[5] In this book Baert describes the reshaping of the intellectual and cultural field in France during WWII and he shows how Sartre was able to present a neat vocabulary to make sense of and come to terms with the trauma of the war.
Authoritative public intellectuals like Sartre rely on their privileged parcours and elite training to speak with moral vigour about a wide range of social and political issues without necessarily having expertise in them.
In contrast with existentialism (which was very much embedded in the humanities), structuralism was compatible with the emerging social sciences (and indeed with other theoretical currents such as Marxism and psychoanalysis).
Baert's position is that most of those groundbreaking works involve ‘self-referential knowledge’: they enable communities to re-describe and re-conceptualise themselves and their presuppositions.
[8] Inspired by Rorty's neo-pragmatism, he has argued in favour of the pursuit of self-referential knowledge, and he has analysed the methodological strategies that make this possible in various disciplines, ranging from archaeology and social anthropology to sociology and history.
[9] For instance, Nietzsche's genealogical history can provide contemporary communities with tools that enable them to re-evaluate the moral and cognitive categories they use to describe the world and their place within it.
[10] A special issue of the journal Human Studies was dedicated to a symposium around Baert's Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Towards Pragmatism.
Bohman [14] contends that Baert underestimates the ability of social scientists to develop generalisations which can lead to emancipatory political agendas.