1. Brief biographical information, main works.

Georg Simmel (03/01/1858 - 09/26/1918) - German idealist philosopher and sociologist, founder of formal sociology. Born in Berlin on March 1, 1858. Graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Berlin. From 1901 to 1914 he was a professor at the University of Berlin. Unable to work and teach effectively in Germany, he left for France, where, starting in 1914, he taught at the University of Strasbourg as a professor. Georg Simmel died in Strasbourg on September 26, 1918. The early period, marked by the influence of G. Spencer and C. Darwin (biological-utilitarian justification of ethics and theory of knowledge: morality and truth as a kind of instinctive expediency), is replaced in the 1900s. the influence of the ideas of I. Kant, especially his apriorism. Subsequently, Simmel became one of the most significant representatives of the “philosophy of life”, developing mainly the problems of the philosophy of culture.

Main works:

· Social differentiation. Sociological and Psychological Studies (1890)

· Problems of the philosophy of history (1892-1893)

· Philosophy of Money (1900)

· Religion (1906)

· Sociology. A Study of the Forms of Socialization (1908)

· Philosophy of Culture (1911)

· Fundamental Questions of Sociology (1917)

Basic concepts developed by G. Simmel: Methodological relativism, geometric research method, interaction, formal sociology, methods of understanding (by analogy, identification of common features, typification, study of life practices in space and time), philosophical sociology, historical sociology, form, content. Social differentiation, social interaction, capitalist society.

2. Research methodology.

Simmel introduced a fundamentally new methodology for sociological research - methodological relativism. Methodological relativism opposed objectivist naturalistic positivism and made it possible to identify the wealth of individual characteristics of the internal microworld.

Methodological relativism (“relative”). Simmel believed that the researcher does not learn the objective characteristics of society, but the reflected ideas of people about the image of the social world, expressed through intelligence, ideas, feelings, motives of activity, reflected in internalized values, knowledge that are the result of life experience, status, social environment, etc. factors. All this motivates a person to social action and determines the nature of interaction with other people. All knowledge about individuals and society relatively correct (not objective).

Simmel's methodology also relies on:

1) Formal sociology– derivation of generalizing (ideal) forms of social interaction, their typology. Formal sociology studies the forms of socialization that exist in any historically known society, relatively stable and repeating forms of interhuman interactions. Considers people's actions relatively. Central to Simmel's teachings was the concept of form. For him, form acted as a universal way of embodying and realizing content, which represented historically determined motives, goals, and motivations for human interactions.

“In any existing social phenomenon, content and social form form the central reality; a social form cannot acquire an existence detached from all content, just as a spatial form cannot exist without matter, the form of which it is. In fact, all these are inseparable elements of all social existence and existence; interest, purpose, motive and form or nature of interaction between individuals, through which or in the image of which this content becomes social reality.”

The problem of form and content worried Simmel.

Simmel paid much attention to methodological problems of sociological knowledge, that is, issues related to the substantiation of the truth of sociological knowledge. As a specific theory of knowledge, Simmel featured the theory of historical understanding.

His research also includes functional analysis interactions of individuals, evolutionary analysis development of society, rational analysis(the desire to use the principle of rationalism in the study of capitalism and the main categories - intelligence and money). People primarily interact on an emotional basis, but there is a trend toward increasing rationality. Simmel uses and dialectical method: studies social reality in the dialectical contradiction of social and cultural processes in society.

3. Methods of research and understanding.

1) Geometric method of studying social phenomena aims to study the social interaction of people. Method of social geometry. Consists of four geometric techniques: - study of social space: social interaction has a spatial form, the boundaries of public education and influences the features of social interaction;

Taking into account distance: the nature of value is relative depending on its position in social space. The further away the value is, the more valuable it is. Value has distance limits. If a value is everyday, its significance is lost, just as an inaccessible value is devalued;

Identification of number, size: take into account the number of participants in social interaction. Small group – dyads, triads; the laws of interaction within a group depend on the size of the group;

Definition of social time: it reflects the nature of the flow of social interaction over time (synchronous, diachronic), the speed of flow.

2) Method of interpretation (understanding) of social phenomena and the meanings of the participants in the interaction ( method of understanding).

For Simmel, understanding the other is achieved by different methods:

· Similarly

based on personal experience

· highlighting common signs of experience

· identifying the degree of awareness by the individual of social action

· typification of social action: correlation of the individual’s personal subjective experience with social values

· studying the life practices of participants in interaction in order to create a more complete image of a person based on life practices in space and time, reflecting his individuality, on the one hand, and involvement in a certain social type

3) Method of sociological imagination. Allows you to immerse yourself in the idea of ​​the spiritual, inner world of the individual, thus catching what is not said by the individual himself.

