2026/07/20 by Pallavi Sanil
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/00380385261468602
Diagnosing Social Pathology aims to revive social pathology as a tool for analysing society.The book discusses Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim, who used it to diagnose modern issues.It offers analysis and a philosophical framework highlighting social pathology's importance in critical social theory.Neuhouser sees societies as collectives that can become ill, like living organisms prone to disruptions.Social pathology involves impaired functions threatening society's sustainability, but unlike biological beings, healthy societies require ethical principles like freedom, justice and well-being.The methodology uses the organism analogy, viewing society as a body with parts, institutions, spheres and practices working via rules.He emphasises these similarities to support a pathology framework.The analysis begins with Rousseau, highlighting the artificial nature of human social life and issues from the conflict between our natural state and social dependencies.Neuhouser notes Rousseau's 'amour-propre', the need for recognition, causes distress in modern communities.Unlike physical illnesses, Rousseau's social problems are psychological, involving false needs threatening well-being.He views society as a 'moral body', an artificial system driven by human action beyond individual control.This explains social pathology as rooted in social systems rather than individual faults.Neuhouser interprets Hegel's social ontology through objective spirit and the living good.Objective spirit involves social institutions shaped by normative consciousness, while the living good merges material reproduction with freedom, aiming to reconcile life and liberty.Failures cause social problems like imbalances, recognition issues and disconnection between freedom and life, as in the master-slave dialectic.Hegel sees social issues stem from disruptions in spirit, reflecting self-aware life.Mental illness results from failures in self-shaping, with societal structures influencing consciousness, emphasising rationality, freedom and self-determination.The author examines Marx's Capital, focusing on the circulation formula (M-C-Mʹ) and capitalist production issues.He identifies five systemic problems: capitalism weakens future conditions, promotes growth at well-being's expense, disguises labour through commodity fetishism, controls workers via market forces and separates 1468602S OC0010.