From the earliest times, thinking about human activity, of theorizing about social life and human community has sought of understand “what” and “why” of human endeavours. From the earliest records of the Assyrians and Egyptians, the Chinese and the Greeks. There has been an effort to understand human actions. Sociology is a science that addresses these ancient concerns of how to explain human relationships in a scientific way. Thinking and theorizing emerge within a social framework and at a given time. Thoughts come from people, people who live at a particular time, in a particular place and under specific circumstances. Since all social theories were thought by social thinkers. We need to study the intellectual, social and cultural environment within which they did their thinking. One can not really establish the exact date when sociological theory began. Developing theories of social life has been going on and is still taking place. Now theories have been emerging within the social and political contexts of every epoch.
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ENLIGHTENMENT AND FRENCH REVOLUTION :
Presenting a history of Sociological theory is a difficult talk as theories are the product of intellectual social and political climate within which they were developed. In this section we will discuss Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
The Enlightenment : It is the view of many observers that the Enlightenment constitutes a critical development especially in the later development of sociology. The Enlightenment was a period of remarkable intellectual development and change in philosophical thought. A number of ideas and beliefs, some of which were related to social life were overthrown and replaced during the Enlightenment. The most prominent thinkers associated with Enlightenment were the French philosophers Charles Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778).
The thinkers associated with Enlightenment were influenced by two intellectual currents – seventeenth century philosophy and science. Seventeenth century philosophy was associated with the work of Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The emphasis was on producing grand and very abstract systems of ideas that made rational sense. The later thinkers associated with Enlightenment made effort to derive their ideas from the real world and to test them. In other words, they tried to combine empirical research with reason. The model for this was science. And we see the emergence of the application of the scientific method to social issues. Moreover, the Enlightenment thinkers wanted their ideas of least in part, to be derived from the real world. They also wanted them to be useful to the social world, especially in the critical analysis. The Enlightenment was characterized by the belief that people could comprehend and control the universe by means of reason and empirical research. The physical world was dominated by natural laws, and it was likely that the social world was also. Thus, it was upto the philosophers to use reason and research to discover these social bus. Once the philosophers understood how the social world worked, the Enlightenment thinkers could work for the creation of a better and more rational world. With an emphasis on reason, the Enlightenment philosophers were inclined to reject beliefs in traditional authority. When these thinkers examined traditional values institutions, they often found them to be irrational, that is, contrary to human nature and an obstacle to human growth and development. The mission of the philosophers of Enlightenment was to overcome these irrational systems. The most extreme form of opposition to Enlightenment ideas was French Catholic counter revolutionary philosophy, represented by the ideas of Louis de Bonald (1753 – 1821). Their reaction was against Enlightenment and the French Revolution. De Bonald was distributed by the revolutionary changes and wanted a return to the peace and harmony of the Middle Ages. In this view, God was the source of society. Reason which was so important to the Enlightenment philosophers, was seen as inferior to traditional religious beliefs. They believed that since God had created society, man should not try to change the holy creation. De Bonald opposed anything that undermined traditional institutions such as patriarchy, monarchy monogamous family and the Catholic Church. De Bonald represented an extreme form of conservative reaction. The conservatives turned away from what they considered to be the “naïve” rationalism of the Enlightenment. They regarded „tradition‟, „imagination‟, „emotionalism‟ and „religion‟ as necessary and useful components of social life. They opposed upheaval and sought to relation the existing order. They saw the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution as disruptive forces.
The theorists who were directly and positively influenced by Enlightenment thinking was Karl Marx (though he formed his early theoretical ideas in Germany) and the French classical sociological theorists. The conservatives tended to emphasis social order, an emphasis that became one of the central themes of the work of several sociological theorists. We see, sociology in general and French sociology in particular is mix of Enlightenment and counter Enlightenment (conservative) ideas.
French Revolution : The causes of French Revolution was the subject of endless debate. The French Revolution plunged Europe into a most profound crisis. From the epicentre in Paris, it sent shock waves into the furthest recesses of the continent. In 1789 there was reason to believe that the changes taking place affected people beyond France and for beyond mere politics. The revolutionaries had inherited the Enlightenments belief in the universal abstraction of man. They felt they were acting on behalf of people everywhere, pitting themselves against universal tyranny. Their most noble movement was the declaration of the Rights of Man. Beyond everyday politics, there were indications that deep forces invisible on the ordered surface of late 18th century. Europe were somehow getting out of control. One source of anxiety was technological, the appearance of power driven machines with immense destructive as well as constructive potential. The second source was social, a growing awareness of the masses, the realization that the teeming millions excluded from society, might take their fate into their own hands. The third source was intellectual, a rising concern both in literature and in philosophy with the irrational in human conduct. The French Revolution changed. The structure of society, and created new ideologies to explain its course when nothing could be adopted from the past produced the modern doctrine of nationalism, and spread it directly throughout Western Europe. It had an enormous indirect consequence upto the present. The European wars of 1792 – 1815, sparked off by the French Revolution spread both revolutionary ideas and nationalism. The French Revolution also provided the empirical origin of modern theories of revolution. Interpretations of the French Revolution have enormously varied depending upon the political position and the historical views of the writers. The relationship between Enlightenment and French Revolution is very complex while Enlightenment spread a skeptical rationalism, it did not propose the extremism or the political solutions adopted during the revolution.
