Text se pokouší sledovat, jakým způsobem se významný český marxista meziválečného období Jaroslav Kabeš snažil rozpracovávat subjektivní stránku marxistické filosofie ve formě specifické etiky. Tuto jeho koncepci autor stati nazval „etikou vůle k přetvoření světa“. Kabešovo úsilí je v textu rámováno „krizí“ marxismu po říjnové revoluci, která vyvolala debatu o dalším směřování marxistické filosofie. Jednou z radikálních odpovědí na tuto situaci byla rehabilitace jejího revolučního charakteru skrze znovuoživení prvků hegelovské dialektiky v Marxových spisech (K. Korsch, G. Lukács). Kabeš se naopak obrátil k tradici voluntaristické filosofie (A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche), ale rovněž k nejranějším Marxovým spisům a Leninově korespondenci, aby zde našel podněty pro svůj projekt materialisticky chápaného etického postoje. and The text attempts to follow the path that Jaroslav Kabeš, a notable Czech Marxist of the interwar period, took to work out the subjective side of Marxist philosophy in the form of a specific ethics. The article’s author calls Kabeš’ conception an “ethics of the will to transform the world.” Kabeš’ efforts are framed in the article by the “crisis” in Marxism that followed the October Revolution and which triggered a debate on the direction that Marxist philosophy should take in the future. One of the radical responses to this situation was to rehabilitate its revolutionary character by reviving the elements of Hegel’s dialectic in Marx’s writings (K. Korsch, G. Lukács). Kabeš, by contrast, turned not only to the philosophical tradition of voluntarism (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche) but also to the earliest writings of Marx and to Lenin’s correspondence so as to find the stimuli for his project of a materialistically understood ethical position.
This article focuses on the problems and contradictions of sociological theories of action. It investigates critically the development of the theory of action after the Parsonian synthesis, drawing attention to the limitations of articulating the concept of action systematically within a presuppositional framework of analytical theory. Having exposed Parsons general theory of action and some interpretations and criticisms, the paper addresses the so-called “return of grand theory”, spearheaded in the early 1980s by authors such as Alexander, Habermas, Giddens and Luhmann. The article analyses the conceptual innovations introduced by their theories according to Parsons own definition of theoretical work, which - as he said - consists in reconstruction and transformation of categories in the moments of their failure. While it is argued that sociological theory cannot do away with general concepts, it is also argued that these need not have the form of a synthetic theory of action of the kind outlined by Parsons and the Post-Parsonians. and Jan Balon.