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The real revolution in the science of society, which laid the foundation of scientific sociology, was made by Marx and Engels. Marx put an end to the view of society being a mechanical aggregation of individuals which allows of all sorts of modification at the will of the authorities and which emerges and changes casually, and was the first to put sociology on a scientific basis by establishing the concept of the economic formation of society as the sum-total of given production relations, by establishing the fact that the development of such formations is a process of natural history.

Marx stressed that people were at once actors and authors of their world-historical drama, and that the structure of society coincided in that sense with the structure of their joint, combined activity.

The understanding of society as a whole, law-governed, innerly connected system entails the principle of objective scientific investigation.

V. Translate the text in writing:

HERBERT SPENCERS SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTION

1. Spencer and His Time

The birth of sociology in England is linked with the name of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). In the middle of the nineteenth century, when his scientific activity was beginning, British capitalism was at the zenith of its prosperity. England, having completed the industrial revolution before all other countries, had far outstripped them in level of economic development. In the eyes of mid-century world opinion, she was the symbol of prosperity and liberalism. In spite of acute class contradictions, the British middle classes were proud of the progress made, and

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looked to the future with confidence. That mood had its effect, as well, on Spencer's social philosophy.

Spencer worked from 1837 to 1841 as an engineer and technician on a railway, simultaneously studying mathematics and natural sciences. Then, for several years, he contributed to the press. In 1853, having inherited a tidy legacy from an uncle, he resigned his post and began the modest life of an independent scientist and publicist. Even after he had attained fame, he refused all official honours.

In the early 1860s Spencer made a tremendous effort to create a system of synthetic philosophy that would unite all the theoretical sciences of the time. This work included ten volumes, consisting of five separate titles: First Principles (1862),

Principles of Biology (1864,1867), Principles of Psychology (18701872); Principles of Sociology ( 1876, 1882, 1896), which was anticipated in 1873 in an independent book The Study of Sociology, and Principles of Ethics (1892, 1893).

What were the sources of his ideas?

In his youth he was not interested in philosophy; later he did not read philosophical and psychological books, preferring to derive the necessary information from conversations with friends and popular editions. According to his secretary, there was not a single book by Hobbes, Locke, Hume, or Kant in his library. His knowledge of history, too, was very weak.

Spencer borrowed much more from the natural sciences, especially from those parts in which the idea of development was being born or worked out. When Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1858, Spencer warmly welcomed it. Darwin in turn highly valued Spencer's theory of evolution, acknowledged its influence, and even placed Spencer intellectually above himself. Yet, in spite of this respect and influence. Spencer's evolutionism was more Lamarckian than Darwinian.

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A second line of influence, perceived and acknowledged by Spencer himself, was the works of English economists of the eighteenth century, especially those of Malthus and Adam Smith.

Finally, the ideas of the English Utilitarians, in particular of Bentham, whose individualism Spencer intensified even more, had quite a clear influence on him. He had already, in his first book Social Statics (1851), formulated a «law of equal freedom», according to which «every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty by every other man». Freedom of individual actions, competition and survival of the fittest were all that were needed for the development of society.

Spencer's attitude to Comte presents special interest. His own ideas had already been formed in the main when he became acquainted with Comte's works. On the whole he highly appreciated Comte, ascribing to him «the credit of having set forth with comparative definiteness, the connexion between the

Science of Life and the Science of Society».

Later, however, there began to be serious disagreements. Spencer was, first of all, much more naturalistic than Comte. Spencer rejected the idea of uniform, linear progress, in the light of which the different forms of society presented by savage and civilised races all over the globe, are but different stages in the evolution of one form. In his view the truth was that social types, like types of individual organisms, do not form a series, but are classifiable only in divergent groups.

Finally, Spencer posed the question of the relation of the individual and the social whole quite differently to Comte.

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VI. Translate the text in writing:

THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY

Spencer did not provide a developed, formal definition of sociology or of its relation to other social sciences. But in The Study of Sociology he paid much attention to demonstrating the possibility of its existence as a science. This possibility depended on the existence (1) of a universal law of «natural causality» which operated in society to the same extent as in nature, and (2) of a regular connection of the elements and structure of any phenomenon. By examining in detail the objective and subjective difficulties (including class prejudices) of shaping sociology as a science. Spencer anticipated a number of the theses of the future sociology of knowledge.

The most complicated methodological task for him was to demarcate sociology from history. When studying the laws of the development of society, sociology is, in spirit, a historical science. But in Spencer's opinion, it was related to traditional, narrative, descriptive history in the same way as anthropology to biography. While biography recorded all the chance circumstances in a human life, anthropology studied the state and conditions of the development of the organism. In the same way sociology, even though it rested on historical facts, was closer methodologically to biology.

