Peter Emmerson

 5. Some Implications of Elias’ model.

 5.1 From ‘relative detachment’ to ‘relative uncertainty’

 The past, certainly in Europe, was an enchanted place, full of demons, angels, pixies and the like. If Weber is right, people were dominated by superstition and their emotional desires; tradition held sway. He went on to say that since the Renaissance these less realistic ways of thinking and acting have been in decline, as more and more people in Europe saw the need to act with self-control, using foresight to make plans. In more recent times we have seen the spread of this style of operation throughout the world, even though some areas are extremely resistant. From Elias’ point of view this is not a good or bad thing, this was not inevitable, this is not part of some underlying governing law that brings progress, this is not guaranteed to continue in the future, it is just what has happened so far. Most importantly for this essay he alerts us to the problem of the way the ideas of the past can obscure our view of the present and future.

Concepts such as objectivity lead us into ways of analysis that confuse scientific problems rather than elucidate them. In developing the concept of ‘relative detachment’, Elias offers us a different direction that is more scientific because it is more reality congruent. Interdependently, it is more sociological. In so doing I would to suggest, he warns of the dangers of excessive idealism and the damage it can do to scientific enterprise. The use of language is critical to this end if we are to be as reality congruent as possible and avoid overextending ourselves by using metaphysical nouns such as objectivity without due caution. As mentioned earlier, Elias argues that if we are to achieve sufficient reality congruence to do science, we need to use process words; verbs such as ‘civilizing’ which is more in tune with the ever changing social environment. At the same time he alerts us to the harm done to scientific analysis by using nouns such as ‘civilization’, which tend to fix things in perpetuity rather than facilitate the exploration of a forever changing reality.

The inclusion of the adjective ‘relative’ (not to be confused with the noun ‘relativism’) is very important because it has a restraining influence on idealistic nouns such as detachment: to be detached is very similar to being objective in that both are expressive of a fixed state of isolation. Detachment is transformed by attaching Relative. Relative detachment is something more sensitive to real social experience because it demands a more subtle, tentative approach that respects the variability implicit in what people do and think, making it more difficult to jump to unrealistic, idealistic conclusions. By attaching ‘relative’ to ‘uncertainty’ I believe we achieve a similar outcome, providing a concept that is more realistic, and which has the increased likelihood of encouraging a more thoroughly scientific way of analysing human life by redirecting our efforts away from all too easy and attractive idealistic intellectual habits, typified by dichotomous noun-traps such as uncertainty and certainty.