4. Tasks of sociology.

· Carry out spatio-temporal correlation of social interaction using the principle of dualism;

· Study social interaction in all contradictions and opposites;

· Explore the evolutionary development of society;

· Develop fundamental generalizing concepts and terms;

· Study types of social behavior of people

· Identify forms of social interaction between people.

5. Object of sociology.

Object of sociology(according to Simmel) - the study of social interaction (interaction) at the macro and micro levels. Those. at the group and societal level. Simmel considered the concept of interaction to be the main “cell” of society. He wrote:

“Society in general is the interaction of individuals. Interaction always develops as a result of certain drives or for the sake of certain goals. Erotic instincts, business interest, religious impulses, defense or attack, play or entrepreneurship, the desire to help, learn, as well as many other motives encourage a person to act for another, to combine or harmonize internal states.. These mutual influences mean that from individual carriers of motivational impulses and goals, a unity is formed - society.”

“Everything that we call an object in general is a complex of definitions and relations, each of which, revealed on a variety of objects, can become the object of a special science. Sociology, as a special science, could find its special object in the fact that it would draw a new line through facts that are in themselves well known. In relation to them, the concept that would reveal something in general for all these facts in their side facing its line, and would form a methodological-scientific unity from them, has not yet revealed its effectiveness.”

6. The concept of sociality: interaction.

The primary source element that continuously creates sociality is social interaction or interaction. Simmel was the first to introduce the concept interactions, which means specific direct social interaction in which common meanings and meanings are shared by all its participants through language, gestures and other symbols.

Features of social interaction: - it is immediate, concrete, real (and not proposed)

It is symbolic

The interaction has a certain meaning understood by the participants. Simmel says that sociality begins like wheat in people's heads.

Meaning and values ​​must be common and shared by the participants in the interaction

Fundamentally important: sociality (socialization) appears when the interaction of two or more individuals begins

Simmel draws attention to the reaction of the other as the reason stimulating the behavior of the subject, i.e. attention is focused on the interaction of interconnected and interdependent social actions of at least two subjects based on the common meanings shared by them.

The action of one individual is both the cause and consequence of the action of another. A chain of social interaction is created from the following elements:

Stimulus - meaning

Interaction - understanding

Reaction - response action

Main Research Question consists in the desire to understand the meanings and meanings of social actions; Carry out spatio-temporal correlation of social interaction using the principle of dualism; Study social interaction in all contradictions and opposites; Explore the evolutionary development of society; Develop fundamental generalizing concepts and terms; Study types of social behavior of people; Identify forms of social interaction between people.

7. Subject and structure of sociology.

Subject of research are forms of social interaction, typology of social behavior.

The initial problem from which Simmel begins his sociological constructions is the problem of defining the subject of sociology. As Simmel believed, sociology should assert its right to exist not through the choice of a special subject, not “occupied” by other sciences, but as a method. Sociology, according to Simmel, is not a science, “having its own content, since it does not find an object for itself that has not been studied by any of the social sciences. Hence, since sociology cannot define its subject by simply isolating certain phenomena of social life, it must define it methodologically, finding a specific point of view. This specific point of view is that sociology should study not the content, but the forms of public (social) life, that which is common to all social phenomena.”

Structure of sociology consists of three levels:

Philosophical sociology. Its subject is pure sociology, the development of fundamental ideas, generalizing concepts and terms, the development of the sociological theory of knowledge;

Historical sociology. Its subject of study is the study of the development of society based on the laws of differentiation and integration;

Formal sociology. The subject of study is forms of social interaction, typology of social behavior.

8. Forms of social interaction.

Simmel draws attention to two aspects of social interaction: form and content.Form– a universal way of social interaction that can be filled with different content. Content– interests, goals, motives of interacting subjects. Social meaning is born in people's heads. Without meaning there is no social life.

The concept of form is the central category of formal sociology. Form is more important than content, because... allows us to identify certain pure forms of social interaction. In any social groups, with the most dissimilar goals and interests, interaction occurs in the same forms.

Types of interaction, constantly repeating, turn into universal patterns of behavior that are unchangeable. Simmel deduced the following forms of social interaction between people:

· Dominance

· Rivalry

· Free communication

· Secrecy

· Submission

· Religiosity

· Competition

· Imitation

· Formation of the party

Division of labor

· Representative office

Simmel identified the following social ideal types of people:

· Coquette

· A prostitute

Aristocrat

· Socialite

9. Society and the individual.

Simmel views society from two perspectives:

1. Firstly, society, as the sociologist emphasizes: “a complex of socialized individuals”, “socially formed human material”

2. Secondly, it represents the sum of those forms of relations thanks to which society is formed from individuals in the above sense of the word.

