This article links the cognitive contents of the different theoretical perspectives that have emerged since World War II to their meaning-making functions, and links both to their social origins broadly understood. It views social theorists as intellectuals who try to understand the crisis of their times. In doing so, they draw not only upon the cognitive resources of earlier social theories but upon the structured traditions of cultural codes and narratives. In order to explain the new and often unnerving experiences of their changing societies, intellectuals develop binary oppositions whose constructions of sacrality and profanity allow them to place the present in relation to a simplified past and future, thus creating “history.” Social theory is also built upon changing narrative forms, genres of collective heroism, romantic individualism, tragedy, comedy, realism, and irony. The author suggests that in recent years the comic and ironic perspectives of postmodern theory have been challenged by a neo-modern perspective that is more heroic and romantic and more confident about solving the “problems of our time.”