialpresuppositionshatare inscribed nthe scholasticpointof view,what,to awakenphilosophers romtheirslumber,I shall call by the name of scho-lasticdoxaor, better,by theoxymoronof epistemicdoxa: thinkers eave in a stateof unthought impense, doxa) the presuppositionsof their thought, that is, thesocialconditionsof possibilityof the scholasticpointof view andthe unconsciousdispositions,productiveof unconscioustheses, which are acquiredthroughanacademicorscholasticexperience,ofteninscribed nprolongationof anoriginary(bourgeois)experienceof distance from the world and from the urgencyof ne-cessity.Incontradistinctionwith Plato's (1973) lawyer, or Cicourel's(1989) physi-cian, we have all the time in the world, all ourtime, and this freedom from ur-gency, fromnecessity-which oftentakes the form of economicnecessity, duetotheconvertibilityof time intomoney-is madepossible by anensemble of socialandeconomicconditions,by the existence of these suppliesof free time that ac-cumulatedeconomic resourcesrepresent Weber [1978] notes in WirtschaftundGesellschaftthatthe primaryaccumulationof political capitalappearswith thenotablewhenthe latterhasamassedsufficientresources o be able to leave aside,foratime, theactivitythatprovideshismeans of subsistenceor to havesomebody


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382 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

replacehim). This reminderof the economic and social conditionsof the scho-lasticposture s notdesignedto condemnor to instill a culpabilitycomplex. Thelogic in whichI reason is not thatof conviction or denunciation the task here isnot tojudge of this as good or bad)but thatof epistemologicalquestioning.Thisis a fundamental pistemologicalquestionsince it bearson the epistemic postureitself, on thepresuppositionsnscribed n the fact of thinking heworld,of retiringfromthe worldandfrom actionin the world in orderto thinkthataction. Whatwe want to know is in what ways this withdrawal,this retirement,this retreatimpacton the thought hatthey makepossible andtherebyon whatwe think.Thus, for instance,if it is true that the conditionof possibilityof everythingthat is produced n fields of culturalproduction Bourdieu1983a) is this sortofbracketingof temporalemergencyand of economic necessity (as can easily beseen in the use of language:I do not use languageto do somethingwith it, I uselanguageto raise questionsaboutlanguage), if it is true thatI am in a universewhich is thatof gratuitousness,of finalitywithoutpurpose,of aesthetics,is it notunderstandablehatI should understandaestheticsso wrongly?Indeed-this iswhat I wanted to tell Jules Vuilleminyesterday-there arequestionsthat we donot askof aestheticsbecause the social conditionsof possibilityof ouraestheticquestioningarealreadyaesthetic,becausewe forgetto questionall the nontheticaestheticpresuppositions f all aesthetictheses . . .Youmaywonderwhy, being a sociologist, I shouldplaythepartof thephi-losopher.Partly,of course, it is in homageto my philosopher riendswho haveconvenedhere. But it is also because I am obliged to do so. I thinkthat to raisesuchquestionson the very natureof the scientificgaze is an integralpartof sci-entific work. These questionshave been thrustuponme, outside of any intentortaste forpurespeculation, n a numberof researchsituationswhereto understandmy materialsI was compelledto reflectuponthe scholarlymode of knowledge(Bourdieu1990a).Thus I discoveredthatthe scholasticvision destroysits objecteverytime it is appliedto practicesthat aretheproductof the practicalview and

