Sociology

SOCIOLOGY. - The term s. was used for the first time by A. Comte (Cours de philos. posit., IV, lesson 47, Paris 1839, p. 252) to indicate the positive study of the laws of social phenomena.

I. EMPIRICAL OR DESCRIPTIVE SOCIOLOGY

The study of social phenomenology is already present among the Greco-Roman historians and philosophers, not only as a comparative observation of human customs, but also as an ascertainment of phenomenal constants and of the social conditioning of human activity.

If Herodotus, still implicated in mythical considerations, did not arrive — despite his prescient ethnological observations — at the concept of social laws, these were identified by Thucydides, who, in the light of the general law of power, attempted an explanation of the origin and development of the Peloponnesian War (cf. W. Jaeger, Paideia, trans. by L. Emery, 2nd ed., Florence 1943, p. 559 ff.). In Plato too one can note "an effort to treat economic and social facts scientifically" (L. Robin, Platon et la science sociale, in La pensée hellén. dès orig. à Epicure, Paris 1942, p. 229); but it is Aristotle who makes the positive study of social matter an essential element of his philosophical-political conception: not only did he in fact compile the collection of 158 Greek constitutions, but in the Politics he studied the morphology (II, IV, VI), the dynamism and the pathology (I, V) of constitutions in the light of social determinants of an ethical, psychological, economic and environmental character (cf. W. D. Ross, Aristotele, trans. by A. Spinelli, Bari 1946, p. 390 ff.).

In the modern era the impulse to the study of social phenomenology came from the great geographical discoveries, which aroused interest in the problem of civilization and permitted the scientific use of the comparative method. Above all, the rapid demographic, economic and scientific development of the 19th century contributed to it, determining a vast and complex social problematic and consequently the autonomous rise of innumerable social sciences and at the same time the necessity of a science that would study the social fact in its unitary essentiality. This social science was called by the Saint-Simonians the "new science" and by Comte "social physics" first, and "sociology" afterward. But the positivist and naturalistic mentality that was at the basis of the rise of sociology long prevented it from establishing itself in its scientific value as an inductive search for the laws of the social fact as such, although from the first half of the 19th century the methodology of such research had already been identified, that is, besides the application of the comparative method, that of the statistical method (J. Quételet, Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés en Essai de physique sociale, Paris 1835) and that of the method of monographs and inquiries (F. Le Play, Les ouvriers européens, ibid. 1855). For Comte sociology is the general and supreme science, having as its object social phenomena as an indivisible whole, with the aim of establishing the laws of specific human nature as it expresses itself in society (Système de polit. posit., ibid. 1851-54): he denies all scientific value to the particular social sciences since they distinguish an indivisible whole, and therefore wants them to be completely absorbed by sociology (Cours de philos. posit., V, ibid. 1852, p. 271). Spencer, on the other hand, maintains the necessity of the social sciences in order to arrive, through them, at a higher synthesis, that is, at sociology, which in itself "integrally assimilates the vast heterogeneous aggregate," giving it a unitary meaning (Principles of sociology, I, New York 1882, p. 462). Of the same opinion is Small, who defines sociology as "an attempt to integrate and generalize all knowledge, with reference to the different influences that act upon human associations" (General sociology, Chicago 1905, p. 7). F. H. Giddings, on the other hand, makes sociology a basic science, whose specific aim is to study "the nature of the socius, his habits and his activities" (Elements of sociology, New York 1898, p. 10). All these conceptions lead to a sociological absolutism, in which sociology, as a positive science, comes to replace philosophical interpretation and to represent the explanatory meaning of all human phenomenology: thus one arrives at a veritable sociologism, which finds its maximum expression in the sociological school of E. Durkheim (Division du travail, Paris 1893; Les règles de la méthode sociologique, ibid. 1895).

