Classification of Gordon's Contributions To Sociology and Philosophy
Gordon considers all of his works to be part of a humanist tradition. The role of intellectuals, in his view, is to challenge the limits of human knowledge and, in so doing, achieve some advancement in what he calls “the Geist war.” For him, the importance of intellectual work could be summarized by his claim that one “achieves” as a human being for humanity but one always fails alone. Gordon’s work has also been characterized as a form of existential sociology. The sociological dimensions of his writings have received much attention, and the readers of his most recent book, Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (2006) have described it as a work that is not only in philosophy (of disciplinarity) but also in education and the sociology of the formations of disciplines themselves. Gordon, however, describes what he is attempting to do as a teleological suspension of disciplinarity.
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