which,consequently,areverydifficult o thinkof, or areevenpracticallyunthink-ablefor science . . .I believe that thereis a sortof incompatibilitybetweenour scholarlymodeof thinkingandthis strange hingthatpractice s. To applyto practicea mode ofthinkingwhichpresupposes he bracketingof practicalnecessity and the use ofinstruments f thoughtconstructedagainstpractice,suchas game theory,thethe-oryof probability,etc., is to forbidourselvesto understand racticeas such. Sci-entistsor scholarswho have not analyzedwhatit is to be a scientistor a scholar,whohavenotanalyzedwhatit means to have a scholasticview andto find it nat-ural,putintothe minds of agentstheirscholasticview. This epistemocentric al-lacy can be found, for instance, in Chomsky(1972), who operatesas if ordinaryspeakersweregrammarians.Grammars a typicalproductof the scholasticpointof view andonecould,buildingonthe workof Vygotsky(1962), show thatskholeis what allows us to move from primarymasteryto secondary masteryof lan-guage, to accede to the meta: meta-discourse,meta-practice.Thefundamentalanthropological fallacy consists in injecting meta- into practices. This is what


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SCHOLASTICPOINTOF VIEW 383

Chomskydoes; this is also what Levi-Strauss 1969) does when he plays on thenotion of rule (see Bourdieu1986a, 1986b). To substitutekinshipstrategiesforkinshiprules is not to effect a simple, and somewhatgratuitous,philosophicalconversion. It is to construct he object differently,to ask differentquestionsofinformants, o analyze marriagesdifferently. Insteadof being content with re-cording, via genealogies, marriages reduced to a kinship relation betweenspouses,Imustgather or eachweddingall the data-and thereare a lot of them-thatmay have entered,consciously or unconsciously, in the strategies:the agedifferencebetween spouses, differences in wealth, materialand symbolic, be-tweenthe two families, the legacy of pasteconomic andpoliticalrelations,etc.And I must in particularreatkinshipexchanges quite differently.WhereLevi-Strauss ees analgebra,we must see a symbolic economy. And to effect this the-oreticalconversion,we must take a theoreticalpoint of view on the theoreticalpoint of view; we must realize that the anthropologist s not, when faced withmarriage, nthepositionof the headof householdwho wishes to marryhis daugh-ter, and to marryher well. The anthropologistbracketsall practical nterestsandstakes. Thisis ratherobvious in the case of theethnographerworking n a foreignculture:hersituationas anoutsidersuffices to puther inaquasi-theoretical,quasi-scholasticpointof view. For thesociologist, however,it is much less obviousandhe can easily forget the gap that separatesthe interest that he may have in theschool system as a scholar who simply wants to understand ndto explain, andthatconsequently eadshimto set a "pure" gaze on the functioningof the mech-anisms of differentialeliminationaccordingto culturalcapital, and the interestthathe has in this samesystemwhenhe acts as a fatherconcernedwith thefutureof his children. The anthropologist, ust like the sociologist, aims at an under-standing hat s its own end, thisbecause, as we sometimessay, "ils n'en ont rienafaire," "they have no use for it"; they are, in a sense, indifferent o the gamethey study. The very idea of matrimonial trategyand of interest(the interest nmaximizingthe materialor symbolic profitsobtainedthroughmarriage) mme-diatelycomes to mind whenyou start hinkingas an agentactingwithinculturaltraditionswherethe bruntof processes of accumulationor dilapidationof (eco-nomic or symbolic)capitalworkthemselves out via matrimonial xchanges.Wehavecome a long way from the algebraistanthropologistwho drawsup geneal-ogies in thehopeof establishingrules for whichhe has no use in practice.The sameappliesto mythor to ritual,and in a way afortiori. FollowingtheDurkheimandMauss(1963) of PrimitiveClassification,Levi-Strauss 1968) hascausedanthropology o make immeasurableprogressby strivingto capturethelogic of mythicalnarrativesor ritualacts. But, to stay in line with currentrepre-sentationsof science, he borrowedhis instruments f knowledgefromthe side ofalgebra-and fromthe mathematicianAndreWeil-and he built formalsystemsthat, thoughthey account for practices, in no way providethe raison d'etre ofpractices,theirtrueexplanatoryprinciple.It is only on condition thatwe takeupthe pointof view of practice-on the basis of a theoreticalreflection on the the-oreticalpointof view as scholasticpointof view, as a nonpracticalpointof view,foundedupon the neutralizationof practical nterests and practicalstakes-that