Society is constantly accompanied by interaction. Simmel associated the term “socialization” with society.

Simmel substantiated a new theoretical and methodological approach to the study of society. His methodology - formal relativism - is directed against the positivism of Comte and the naturalism of Spencer, the social realism of Durkheim and the sociological nominalism of Weber. Formal relativism allows us to understand society as the result of the interaction of individuals and social groups. Society- an objective reality that exists outside of any phenomenon and at every given sociological moment. Actually, “society” in itself is such an existence with another, for another, against another, where material or individual contents and interests, thanks to drive or purpose, acquire or retain form.

Individual Simmel has consciousness and will, i.e. the opportunity to make a choice of ways and means of activity. His individual can already be classified as a subject.

Society and the individual: duality of interaction. Relations between society and the individual are built on the basis of duality: the individual, possessing consciousness and will, interacts with others, in accordance with his and his own interests and goals. Simmel makes an attempt to present the relationship between society and individuals as dual: on the one hand, communication between individuals creates society, on the other hand, society, inducing individuals to specific forms of interaction, makes them socialized.

« In every person, the individual and the social stand in an invariable proportion, which only changes its form: the tighter the circle to which we surrender, the less individual freedom we have».

Interaction theory.

According to Simmel, the primary basis of society is the social interaction of individuals. Such interaction has two elements: content, consisting of interests, goals, motives, and the form of interaction between individuals.

He viewed social interaction primarily as a psychological process - a specific situation in which two individuals participate. The only thing that exists, according to Simmel, are individuals as human beings, their situations and activities. Therefore, “the existence of a society that arises through an idealized synthesis of such interactions can never be analyzed as a reality.” To understand situations and activities, according to Simmel, means to consider such situations in the unity of content and form. Thus, he laid the foundations for the idea that the sources of social life are in the heads of the participants in social interaction, from which, like wheat from the ground, the entire field of social life grows. Thus, according to Simmel, attention is concentrated on the microanalysis of specific interactions. He, unlike Weber, believed that “global social theories are impossible in sociology.” With his sociological analysis, Simmel relied primarily on the “microfoundations” of human experience, and primarily on its cultural component. Based on this, according to the sociologist, it is possible, on the one hand, to understand the individual experience of real life, and on the other, to see society as a whole mosaic fabric woven from many “fragments.” In this approach, social structures are seen as emerging from a complex process of interactions and interpersonal communications in which shared “meanings and meanings” are negotiated, established and, to a certain extent, shared by all participants in the interaction. From this vision, social interaction appears as an exchange of gestures and linguistic symbols that structure intellectual interaction in society.

Social group.

Simmel derived a number of laws of group interaction:

1) the size of a group is directly proportional to the degree of freedom of its members

2) the smaller the group, the greater the unity and cohesion against a hostile environment

3) the larger the group, the more opportunities for the manifestation of individuality and individual freedom

Simmel notes that a person is included not in one, but in several social groups (family, relatives, professional circle, etc.). The more groups a person is included in, the more developed his culture is, the more opportunities for the manifestation of freedom and individuality, the more developed the society is.

Social progress.

Simmel considers social processes to be:

The first is submission, domination, reconciliation, competition, etc.

The second category of social forms covers social types, meaning some characteristics of human qualities that do not depend on interactions between people (for example, aristocrat, poor man, coquette, merchant, woman, stranger, etc.)

The third group of social forms includes development models and characterizes social differentiation, the relationship between the group and the individual. Simmel writes that the strengthening of individuality leads to the degradation of the group (the smaller the group, the more its members become more different from each other).

Simmel characterizes fashion as one of the social processes.

“The essence of fashion is that only part of the group always follows it, while the group as a whole is on the way to it. Once the fashion is fully accepted, i.e. Once what was originally done by a few is now actually done by everyone, as has happened with certain items of clothing and forms of communication, it is no longer called fashion.”

10. Analysis of capitalist society. Intelligence. Money. General alienation.

Simmel identified the relationship between the development of intelligence and money in his work “The Philosophy of Money.” Here he gives a description of capitalist society.