In opposition to this exaggerated pre-eminence of sociology, J. Stuart Mill (v.) denies the necessity and the very possibility of sociology as a special science (A system of logic, New York 1934, p. 547 ff.), and many moderns stop at a wholly empirical position, which considers sociology more as a method of research or a "sociological spirit" than as a true and proper science distinct from the many social sciences (cf. J. Leclercq, Introduction à la s., Louvain 1948, p. 199). Certainly empirical sociology, like every science concerning human activity, cannot be considered a perfect science, inasmuch as it is not capable of arriving at an interpretation of social phenomenology and at a certainty comparable to that of the natural sciences. But the problem that arises is whether sociology has an object of research of its own that distinguishes it from the other social sciences: the majority of contemporary sociologists, especially in the United States of America, affirm that it does, without any longer claiming to give it a particular pre-eminence over the others (H. E. Barnes-H. Becker, Social thought from lore to science, I, New York 1938, p. x). The Dictionary of sociology (ibid. 1944, p. 302) considers as the proper object of sociology "the phenomena that arise from the group relations of human beings" or also "man and his human environment in their mutual relations." The task of empirical or descriptive sociology is the study of that complex social conditioning in which all human activity must concretize itself, both in its totality and in its particular aspects. In this way it makes use of all the data of the various social sciences, and at the same time reconsiders them all from its own point of view, determining an intimate interdependence of the greatest value for the adequate knowledge of all social phenomenology. Avoiding every philosophical postulate and every attempt to arrive at antiscientific interpretations or generalizations, empirical sociology must remain on the plane of systematic observations and methodical verifications of phenomenal hypotheses, in order to be able to establish the laws of social conditioning.

II. RATIONAL SOCIOLOGY

The interpretation of social concreteness cannot be founded on anything but hypotheses taken from philosophy, which alone, in establishing the nature of man and of his activity, can comprehend the whole of social phenomenology in its intimate human meaning. Positivism (v.), which claimed to replace philosophy with empirical sociology as a positive science interpreting society and the whole of human life, did nothing but apply philosophical presuppositions to a more or less valid scientific investigation.

The rise of rational sociology is intimately connected with the formation in the 18th century of the philosophy of history (v.) and of the problematics of the origin of civilization and of progress. G. B. Vico (v.), who can be considered its first representative, indicated its nature, observing that "both the philosophers have failed by half who did not confirm their reasonings with the authority of the philologists, and the philologists who did not care to verify their authorities with the reason of the philosophers" (Scienza nuova seconda, I, sec. 2, ch. 140, Bari 1942, p. 77). While Hegelian idealism denied every possibility of sociology, reducing all historical-social reality to a moment of the rational dialectic of the Idea, Marxism, with its theories of the preponderance of the economic factor, of ideal superstructures and of class struggle, laid the foundations of a veritable sociological doctrine interpreting all social and historical facts in the light of historical and dialectical materialism (v.) (cf. F. Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats, Zurich 1884).

Naturalistic sociological theories start from a double philosophical premise: human activity bound by a natural determinism; and society conceived either atomistically as the resultant of individual energies, or realistically as a totality anterior to individuals. Naturalistic conceptions, whether those founded on nominalist atomism or on totalitarian realism, are concerned to determine the predominant natural factors, with which to explain the whole of social phenomenology not only on the morphological plane, but also on the dynamic one. Naturalistic sociologists, in conformity with the philosophers of history, in the 19th century and the early 20th, sought to establish the laws of an evolutionary progress in a straight, constant, uniform and universal line (cf. P. T. Sorokin, Social and cultural dynamics, I, New York 1937, ch. 4); in the course of the 20th century, however, rejecting the linear theory, they have become increasingly interested in studying the processes of social transformation, in order to establish the laws of their constants, of their varieties, of their cyclical repetitions. The representatives of the physico-mechanical or dynamic school (E. Solvay, W. Ostwald, W. Bekhterev) and of the geographical school (W. S. Jevons, H. L. Moore) start from cosmo-social factors; those of the biological schools (E. G. Conklin, F. Galton, K. Pearson, H. S. Chamberlain, C. Lombroso) have recourse, in order to establish the bio-social determining factor, to the physiological laws of evolution (v.), natural selection or adaptation, of heredity, of race; those of the innumerable psychological schools (v. SOCIETÀ) explain the psycho-social factor through the various theories of instincts, sentiments, desires, attitudes, behaviors, reactions, imitation, etc.; those finally of the properly sociological school (Durkheim) aim to establish the specifically and exclusively social factor in the laws of solidarity (v.) and in the mechanism of the collective consciousness.