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we have some chance of grasping hetruthof thespecific logic of practice. Ritualaction,which structural nthropology ituateson the side of algebra,is in fact agymnasticsor adance(onegoes fromright o left, or from left to right,one throwsabove the left or the rightshoulder)and follows a practical ogic, thatis, a logicthat s intelligible,coherent,butonly upto a certainpoint (beyondwhich it wouldno longerbe "practical"),andoriented owardpracticalends, thatis, the actual-ization of wishes, of desires(of life or of death)and, through hem, of the socialstructureshat have producedthese dispositions. Here again, the change in thetheoryof practiceprovokedby theoreticalreflectionon the theoreticalpoint ofview, on the practicalpoint of view, and on theirprofounddifferences, is notpurelyspeculative: t is accompaniedby a drasticchange in the practicalopera-tions of researchandby quitetangiblescientificprofits.For instance,one is ledto pay attention o propertiesof ritualpracticethat structuralistogicism wouldinclineto pushasideorto treatas meaninglessmisfiringsof themythicalalgebra,andparticularlyo polysemicrealities,underdeterminedr indeterminate,not tospeakof partialcontradictions nd of the fuzzinessthatpervade he whole systemand account for its flexibility, its openness, in short everythingthat makes it"practical"and thusgearedto respondat the least cost (in particularn terms oflogical search)to the emergenciesof ordinaryexistence andpractice(see "Irre-sistibleAnalogy" in Bourdieu1990a:200-270).

Inshort,to playon a famous title of Ryle's, I wouldsaythat gnoringevery-thingthat s implicated n the "scholasticpointof view" leads to the mostseriousepistemologicalmistake n the socialsciences, namely,thatwhich consistsinput-ting "a scholar nside themachine," in picturingall social agentsin the imageofthe scientist(of the scientistreasoningon humanpracticeand not of the actingscientist,the scientistin action)or, moreprecisely, to place the models that thescientistmust construct o accountfor practices nto theconsciousnessof agents,to operateas if the constructions hat the scientist must produceto understandpractices,to accountfor them, were the main determinants, he actual cause ofpractices.The rationalcalculatorthat the advocatesof RationalAction Theoryportrayas the principleof humanpracticesis no less absurd-even if this doesnot strikeus as much,perhapsbecauseit flattersour"spiritualpointof honor"-thantheangelusrector, the far-seeingpilot to whichsome pre-Newtonianhink-ers attributed heregulatedmovement of theplanets.One would need here to push the analysisfurtherand to trackdown all thescientificmistakesthatderive from what could be called the scholasticfallacy,such as the fact of asking interviewees to be theirown sociologists (as with allquestionsof the type: "Accordingto you, how manysocial classes arethere?")for lack of having questionedthe questionnaireor, better, the situationof thequestionnairedesignerwho has the leisure or the privilege to tearherself awayfromtheevidences of doxa to raisequestions.Orworse: thefact of asking surveyrespondentsquestionsto which they can always respondby yes or no butwhichthey do not raise and could not ask themselves (thatis, trulyproduceas such)unlesstheywerepredisposedandpreparedby theirsocial conditionsof existenceto takeup a "scholasticpointof view" on the social world(as in so manyques-


