The Symbol Theory: Volume 13: v. 13 (Collected Works of Norbert Elias) - Hardcover

Elias' work is intriguing and has the capacity to stimulate sociologists...The subject matter of The Symbol Theory is both expansive and deep"' - Journal of Applied Rehabilitation Counselling "Readers will be well rewarded. In its attempt at a grand synthesis" "The Symbol Theory moves way beyond sociology in any strict sense...Few readers will fail to be impressed by the breadth of vision and the clarity of expression. For many, the book may supply a welcome, undogmatic antidote to skepticism"' - Contemporary Sociology

"The Symbol Theory, volume 13 in "The Collected Works of Norbert Elias", situates the human capacity for forming symbols in the long-term biological evolution of Homo sapiens, showing how it is linked through communication and orientation to group survival. Elias proceeds to recast the question of the ontological status of knowledge, moving beyond the old philosophical dualisms of idealism/materialism and subject/object. He readjusts the boundary between the 'social' and the 'natural' by interweaving evolutionary biology and the social sciences. "The Symbol Theory" provides nothing less than a new image of the human condition as an accidental outcome of the blind flux of an indifferent cosmos. Elias' Introduction now includes previously unpublished passages written in the days before he died.