Rightly W. Dilthey (Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, Leipzig 1883) opposed positivist sociology, affirming that the sciences of the spirit cannot be treated on the same footing as the sciences of nature. To this end he had recourse to inner experience (Erlebnis), rejecting every attraction deriving from the brute analysis of facts, since only vital intuition can give the intimate sense of historical-social reality: the study of history and of society must be accomplished through categories by which the individual becomes the interpreter of the reality vitally united to him (Lebensseinheit). From these principles there developed, in opposition to naturalism, but often in hybrid confusion with it, German sociology. F. Tönnies (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1887) attempts to found a "pure sociology," having as its object social bonds (Verbundenheiten), according to the two fundamental categories (op. cit., 2nd ed., ibid. 1912) of "community" and "society," derived from the psychological experience of the forms of the human will, spontaneous or vital and reflected or rational (cf. J. Leif, La sociologie de Tönnies, Paris 1946). G. Simmel is the initiator of purely "formal" sociology (Sociologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, Leipzig 1908); he, leaving to the social sciences and to empirical sociology the study of social "content," intends solely to devote himself to social "forms," resulting from the possible interindividual relations, determined by psychological analysis (Le problème de la sociologie, in Rev. métap. 2 [1894], p. 497). Max Weber, linking himself more closely to Dilthey and to Rickert, conceives the social fact as essentially historical, and therefore comprehensible only through subjective intuition: he founds "interpretive sociology" (verstehende Soziologie), whose task is to bring out the "Idealtypus," establishing a "Zweckrationales Schema," which permits reaching the subjectively thought meaning of social forms, and therefore the inner motive of all social acts (Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozialund Wirtschaftsgesch., Tübingen 1924). In O. Spann (Gesellschaftslehre, Leipzig 1914; Der wahre Staat, ibid. 1921) sociology rises to a veritable metaphysics of the Platonic type. Also O. Spengler (Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Munich 1918-22) seems to give society, understood as culture, a metaphysical meaning, to which he strangely links that of a living body with its vital parabola, making of sociology a metaphysical novel with a pessimistic background. Historicist sociology is developed above all by A. Weber (Kulturgesch. und Kultursoziologie, Leiden 1935), who views the whole historical-social process according to the fundamental concepts of society, civilization and culture; and by K. Mannheim (Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbaus, ibid. 1935).

Much more important is phenomenological sociology, which has its greatest representatives in Max Scheler (Versuche zu einer Soz. des Wissens, Munich 1924; Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, Leipzig 1926), A. Vierkant (Gesellschaftslehre, 2nd ed., Stuttgart 1928), Th. Litt (Individuum und Gemeinschaft, 3rd ed., Leipzig 1926). In order to exclude the danger of totalitarianism into which many representatives of German sociology have fallen, G. Gurvitch elaborates the doctrine of "social pluralism," considering sociology as the expression of various fixed and immutable social forms, which, variously linking together, form the social complex amalgamated in the unity of "social control" (various authors, Le contrôle social, in La sociologie au XXe siècle, I, Paris 1947, p. 271 ff.).

All these sociological theories, founded on formal categories, on abstract forms of relations, on pure phenomenological analysis of consciousness, cannot interpret the concrete reality of society, but only construct arbitrary hypotheses. Rational sociology cannot be founded on anything but hypotheses derived from the metaphysics of the human person. For Christian sociologists, therefore, it must be founded on the consideration that all social activity, including that proper to the social complex, is essentially a perennial expression of individual rationality and freedom, which, though conditioned by biological, physical, psychological and sociological natural laws, asserts itself in social "collaboration," for the realization of its eternal end through the conquest of finite goods.

The object of rational s. is the positive study of society in concreto, in its immanent meaning of historical processuality, with the aim of establishing the laws that determine its formation and its development. Its purpose is not to give value judgments, but to interpret historical-social concreteness. Nevertheless, through the verification of hypotheses and the determination of social laws, it permits the full understanding of the social nature of man and therefore the subsequent formulation of value judgments, which will become criteria of practical activity through philosophy and social politics. L. Sturzo, linking back to the Vichian position (G. Marchello, Storicismo e spiritualismo, in Riv. intern. di scienze sociali, 22 [1950], fasc. 1), attempts to establish on these principles a historicist s., applying the historicist method to the positive study of society in concreto (La società: sua natura e sue leggi, Bergamo 1949, p. 28).

He also defends the necessity of a s. of the supernatural, insofar as only with theological hypotheses can an adequate interpretation be given to the social concreteness in which the supernatural life of individuals and of the Church operates (cf. La vera vita, Rome 1947).

Contemporary thought, despite the negative attitude of idealism and relativism and the justified diffidence of the majority of spiritualist philosophers, feels the necessity of arriving at an exact formulation of rational s., as a positive science distinct from descriptive s. and from social philosophy.

Tullio Piacentini