Werner Stark - The Fundamental Forms of Social Thought

The International Library of Sociology

THE FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF SOCIAL THOUGHT

Founded by KARL MANNHEIM

The International Library of Sociology

SOCIAL THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
In 22 Volumes

THE FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF SOCIAL THOUGHT

by

WERNER STARK

First published in 1962
by Routledge

Reprinted in 1998, 2000, 2002
by Routledge
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or
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First issued in paperback 2010

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

1962 Werner Stark

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

The Fundamental Forms of Social Thought
ISBN 9780415175050 (hbk)
ISBN 9780415604970 (pbk)
Social Theory and Methodology: 22 Volumes
ISBN 9780415178181
The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN 9780415178389

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

PREFACE

I N WRITING the present book, I have had three different, but related, aims in view. I have, first of all, tried to show what were, in point of fact, the fundamental forms of social thought which have, between them, dominated the past. This might be called, with a word perhaps too grand, my typological aim. I have secondly attempted to explain why these powerful doctrines have developed and constantly tended to reappear; that is to say, I have applied the explanatory method known as the sociology of knowledge to sociology itself. This might be called my analytical aim. And I have, thirdly and lastly, raised the question of the validity of the basic conceptions of social life which the history of ideas has thrown up. This might be called my critical aim, or, even better, my critical and constructive aim. My result can be briefly indicated by saying that I have found the appearance of all the decisive movements of thought entirely understandable. I should almost go so far as to say that the main schools had to appear. But, on a critical approach, I have been unable to attribute to all of them the same value. True, I have arrived at the conviction that none was without a sound intuition at its root, but in two cases out of three one-sidedness spoilt the picture of the social order which was built up on the basis of that intuition. Models were used which misrepresented social reality by exaggerating one or the other of its basic features, and the conclusion was forced on me that these two doctrines were right only when taken in conjunction, but decidedly wrong when taken in isolation. In other words, there seems to me now, after a close study of the development of social thought, to be above all a need for synthesis, and I have awarded the prize to the third theory because I found it to be a synthesis, a reconciliation of opposites, truer than they because it bears in itself both their fundamental truths. With this result, I hope to have made a contribution to the further development of the study of society in days to come. My book is both a key to the past, and a plea for the future, of the social sciences.

My thanks are due to Dr Alison Hanham for reading my manuscript and suggesting linguistic improvements. My obligations to Drs I. S. Grant, E. J. Popham, W. Montgomery Watt and J. R. Western as well as to Mr D. M. Leahy are recorded, at the appropriate places, in footnotes to the text.

W. STARK

To become kindred in spirit without being kin in bloodthat is what only man can do.

NIKOLAI GOGOL

Taras Bulba

I

INTRODUCTION1

H OWEVER WE may define society in general; whatever else it may or may not be: one thing is certain, namely that each and every social formation is at the same time a multiplicity and a unity. We cannot speak of a society unless there are before us several human beings, and unless the lives of these human beings are in some way interconnected and interrelated, i.e. constitute a unity of some kind. This primitive fact makes it obvious that there areand, indeed, that there can beonly three fundamental forms of social thought, even if these basic approaches have produced, and incarnated themselves in, a vast literature of amazing wealth and variation. A social philosopher can either maintain that a social system is a unity rather than a multiplicity, that it is one rather than many; or he can take the view that it is a multiplicity rather than a unity, that it is many rather than one; or, finally, he can try to develop a definition of social life which does justice, both to the real integration of the social order and to the real independence of the individuals comprised by it. In other words, to use a well-known clich, he can either see the wood rather than the trees; or he can see the trees rather than the wood; or he can endeavour to remember that the wood is made up of trees and that the trees between them make up a wood. Thus blandly stated, the third possibility at once appears superior to the other two; yet in the history of human thinking about social reality it has played only a modest and minor part, even though it seems now to be at long last coming into its own.