The Significance of Shils* STEPHEN T URNER University of South Florida Edward Shils was a widely recognized bill misunderstood thinker. The original contexts of his th OJtght are not well understood and greatly distort ed by associating him Hiith rhe concerns of Parsons. Shils provides a fully comparable alternative to 1he 1/tought of Habermas and Foucault, with essentially similar roots: practice rheory, rhe dissolution of Marxism in the twemies, and Carl Schmitt. Though Shils was indebted to the Amer- ican sociological traditi011, with respect to these issues his sources 11·ere outside it: in Hendrik de Man, T. S. Eliot, and Michael Polany i. It is shown how Shils responded to Schmirt's argument about rhe inherent conflict between democracy and liberalism in terms of an accow1t of civility and tradition, and how this argument results in a cririque of Foucault, Habermas, and collectivistic liberalism. Edward Shils, who died in 1995, was a widely recognized figure in social theory. He received many honors, among th em the Balzan award, a Nobel-like award for fields with- out Nobels, and the Jefferson Lectureship, perhaps the highest form of recognition in the humanities in the Un ited States. Truly transatlantic, he divided his time between Cam- bridge and Chicago. He left a strong mark on the inte llectual life of Britain, where he played the major role in introducing both Weber and American-style empirical sociology during the postwar years. The journal he founded and ed ited, Min er va (1996), published a memorial issue that included tributes from students and associates, especially in England, and a memorial appeared in the proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (Eisen- stadt 1997). His work was the su bject of a festschrift to which many of the most prominent figures of the social sciences contributed (Ben-David and Clark 1977), and of another edited volume, based on a 1985 Symposium, on his notion of center and periphery (Green- feld and Martin, 1988). A volume of his work appears in the Unive rsity of Chicago Press Heritage of Sociology series (S hils [ 1972] 1982). His students, such as S. N. Eisenstadt and Joseph Ben-David, became world-class scholars in their own right. To ward the en d of his life he was an active member of the Castelgandolfo Colloquia and an officer of its sponsor, the lnstitut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Th is brought him into personal and mutually respectful contact with the Pope. Memorial services were given for him both in Chicago and Cambridge, and a memorial symposium in Vienna. Many of Shils's writings have been influ en tial, and several are minor classics. "The Cohesion and Disintegration of the Wehrmacht in World War II," written with Morris Janowitz, is the classic account of military unit solidarity and the role of ideology in *This article was presented in a different form at the Theory Section minisymposium on the Vocation of Social Theory in Toronto, 1997. It was revised whi le I was a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, whose support is gratefu ll y acknowledged. I am also pleased to acknowledge the advice of three anonymous reviewers for Sociological Theory, one of whom suggested that, given my references to what Shils said, I explain my personal relationship to him. I was in contact with him wi th some frequency after 1982, when I was a member of his NEH Seminar on the Sociology of Intellectuals and attended a seminar on Weber and Tocqueville. We usually met when we were both in Chicago, every year or two, and on a few other occasions. We always spoke about science, but t he discussions digressed in many directions, notably toward the hi story of social thought, universities, and sociology. Shils did not regard me as a disciple, and in the course of his 1 attended while in the seminar he would ironically note my disagreements with his interpretations of Weber. Pl ease address correspondence to the author at the Dept. of Philosophy, University of South Fl orida, Tampa. FL 33620. Tumer@chuma.cas.usf.edu Sociological Theory 17:2 July 1999 ©American Sociological Association. 1722 N Street N \V, Wa shington, DC 20036 . .. • ·<