VII. Translate the text in writing:

PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIOLOGY. THE THEORY OF UNDERSTANDING

Simmel demonstrated the idea of pure sociology most fully and consistently in his analysis of free sociability. But in it he also exhausted this idea by demonstrating its limits. Pure sociology, he considered, was only possible along with a philosophical sociology that set theoretical-cognitive and socio-philosophical guideposts for pure sociology, endowing it with terms and conditions, fundamental ideas, and premisses unrelated to experi­ence and the direct object of knowledge, and having no place within them.

Simmel posed the problems of the connection of sociology and philosophy, and of its philosophical foundation, as problems (a) of the development of a sociological theory of knowledge and (b) the creation of a historical sociology or, as he himself put it, a social metaphysics.

He considered the theory of historical understanding a specific theory of knowledge of social phenomena. He regarded this theory, which he had already developed in

466 | English for Psychologists and Sociologists

Problems of the Philosophy of History, as a philosophical methodology of cognition that served as a guide for applying general scientific methods during sociological analysis. In addition, understanding served as the connecting link between pure or formal sociology and social philosophy. It was a means of historical comprehension of the data and facts accessible to formal sociology.

Essentially hypothetical formations that are perceived and discussed as historical truths arise, Simmel wrote, only in the mental activity of the researcher, who orders the facts in accordance with the prevailing ideas and values, puts them into combinations from which arise solutions of problems that could not even have been posed if the researcher had relied only and exclusively on the initial series of experience, and only in such activity.

This «mental activity» was essentially an activity of understanding and its directing and organising-and regulating-principle was the «whole image» of the social world that figured in the image of historical sociology.

VIII. Translate the text in writing:

THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF MORALITY

Since Durkheim considered society a moral unity of individuals, he clung to the conceptual scheme of «sociologism» in his treatment of the nature, origin, and functions of morals, deducing morality from social conditions, the social milieu, and the social structure in his specific understanding.

He originally regarded morality as a system of objective rules of behaviour, the distinguishing feature of which was their compulsory character to which the individual could not help submitting. He considered duty to be the

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main attribute of morality. Doing one's duty made a person's behaviour moral. Subsequently his interest was held by the voluntary aspect of morality, and such features of it as desirability, acceptability, and the individual's personal interest in moral values (objective goods, social in their nature).

In trying to give a sociological explanation of both the origin and functioning of moral phenomena, Durkheim reinterpreted the modes of social determination of morals. In The Division of Labor he had affirmed the principle of the historical development of moral beliefs in accordance with morphological or structural factors. Later he stressed the significance of periods of mental uplift, «movement of enthusiasm», and creative and innovating periods, which left their memory in the form of ideas, ideals, and values. These ideas, were upheld and reproduced again and again through the organisation of festivals, public, religious and lay ceremonies, through preaching of all sort and dramatic productions in which people could come together and share in the same intellectual and moral life.

In any case Durkheim affirmed the social essence of morality. When stressing the sacred character of morality, he explained it by both religion and morality having society as their source and object, society which transcended the individual by its force and authority. Society demanded personal unselfishness and self-sacrifice—which were obligatory components of morality. Kant, he said, postulated God because morality was unintelligible without that hypothesis. He (Durkheim) postulated a society specifically distinct from individuals, because morality was otherwise without object and duty, without foundation.

When linking morality with the social conditions giving rise to it, Durkheim did not consider it possible to bring out and substantiate a social ideal of a revolutionary