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tionsof politicaltheory).We would also need to uncoverall the unnoticedtheo-reticaleffects producedby the mere use of instrumentsof thoughtthat, havingbeenproducedn a "scholasticsituation,"reproducen theirfunctioning hepre-suppositions nscribed n the social conditions of theirconstruction,such as thebracketingof time, of temporalurgency,or the philosophyof gratuitousness,ofthe neutralizationf practicalends.It is at this juncture, for instance, that we would have to question, in theperspectiveputforthby GunterGebauerandChristophWulff (1989), the effectsproduced, n andthrough heirvery use, by the most ordinarynstrumentsof thescholarly radition:writing,as shownby theoperationof recordingandtranscrib-ing of an interviewor a dialogue, effects or makespossible a synchronizationofthe successivemoments n the linearunfoldingof discourse,therebycreatingtheconditions of possibility (as we see with Socrates)of the logical critiqueof ar-gumentationbuttendingalso, when we forgetthese effects, to destroythis fun-damentalpropertyof practiceorof speech:their embeddedness n duration. Forinstance,the structural nalysisof a poem, which synchronizessuccessive mo-ments,often thanks o the use of a spatialschema, causes an essentialpropertyofreading o disappear,namely, that it unfolds in time, which makes it possible tocreate effects of surpriseas frustrated xpectation,etc.) Likewise, by "simulta-neizing" the successive momentsof social processes, all the techniquesthattheethnographeroutinelyutilizes, such as the two-by-two table analyzed by JackGoody(1977) or, moregenerally,genealogies, kill the properlystrategicdimen-sionof practiceswhich is related o theexistence, ateverymoment,of uncertain-ties, indeterminations,f only subjectiveones. In sum, we mustcarryout a veri-tablecritiqueof scholarlyor scholastic reasonto uncoverthe intellectualistbiasthat s inscribed n the most ordinary nstruments f intellectualwork(we wouldhaveto include also mathematical igns) and in theposturewhich is the tacit con-ditionof theirproductionand of theirutilization.When we unthinkinglyput to work our most ordinarymodesof thinking-all those, for instance, which underpin he most elemental logical operations-we inflictuponourobjecta fundamental dulterationaswe see very clearlytodaywhenwe tryto applylogic to naturalanguages),which cango all thewayto pureand simple destruction and that remains unnoticed as such. The same is true whenwe apply beyondtheirconditionsof historicalor social validity (leadingto an-achronismor to class ethnocentrism)conceptsthat, as Kant(1952) put it, seemto "pretendto universalvalidity" because they are produced n particular on-ditions whoseparticularityludes us. How could we notsee-to be moreKantianthan Kant, and than my friend Jules Vuillemin (1989)-that the disinterestedgameof sensitiveness,thepureexercise of the facultyof feeling, in short,the so-called transcendental se of sensitivitypresupposeshistorical and social condi-tions of possibility and that aestheticpleasure,this purepleasurewhich "everymanoughtto be able to experience," is theprivilegeof those whohave had accessto theconditions n whichsuch a "pure" dispositioncanbe durablyconstituted?Whatdo we do, for instance, when we talk of a "popularaesthetics" orwhen we wantat all costs to credit the "people" (le peuple), who do not care to


