ONCE AGAIN: THE CASE FOR PARSONS'S VOLUATARISM.

The article discusses sociologist Talcott Parsons' voluntarism. It (voluntarism) is not antithetical to systems analysis, nor, certainly, is it antithetical to normative control. There is a wide range of diverse components in any theory. These components may be viewed as forming a continuum from the most general kinds of commitments to the most specific. Every theory contains general pre-suppositional commitments e.g., theoretic-epistemic, or formal elements, as well as very specific propositional statements which are much more directly derived from empirical observation. Similarly, voluntarism does not depend on whether an actor's choice is preserved, nor does it depend on whether or not an actor is described as a member of a normative system. Every concrete actor has a choice in every concrete situation. Parsons has never denied free will in this limited sense. Parsons certainly does not advocate individualism in the laissez-faire sense of the term, but rather the socially constrained exercise of individual choice.