In parallel with the growth of freedom and individualization based on the division of labor, intelligence develops, at the same time this contributes to the development of the monetary system; The characteristic features of capitalist society - money and intelligence, a monetary economy - are the embodiment of intellectual potential. Social progress, historical development and its content are determined by the development of intelligence and money. Happening intellectualization public life. Rationalization is associated with the development of the monetary system.

The emergence and development of money as a manifestation of increased intelligence serves, according to Simmel, as a sign of the beginning of the historical development of society, i.e. history begins with the development of capitalist society. Intelligence and Rationalization- two sides of the same coin, which is called capitalist society. The intellect builds an objective mechanistic picture of the world with merciless logic, discarding naive subjectivism in the understanding of previous eras. Money gives rise to general alienation, even the owner, thanks to money, is alienated from property, people lose their individuality, become depersonalized. The nature of money is similar to the nature of prostitution: it is also not associated with any one subject, it also easily leaves and comes to its owners.

11. Sociology of conflict.

Simmel is considered one of the founders of the sociology of conflict. He considered conflict to be immanent in the nature of society, to be general and universal, and to operate in all spheres of society. Conflict is an attribute of society; it was, is and will always be.

"Simmel's Paradox": In order to contain the conflict, it is necessary to find out the comparative strength of the conflicting parties before it begins. This helps resolve the conflict.

12. The significance of Simmel's work.

· Founded formal sociology in Germany

· Developed new theoretical and methodological principles for studying forms of human interaction

Formulated a typology of social types

· Contributed to the institutionalization of sociology as a science and academic discipline in Germany

Advantages:

The main advantage, in my opinion, of Simmel’s teachings was that he analyzes in detail the problem of the relationship between society and the individual. At the same time, considering only the latter as the true reality. As for society as such, its concept as an object of science disappears.

Consequently, sociology, according to Simmel, should place the main emphasis on the study of individuals and their interactions, which make it possible to imagine society as a whole.

Flaws:

The main drawback not only of Simmel’s teachings, but also of the entire interpretative paradigm is its depth in the microworld. This paradigm takes a person beyond the analysis of the problem of society.

For example, Simmel brings to the fore the study of social interaction (interaction) at the macro and micro levels. Those. at the group and societal level. Simmel considered the concept of interaction to be the main “cell” of society.

But for Simmel, the unit of study is no longer the individual, but the interaction of individuals. But still the study takes place at the micro level.

(1918-09-28 ) (60 years)

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2.2. History of the formation and development of Western sociology.

Subtitles

Biography

Born into a wealthy family; Simmel's parents were of Jewish origin, his father converted to Catholicism, his mother to Lutheranism, Simmel himself was baptized into Lutheranism in childhood. After graduating from the University of Berlin, he taught there for more than 20 years. Due to the anti-Semitic sentiments of his superiors, his career was not very successful. For a long time he served in the low position of privatdozent, although he enjoyed popularity among listeners and the support of scientists such as Max Weber and Heinrich Rickert. Freelance professor from , full-time employee of the provincial University of Strasbourg (1914), where he found himself isolated from the Berlin scientific community, and with the outbreak of the First World War in the same year, this university ceased activity. Shortly before the end of the war, Simmel died in Strasbourg from liver cancer.

Philosophical ideas

According to Simmel, life is a flow of experiences, but these experiences themselves are culturally and historically conditioned. As a process of continuous creative development, the life process is not subject to rational-mechanical knowledge. Only through direct experience of historical events, diverse individual forms of realization of life in culture and interpretation based on this experience of the past can one comprehend life. The historical process, according to Simmel, is subject to “fate,” in contrast to nature, in which the law of causality prevails. In this understanding of the specifics of humanitarian knowledge, Simmel is close to the methodological principles put forward by Dilthey.

Formal sociology

Pure (formal) sociology studies forms of socialization, or forms of association(German: Formen der Vergesellschaftung) that exist in any of the historically known societies. These are relatively stable and repeated forms of human-to-human interactions. Forms of sociation were abstracted by Simmel from the corresponding content to develop “strong points” of scientific analysis. Through the creation of scientifically based concepts, Simmel saw the path to the establishment of sociology as an independent science. Forms of social life are domination, subordination, competition, division of labor, formation of parties, solidarity, etc. All these forms are reproduced, filled with appropriate content, in various kinds of groups and social organizations, such as the state, religious society, family, economic association etc. Simmel believed that pure formal concepts have limited value, and the project of formal sociology itself can only be realized when these identified pure forms of social life are filled with historical content.