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haveone, with a "popularculture"?Forgetting o effect the epocheof the socialconditionsof the epocheof practical nterests hat we effect when we pass a pureaestheticappreciation,we purelyand simply universalize the particular ase inwhich we areplacedor, to speaka bit moreroughly,we, in an unconscious andthoroughlyheoreticalmanner,grant heeconomic andsocialprivilegethat s thepreconditionof the pure and universal aesthetic point of view to all men andwomen(andin particularo this good old peasant,capableof appreciating, ikeus, the beautyof a landscape,or to the black subproletarianapableof appreci-atingthe rhythmor appealof a rapmelody). Most of the human works thatweareaccustomed o treatingas universal-law, science, the fine arts, ethics, reli-gion, etc.-cannot be disassociatedfrom the scholasticpointof view and fromthe social and economic conditionswhich make the latterpossible. They havebeenengendered n these very peculiarsocial universesthat the fields of culturalproduction re-the religiousfield, theartistic ield, thephilosophical ield(Bour-dieu 1983a, 1983b, 1990c)-and in which agentsareengagedwho have in com-montheprivilegeof fightingfor the monopolyof the universal,andtherebyef-fectivelyto cause truthsand valuesthatareheld, at eachmoment,to be universal,nayeternal,to advance.I am readyto concede that Kant's aestheticsis true, butonly as a phenom-enology of the aesthetic experience of all the people who are the productofskhole. Thatis to say, the experienceof the beautifulof which Kantoffers us arigorousdescriptionhas definiteeconomicand socialconditionsof possibilitythatare ignored by Kant and whose universalanthropologicalpossibility of whichKantadumbrates nanalysiscouldbecomereal only if those economicandsocialconditionswere universallyallocated.It meansalso thatthe conditionof actualuniversalizationf this(theoretical)universalpossibilityis thus the actualuniver-salizationof the economic andsocial conditions,thatis, of skhole, which, beingmonopolizedby some today, conferuponthemthe monopolyover the universal.To drive thepointhomeand at theriskof appearingoverly insistent-but insuchmatters, t is so easy to havea lighttouch-I wouldsay thatthe datum romwhichsociologicalreflectionstarts s not theuniversalcapacityto grasp he beau-tiful but the incomprehension, he indifference,nay the disgust of some socialagents(deprivedof the adequatecategoriesof perceptionandappreciation)n theface of certainobjects consecratedas beautiful(the "beau classique" for in-stance;cf. Bourdieu1984). And to recall the social conditionsof possibilityofthisjudgment hatclaimsuniversalvalidityleadsto circumscribe he pretensionstouniversalityof Kantiananalysis:we may grant heCritiqueof Judgementa lim-itedvalidityas a phenomenological or, for thepleasureof shocking,ethnometh-odological) analysisof the lived experienceof certaincultivatedmen andwomenin certainhistoricalsocieties, andwe can describevery precisely the decidedlynontranscendentalenesis of this experience. But only to add immediatelythatthe unconscious universalization of the particular case which it effects (by ignor-ing its own social conditionsof possibilityor, to be Kantian o the end, its ownlimits)has the effect of constitutingaparticular experienceof the workof art(orof the world, as with the idea of "naturalbeauty") as a universalnorm of all


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SCHOLASTICPOINTOF VIEW 387

possibleaestheticexperience,andthus of tacitlylegitimizinga particularormofexperienceand,thereby,thosewho have theprivilegeof access to it. On thebasisof these analyses, one could show thatthe "purest" conceptsof aesthetic udg-ment("beautiful," "sublime," etc.) have aninescapablypoliticaldimensionandthataesthetic debatesconceal more or less effectively properlypoliticalopposi-tions between antagonisticpositions withinthe artisticor intellectual field and,beyond t, in the social field as a whole. (It is the case for instancewith the debateson decline and democratic astewhich have been evoked here, or on the dispro-portionateand the sublime, and which often combine social antagonismswithnationalantagonisms,between FranceandGermany n particular.)Whatis true of pureaestheticexperienceis true of all the anthropologicalpossibilitiesthatwe tend to thinkof as universal: he abilityto producea complexchain of logical reasoningor the abilityto accomplisha perfectlyrigorousmoralact are, by way of anthropologicalpossibilities, virtuallygrantedto everybodyandno one can maintain hatthey are a priori reservedfor some. And yet theyremain he privilegeof a happyfew because these anthropologicalpotentialitiesfind their full realizationonly underdefinitesocial and economic conditions;andbecause, inversely, there are economic and social conditionsunderwhich theybecome atrophied,annulled.This is to say that one cannot, at the same time,denouncethe inhumansocial conditionsof existence imposed uponproletariansandsubproletarians, specially in the blackghettosof the UnitedStatesandelse-where, and credit the people placed in such situationswith the full accomplish-ment of theirhumanpotentialities,and in particularwith the gratuitousanddis-interesteddispositions hatwe tacitlyorexplicitlyinscribe n notionssuchasthoseof "culture" or "aesthetics." In this case, the commendableconcern to rehabi-litate(byshowing,as I didfor instancea longtimeago, that hephotographsakenby membersof theworkingclass pursueanimmanent ntentionwhichhas itsowncoherence,its own logic, itsjustification-which still does not entitle us to speakof an aesthetics[Bourdieuet al. 1990]) can end up yielding the oppositeresult:thereis a manner,quitecomfortable n short,of "respectingthe people" whichconsists in confiningthem to whatthey are, inpushingthem urtherdown, as wecould say, by converting deprivationandhardship nto an elective choice. TheProletkult s a form of essentialism,forthe same reasonas theclass racismwhichreducespopularpractices o barbarityandof whichit often is nothingmorethanthe mereinversion,and a falsely radicalone at that: ndeed, it offers all the ben-efits of apparent ubversion,of "radicalchic," while at the same time leavingeverythingas is, the ones with theiractuallyculturedcultureand a culturecapableof sustaining ts own questioning,the others with theirdecisively andfictitiouslyrehabilitatedulture).I understandLabov(1973) when he purports o show thatthe dialectof the residentsof blackghettoscanconvey theologicaltruthsas subtleandsophisticatedas do the knowinglyeuphemizeddiscourses of the graduatesofHarvardUniversity; t remains, however, thatthe mosthazyandfuzzyutterancesof the latteropen all doors in society whereas the most unpredictableinguisticinventionsof the formerremain otallydevoid of value on the marketof theschooland in all social situationsof the same nature.(This does not mean that we need


