Sublimating Resentment: Following Elias along Five Paths toward Another Sociology

Abstract

My hypothesis is that the key position of most of Elias’ works is: sublimating resentment. In order to sustain this hypothesis, I develop five key intellectual positions which both define his intellectual style and account for such a sublimation of resentment: the stress on interdependence rather than on domination; on relations rather than on substance; on contexts rather than on general entities; and on analytical description rather than on value judgment. Those five paths may lead us far from present time major trends in sociology.