My research area is social and political thought broadly understood and my writing engages with a whole range of theorists from Hobbes to Luhmann via Simmel, Karl Löwith and Jürgen Habermas. I am interested in the relationships between natural law and social theory, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, the problem of universalism in modern normativity.
My current research programme centres on the idea of Philosophical Sociology, which seeks to investigate the relationships between explicit conceptions of the social and implicit ideas of human nature in the social sciences. This is what I explore in my new book Debating Humanity. Towards a Philosophical Sociologythat looks at the ways both contemporary sociologists (e.g Margaret Archer, Talcott Parsons, Luc Boltanski) and philosophers (Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor, Hans Joas) construe their arguments on the key anthropological features that make us human.
I have also blogged on this project for The Sociological Imagination and The Sociological Review.
I have given over 70 invited presentations, lectures or graduate courses in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Spain and the UK. I sit in the Editorial Board of Sociology and in the international boards of British Journal of Sociology and European Journal of Social Theory. I am also a Social Science panel member of the Newton Initiative.
You can access my research profile at:
Also, you can follow me on twitter @danielchernilo
I welcome doctoral students in the following areas:
a) The relationships between philosophy and sociology
b) Normative challenges in contemporary society
c) Classical and contemporary social and political thought
d) Nationalism and cosmopolitanism
- Classical and Contemporary Social and Political Thought
- Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Global Modernity
- Philosophical Sociology and the Problem of Universalism
- Doing Theory Research
- Sociological Imagination (UG)
- The Individual and Society (UG)
- Classical & Contemporary Social Theory (UG)
- Media and Modernity (PG)
Books in English
- Daniel Chernilo (2017) Debating Humanity. Towards a Philosophical Sociology. Cambridge University Press.
- Daniel Chernilo (2013) The natural law foundations of modern social theory: A quest for universalism. Cambridge University Press.
- Daniel Chernilo (2007) A social theory of the nation-state. Routledge.
Books in Spanish
- Daniel Chernilo (2011) La pretensión universalista de la teoría social, LOM-University of Chile.
- Daniel Chernilo (2010) Nacionalismo y cosmopolitismo: ensayos sociológicos, Diego Portales University Press
Selected Articles
- Daniel Chernilo (online first) ‘The question of the human in the Anthropocene debate’, European Journal of Social Theory,
- Rodrigo Cordero, Aldo Mascareño and Daniel Chernilo (online first) ‘On the Reflexivity of Crises: Lessons from Critical Theory and Systems Theory’, European Journal of Social Theory.
- Daniel Chernilo (2016). ‘Humanism and Sociology’, Journal of Classical Sociology 16 (3): 310–317.
- Daniel Chernilo (2015). ‘Social change and progress in the sociology of Robert Nisbet’, Society 52 (4): 324-334
- Daniel Chernilo (2014) ‘The idea of philosophical sociology’, British Journal of Sociology 65 (2): 338-357.
- Daniel Chernilo (2013) ‘Jürgen Habermas: Modern social theory as postmetaphysical natural law’, Journal of Classical Sociology 13 (2): 254-273.
- Daniel Chernilo and Robert Fine (2013). ‘Introduction to the special issue on social theory and natural law’, Journal of Classical Sociology 13 (2): 191-196.
- Daniel Chernilo (2012) ‘Cosmopolitanism and the question of universalism’, in Delanty, G. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, Routledge.
- Daniel Chernilo (2011) ‘The critique of methodological nationalism: Theory and History’, Thesis Eleven 106 (1): 98-117.
- Daniel Chernilo (2010) ‘On the relationships between social theory and natural law: Lessons from Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss’, History of the Human Sciences 23 (5): 91-112.
- Daniel Chernilo (2010) ‘Methodological nationalism and the domestic analogy: Classical resources for their critique’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 23 (1): 87-106.
- Daniel Chernilo and Aldo Mascareño (2009) ‘Obstacles and Perspectives of Latin American Sociology: Normative Universalism and Functional Differentiation’, Soziale Systeme 15 (1): 72-96.
- Daniel Chernilo (2007) ‘A quest for universalism: Re-assessing the nature of classical social theory’s cosmopolitanism’, European Journal of Social Theory10 (1): 17-35.
- Daniel Chernilo (2006) ‘Social theory’s methodological nationalism: Myth and reality’, European Journal of Social Theory 9 (1): 5-22.
- Daniel Chernilo (2002) ‘The theorisation of social co-ordinations in differentiated societies. The theory of generalised symbolic media in Parsons, Luhmann and Habermas’, British Journal of Sociology 53 (3): 431-449.