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to acceptthe quasi-essentialistdescriptionthatBasil Bernstein[1973] gives ofpopular anguage.) Populist aestheticism is yet another one of the effects, nodoubtoneof themostunexpected,of scholastic bias since it operatesa tacit univ-ersalizationof the scholasticpointof view which is by no meansaccompaniedbythe will to universalize he conditions of possibilityof thispointof view.Thus, we mustacknowledgethatif everything eadsus to think that certainfundamentaldispositionstoward the world, certain fundamentalmodes of con-structionof reality-aesthetic, scientific,etc.-constitute universalanthropolog-icalpossibilities,thesepotentialitiesare actualizedonly indefiniteconditionsandthat heseconditions,startingwith skhole asdistancefromnecessityandurgency,and especially academic skhole and the whole accumulatedproductof priorskholethatit carries,areunevenlyallocated acrosscivilizations, from the Tro-briand slandsto the United Statesof today, andwithin our own societies, acrosssocial classes or ethnicgroupsor, in a morerigorous anguage,acrosspositionsin social space. These are all very simple thingsbutvery fundamentalones, andit is not superfluouso insiston them, especiallyin a scholasticsituation,thatis,amongpeople readyto join in the forgettingof the presuppositionsnscribed ntheircommonprivilege.Thissimpleobservation eadsus to an ethicalorpoliticalprogramhatis itself very simple:we can escape the alternativeof populismandconservatism, wo formsof essentialism which tendto consecrate he statusquo,only by working o universalize heconditionsof access to universality.But to give a concrete andprecisecontent to this kind of slogan that has atleastthevirtueof beingclear andrigorousand to putus on noticeagainstpopulistmake-believe,we wouldneed to reintroduce he whole analysisof the genesis ofthe specificstructure f these quite peculiarsocial worlds where the universal sengenderedandthat I call fields. I believe indeed that thereis a social historyofreason,which is coextensive with the historyof these social microcosmswherethe social conditions of the developmentof reason are engendered(Bourdieu1990b).Reason is historical hroughandthrough,which does not mean thatit isfor thatmatterrelativeandreducibleto history. The historyof reasonis the pe-culiarhistoryof the genesis of these peculiarsocial universes that, having forprerequisite khole and for foundationscholastic distance from necessity (andfromeconomic necessity in particular)andurgency,offer conditionspropitioustothedevelopmentof a formof socialexchange,of competition,even of struggle,which areindispensable or thedevelopmentof certainanthropological otential-ities. To makeyou understand, will say thatif those universesarepropitious othedevelopmentof reason,it is because, in order o make the most of yourselfinthem, you must make the most of reason;to triumph n them, you must makearguments,demonstrations, efutations riumph n them. To be recognized,thatis, symbolically efficient in these universes, the "pathological motivations"aboutwhich Kant(1950) writesmust be convertedinto logical motives. Thesesocial universes hat,in someways, are likeall otheruniverses,withtheirpowers,theirmonopolies, their interestsand so on, are, in other ways, very different,exceptional,if not a bit miraculousand, being bornof a considerablehistoricalwork, they remainvery fragile, very vulnerable,at the mercy of authoritarian


