But the fact a person denies that he is theorising is no reason for taking him at his word and failing to investigate what implicit theory is involved in his statements.
Interpretation
Denial of one's own theoretical framework does not exempt one from having underlying assumptions in their statements.
In this quote, Talcott Parsons suggests that individuals often claim to speak without theory or bias, but this denial does not eliminate the implicit theories that influence their statements. It emphasizes the importance of investigating the underlying beliefs that shape what a person communicates, regardless of their explicit disavowals of theoretical thinking.
In practice
In a debate, one might quote Parsons to illustrate that opponents' apparent neutrality may still carry biased assumptions.
We are constantly - in order to cope with painful realities - shuffling through third-rate, half-remembered fantasies taken from movies, from TV, from people we admire. We do this individually, we do it collectively - we tell stories to escape our most painful truths.
Holy is the dish and drain, the soap and sink, and the cup and plate and the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile, showerheads and good dry towelsand frying eggs sound like psalms, with bits of salt measured in my palm. It's all a part of a sacrament, as holy as a day is spent.
It is important to the typical 'Star Trek' fan that there is a tomorrow. They pretty much share the 'Star Trek' philosophies about life: the fact that it is wrong to interfere in the evolvement of other peoples, that to be different is not necessarily to be wrong or ugly.
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops
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