In contrast to Comte, Spencer not only set out his understanding of the subject-matter and tasks of sociology but also, in fact, realised the principles he proclaimed. His Principles of Sociology was essentially the first attempt to construct an integral sociological system on ethnographic material. Under the heading «The Data of Sociology» he tried to reconstruct theoretically the physical, emotional, intellectual, and especially the religious life of primitive man, and to bring

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out the origin of his main ideas and notions. Later, as «the inductions of sociology», which consisted in a kind of general theory of society, he analysed the concepts of society, social growth, social structure, social functions, various systems and organs of social life. In the second volume of Principles of Sociology he examined the evolution of domestic relations (primitive sexual relations, forms of the family, the position of women and children), ritual institutions (including customs), political institutions. His sociology was thus an all-embracing science that included anthropology, ethnography, and a general theory of historical development.

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

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regarded this theory, which he had already developed in

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 main attribute

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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 character requiring a radical breaking up of the social structure. Whenever morality lagged behind the real conditions of

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society, it was only necessary, he considered, to bring it into accord with the changed structure, and no more.

The idea of the determination of morality by a stable social structure led Durkheim to moral relativism. If all the forms of morality were conditioned identically by the existing structure, they were identically legitimate and there were no objective criteria for recognising the superiority of any one of them.

Underlying a social crisis, which (he considered) was mainly of a moral nature, was a change in the character and content of the collective consciousness. A rapid change of standards and values entailed a loss of past discipline and order in society. The morality of individualism was not yet established as the main social value and content of the collective conscience. The organic solidarity of modern society did not exclude a lack of rules of behaviour, and lack of standards. Modern society was therefore put into moral disorder and experienced social strife. The way out of the crisis was to strengthen moral regulation.

In Durkheim's conception the state, which thinks and acts for all the rest of society, was the main agency fulfilling the function of «collective mind» and defender of collective interests. He treated the role of the state in the spirit of liberalism, but foresaw the possibility of an excessive strengthening and hypertrophy of its functions at the expense of the individual's interests. The individual should be defended against extreme state control by «secondary» or intermediate social groups (religious, production, etc.). In line with that Durkheim put forward the idea of special, particular moral codes regulating the behaviour of individuals as members of corresponding social groups, argued the need for historical study of these codes, and developed the idea of the relativity of the moral requirements accepted in various professional circles. At the same time he called for the establishing of a rigid hierarchy of moral rules according to their social importance. Family, professional,

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and civil morality shaped the hierarchical structure, at whose pinnacle were the universal values and ideas embodied in the state. Durkheim reproduced the Comtean idea of the state as an agency of universal reconciliation and moral regulation of the interests of all the members of society, irrespective of the social and class content of those interests.

The conception of an unconditional hierarchy of moral standards had a formal character and was aimed at maintaining stability of the social order.

In Durkheim's view a person's moral behaviour had three main, inherent features: a sense of discipline, membership of a group, and autonomy. He ascribed rather more significance to moral discipline and control, in essence equating discipline and morality. Only a human being was capable of consciously following discipline and only through that did freedom become possible. The social essence of morality was embodied in the feature of «group membership», and the idea of conscious, voluntary observance of social prescriptions in «autonomy».

Durkheim connected his interpretation of the social functions of morality directly with the theory of education. The aim of education and upbringing was to mould a social being, to develop those qualities and properties of a child's personality that society needed. It was the business of education to transform the egoistic, unsocial creature that a child was initially, by the most effective means, into another being, capable of leading a moral and social life.

His treatment of the moral problems of modern times was based on his anthropological theory, and the conception of the duality of human nature, the conception of Homo duplex.

Man's social nature, created through education (standards, values, ideals) was contradicted by his biological nature (capabilities, biological functions, impulses, and passions). That made for incessant inner disquiet, and a sense of tension and alarm. Only society's controlling activity

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restrained man's biological nature and his passions and appetites, and put them into a certain context. When society relaxed its control over the individual, rose a state of the disintegration of society and the individual. In that social state there was no firm moral control of individual behaviour, and a kind of moral vacuum was created in which the old standards and values no longer played their role, and new ones had not yet been confirmed. This state opposed the moral order, regulation, and control that characterised the normal, «healthy» state of society.

In his The Division of Labor Durkheim considered anomy from the aspect of social structure, explaining it by lack of co-ordination of social functions from the growth and development of society. In Suicide he treated anomy as a moral crisis in which the system of normative control of individual needs and passions was disrupted through social upheavals, which led to loss of person balance, and the feeling of belonging to a group, and loss of discipline and social solidarity. Deviant behaviour was also a consequence of that.

Durkheim believed, in Utopian fashion, that individual and social needs could be consciously regulated, and kept within the context of limitations dictated by the re social possibilities, while preserving capitalist social relations. That would prevent the rise of tension, spiritual crisis, feelings of disappointment and distress, and consequently of deviant behaviour.

In developing the problem of the social essence morality, Durkheim expressed many true ideas. His recognition of social conditions as decisive for the genesis of morality was positive; so, too, was his analysis of the functional consequences of moral rules for society, and his recognition of their socio-cultural inconstancy, on the one hand, and universality, on the other.

The sociological interpretation of morality was very fruitful in principle, but Durkheim's conception was too