Transitional Figures: Edmund Husserl, Emile Durkheim, the Fabian Society

Discussion of modernism tends to be confined to specific modes of expression—architecture, art, literature, music, photography. Generalizing nonetheless, modernism works by breaking the surface and working through layers. There is no empty space; there are only ensembles of relations, stable or shifting, linked by purpose. Form follows function; complexity induces functional differentiation. A distinctively modernist philosophy must dig beneath, or get inside, the questions: what is it possible to think, and ask? What is doing the work called thinking? Husserl’s phenomenology is the one philosophical program of its time directed to these questions and their implications for social existence. Durkheim expressly developed a functionalist perspective for social theory. Looking below the surface, he found social complexity subject to the differentiation of ever more specialized institutions performing more specialized tasks. Closely affiliated with London modernists, the Fabian Society began the task of assessing global administration in just these terms.