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governmentsas we saw in Germanyor Russia. It remainsthat the social condi-tions of theirfunctioning,the tacitlyorexplicitly imposedrulesof competition nthemare such that the most "pathological"functions areobliged to mold them-selves into social forms and social formalisms,to submitthemselves to regulatedproceduresandprocesses, notablyin mattersof discussion andconfrontation, oobey standards hataccordwith what is seen, at each moment in history,as rea-son. Thescientificfield, this scholasticuniversewherethe mostbrutalconstraintsof the ordinarysocial world are bracketed,is the locus of the genesis of a newformof necessity or constraintor, if you want, of a specific legality, an Eigen-gesetzlichkeit: n it the logical constraints,whose specificityBouveresse(1989)tried to uncover this morning, take the form of social constraints-and con-versely. Inscribed nto minds in the form of dispositionsacquiredvia the disci-plinesof the ScientificCity (and, moresimply, through he acquisitionof state-of-the-artmethods andknowledge), they are also inscribed n the objectivityofthescientific field in the form of institutionssuchas proceduresandprocessesofdiscussion,refutation,andregulateddialogueandespecially, perhaps, ntheformof positiveandnegativesanctions that the field, functioningas a market,inflictsuponindividualproducts.This is to say in passingthat there is no need to wrenchourselvesfree fromtheembraceof relativism,to inscribe heuniversalstructures f reason,no longerinconsciousness but in language, by way of a revivedformof the transcendentalillusion.Habermas1981) stopshis efforts in midcoursewhenhe seeks a way outof thehistoricistcircleto which the social sciences seem to condemnthemselvesin the social sciences (and in particularn Grice's principles).The sociologicalconstructivismhatI proposeallows us to accountforthetranscendance f (math-ematical,artistic, scientific, etc.) works which areengendered n scholarlyfieldsandwhicharetestedthrough he constraintdiscussedby Bouveresse, and to ac-countalso for the Platonic llusion whichcan be found, underdifferentguises, inall thesefields. We must, by takinghistoricistreduction o its logical conclusion,seek theoriginsof reason not in a human"faculty," thatis, a nature,but in theveryhistoryof thesepeculiarsocial microcosmsin which agentsstruggle,in thenameof the universal,for the legitimatemonopolyover the universal,andin theprogressivenstitutionalizationf a dialogicallanguagewhichowes its seeminglyintrinsicpropertieso thesocialconditionsof itsgenesisand of itsutilization.Thisanalysisallows us to move past the moralismof the glorificationof rationaldia-logue toward a genuineRealpolitikof reason (Bourdieu1987, 1989). Indeed, Ithinkthat, short of believing in miracles, we can expect the progressof reasononly from a permanent truggleto defend andpromotethe social conditionsthatare most favorableto the developmentof reason, thatis, institutionsof researchandteachingno less thanscientificjournals, the diffusion anddefense of booksof quality,thedenunciationof censorship,academicorotherwise,etc., thus fromrenewinga greattraditionof philosophy-and especially Germanphilosophy-whichdid not disdain to incarnate ts strugglefor the developmentof the humanspirit n grandeducationalprojectsaimedat endowingreason and freedomwiththe properlypolitical instrumentswhich are the preconditionof theirrealizationin history.