IDEALS OF SAINT SIMON : Claude Henri Saint Simon (1760 – 1825) was born into an old noble family in 1760. He fought in the American Revolution and wrote to his father that when his ideas were anchored, he would achieve a scientific work useful to humanity. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, he renounced his noble titles. During the Revolutionary period he was chiefly engaged in financial dealings in national lands. He was one of the revolutions great speculators and during this time he lived lavishly. After a major quarrel with his business partner over his extravagance and reckless ventures, he turned to scientific self-education and surrounded himself with scientists and artists. He took a house opposite the Ecole Polytechnique and invited outstanding physicists and mathematicians to dinner. Then he took a house opposite the Ecole de Medicine where he studied physiology in a similar fashion. Journeys to England and Germany completed his education. The rest of his life was spent in writings amid increasing poverty. From 1803 to 1813 he was concerned primarily with the reconstruction of the intellectual realm, as a precondition for reorganizing society. In 1805 his money ran out. For a time he was a copyist in a pawn shop. For several years he lived in great poverty and fell dangerously ill. But his fortunes improved with the fall of Napoleon. He acquired a secretary in Augustin Thierry, the future historian, who was succeeded by Auguste Comte in 1817. These young men enabled the ideas of Saint Simon to acquire some coherence. With the restoration of French monarchy, he turned his attention to the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, to whom he addressed himself in a series of periodicals and pamphlets on the reorganization of society. He wrote on science, economics and politics. The capitalists and liberals, especially the financial aristocracy supported him, as he argued for the primary of industry and government non interference. However, in the publication of the third volume of the periodical L industries the constitutional monarchy and the sanctity of property were mildly criticized, his supporters deserted him. Subsequently there was a trial for subversion in which he was acquitted, but this gave him the much needed publicity. Saint Simon and Comte continued to publish further periodicals, exploring in detail the features of the emerging industrial society of the future and exhorting the industrial class, and in particular the leaders of the bourgeoisie, to bring it into being and demolish the theological feudal order of the past.
In a sudden crisis of demoralization due to lack of support for his ideas Saint Simon attempted suicide in 1823, but survived for two years. In his last years, he turned his attention to the role of religion in the industrial society and became concerned with the condition of the working class. He also quarreled with Comte. He died in 1825. Saint Simon maintained that it was possible to study the structure of society and uncover its laws. In his work, Saint Simon wrote about the necessity of creating a science of social organization. The very term organization meant organic structure. He maintained that a society like an organism was born and grew. Therefore it was necessary to understand such growth (social change) and the forces behind social stability (social order). He believed that laws exist to explain. These issues of organization and social stability. Saint Simon saw historical development as a result of increasing use of scientific knowledge, each stage of development embodied some degree of rationality. He regarded development and progress as the struggle of opposing forces. When the social system comes into being, it continues till it reaches maturity, than the system beings to decline. The feudal system for example, reached its maturity in the tenth century and from that time till the end of the Revolution showed a decline, leading to the emergence of the new social system. The new organic society would be built exclusively on positive principles. Saint Simon viewed the historical transformation of European society as the result of forces that were maturing in the womb of the older order. The growth of science and the emergence of an industrial commercial bourgeoisie, the protestant ethic and the critical philosophical movement to the Enlightenment had all contributed to undermine the Catholic Church and the unity of the medieval society. The philosophers with their insistence on the principles of equality and natural rights had led to the destruction of the old society, but the same principles did not give any guidance to the successful reconstructor of the new society. The new social order rests on the unity in the realm of thought of intellectual principles.
According to Saint Simon human knowledge and human society passed through three stages in its development principles from the theological stage of the medieval period to the metaphysical stage of the eighteenth century and finally to the scientific stage. In the modern society, scientific knowledge would replace religious dogmas. Scientists and industrialists would replace clergy and nobility. The new elite will bring about change with the application of scientific principles to all natural and human phenomena. Saint Simon chose to call the scientists, the spiritual elite, and the industrialists the temporal elite‟. Ideologically, Saint Simon envisioned the transformation of society, an international community. Therefore, he was in favour of technological growth and industrialization. He believed that all societies would unite, forming a world wide community. He felt that the ideas of science should be introduced to the masses through artists and their works. Saint Simon had great faith in the power of reason to change the world. He viewed the new elements of his age potentially as part of an organic whole. The most lasting and important influence of Saint Simon lies with his former pupil and one time personal secretary Auguste Comte. Comte successfully transformed many of Saint Simon‟s ideal and formulated them into a new discipline called sociology.
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