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390 CULTURALNTHROPOLOGY

References CitedAustin,John L.1962 Sense and Sensibilia. Reconstructed romManuscriptNotes by G. J. Warnock.Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress.Bernstein,Basil1973 Class, Codes, andControl. Volume 1. London:Routledge& KeganPaul.Bourdieu,Pierre1983a The Field of CulturalProductionor: The Economic World Reversed. Poetics

12(November):311-356.1983b The PhilosophicalEstablishment. n Philosophyin FranceToday. A. Monte-fiore,ed. Pp. 1-8. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.1984[1979] Distinction:A Social Critiqueof the Judgementof Taste. Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress.1986a[1985] From Rules to Strategies.CulturalAnthropology1(1):110-120.1986b Habitus, Code, Codification. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales64(September):40-44.[translatedn In Other Words. Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1990.]1987 Fur eine Realpolitik der Vernunft. In Das Bildungswesen der Zukunft. S.Muller-Rolli,ed. Pp. 229-234. Stuttgart:ErnstKlett.1989 The Corporatismof the Universal:The Role of Intellectualsin the ModemWorld.Telos 81(Fall):99-110.1990a[1980] The Logic of Practice. Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress.1990b The PeculiarHistoryof Scientific Reason. Sociological Forum(Winter). (inpress)1990c Maxwell's Devil:TheGenesisand Structure f theReligiousField.In Practice,Class, and Culture:Selected Papersby PierreBourdieu. Loic Wacquant,ed. Cam-bridge:PolityPress. (in press)Bourdieu,Pierre,H. L. Boltanski,and J. C. Chaboredon

1990[1970] Photography:The Social Uses of a Middle-BrowArt. Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress.

Bouveresse,Jacques1989 La force de la regle. Paperpresentedat the Conferenceon Geschmack, Strate-gien, praktiker inn, FreieUniversitat,Berlin, 23-24 October.Chomsky,Noam1972 Languageand Mind. New York:HarcourtBraceJovanovich.Cicourel,AaronV.1989 Habitusandthe Developmentof Emergenceof PracticalReasoning, Paperpre-sentedat the ConferenceonGeschmack,Strategien,praktiker inn,FreieUniversitat,Berlin,23-24 October.Durkheim,Emile, and MarcelMauss

1963[1903] PrimitiveClassification.Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress.Gebauer,Giinter,andChristophWulff1989 Mimesis undpratikerSinn. Paper presentedat the Conferenceon Geschmack,Strategien,praktikerSinn, FreieUniversitat,Berlin, 23-24 October.

Goody, Jack1977 The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.


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Habermas,Jurgen1981 Theorie des KommunikativenHandelns. Frankfurt: uhrkamp.Husserl,Edmund1983[1913] Ideas Pertaining o a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological

Philosophy.First Book: GeneralIntroduction o a PurePhenomenology.TheHague:MartinusNijhoff.Kant,Immanuel1950[1791] Prolegomena o Any FutureMetaphysics.New York: Macmillan.1952[1790] Critiqueof Judgement.Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress.Labov,William1973 Language n the InnerCity:Studiesin the Black EnglishVernacular.Philadel-phia:Universityof PennsylvaniaPress.Ldvi-Strauss,Claude1968[1964] The Raw andthe Cooked:Introductiono a Science of MythologyI. NewYork:Harper& Row.1969[1949] TheElementaryStructures f Kinship. Boston:Beacon Press.Plato1973 TheRepublicandOtherWorks. New York:Doubleday.Vuillemin,Jules1989 Rdflexionsur raisonet jugementde goOt.Paperpresentedat the ConferenceonGeschmack,Strategien,praktikerSinn, FreieUniversitat,Berlin, 23-24 October.Vygotsky,L. S.1962[1934] ThoughtandLanguage. Cambridge:MITPress.Weber,Max1978[1918-20] EconomyandSociety. Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress.

Bourdieu Scholastic Point of View

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