Basic forms of social life

1. Social processes - these include constant phenomena independent of the specific circumstances of their implementation: subordination, domination, competition, reconciliation, conflict, etc.
2. Social type (for example, cynic, poor man, aristocrat, coquette).
3. “Development models” are a universal process of expanding a group with strengthening the individuality of its members. As their numbers grow, group members become less and less similar to each other. The development of individuality is accompanied by a decrease in group cohesion and unity. Historically, it develops towards individuality due to the loss by individuals of their unique social characteristics.

• Classification of forms of social life according to the degree of their remoteness from the immediate flow of life:

1. The closest to life are spontaneous forms: exchange, personal inclination, imitation, crowd behavior, etc.
2. Somewhat further from the flow of life, that is, from social contents, stand such stable and independent forms as economic and other forms of state-legal organizations.
3. “Game” forms maintain the greatest distance from social life. These are pure forms of sociation, which are not just a mental abstraction, but forms that actually occur in social life: the “old regime,” that is, a political form that has outlived its time and does not satisfy the needs of the participating individuals; “science for science’s sake,” that is, knowledge divorced from the needs of humanity, which has ceased to be “a weapon in the struggle for existence.”

Big cities and spiritual life

The intellectualization of society and the development of the money economy is, according to Simmel, evidence of a growing gap between the forms and contents of modern society, evidence of the increasing devastation of cultural forms, accompanied by individualization and an increase in human freedom. At the same time, the reverse side of intellectualization is a decrease in the general level of mental life, and the reverse side of the development of a money economy is the alienation of the worker from the product of his labor. The devastation of cultural forms and their separation from content is most clearly manifested in large cities, which live by production for the market and make rational people free, but lonely and abandoned. Simmel’s work “Big Cities and Spiritual Life” is dedicated to big cities and the peculiarities of the inner world of their inhabitants.

Fashion philosophy

The study of fashion and its place in the development of society is one of the areas of Simmel’s work. Explaining the origins of fashion, Simmel, first of all, analyzes the tendency to imitation. He believes that the attractiveness of imitation for an individual, first of all, is that it represents the opportunity for purposeful and meaningful activity where there is nothing personal and creative. Fashion is an imitation of a model and satisfies the need for social support, leading the individual to a path that everyone follows. However, it equally satisfies the need for difference, the tendency to change, to stand out from the crowd. Thus, fashion is nothing more than one of the forms of life. According to Simmel, fashion is a product of the division of classes, where there are no classes, fashion is impossible there. Necessary social trends for establishing fashion are the need for unity, on the one hand, and isolation, on the other.

1. Brief biography of G. Simmel

Georg Simmel was born in Berlin. He graduated from a classical gymnasium and entered the University of Berlin. He received his doctorate in philosophy for his dissertation on Kant. He became a professor at universities in Berlin and Strasbourg. At universities he read logic, history of philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of art, social psychology, sociology and special courses on Kant, Schopenhauer and Darwin. The interdisciplinary nature of Simmel's lectures attracted the attention of not only students, but also representatives of the intellectual elite of Berlin.

The early period was marked by the influence of G. Spencer and C. Darwin. Simmel writes an essay “Darwinism and the Theory of Knowledge,” in which he gives a biological-utilitarian justification for ethics and the theory of knowledge; applies the principle of differentiation, characteristic of Spencerian evolutionism, as a universal tool in the analysis of development in any sphere of nature, society and culture.

Then Simmel began to look for a priori forms of social knowledge, relying on the philosophy of I. Kant. At the neo-Kantian stage of spiritual development, his focus is on values ​​and culture related to the sphere that lies beyond natural causality. It was then that “formal sociology” was born, which is designed to study not the content of individual social phenomena, but the social forms inherent in all social phenomena. He understands the activities of humanists as “transcendental form-creation.” The source of creativity is the individual with his a priori given way of seeing. During this period, Simmel wrote numerous works on Kant and created a work on the philosophy of history.

Subsequently, Simmel becomes one of the most significant representatives of the late “philosophy of life”. He writes the work “Philosophy of Money”, in which he attempts a cultural interpretation of the concept of “alienation”. In accordance with the forms of vision, various “worlds” of culture arise: religion, philosophy, science, art - each with a unique internal organization, its own unique logic. Philosophy, for example, is characterized by comprehension of the world in its integrity. The philosopher sees integrity through each specific thing , and this way of seeing can neither be confirmed nor refuted by science. Simmel speaks in this regard about different “distances of cognition.” The difference in distances determines the difference in images of the world.

An individual always lives in several worlds, and this is the source of his internal conflicts, which have deep foundations in “life.” The complex ideological evolution, breadth and dispersion of interests, and the essayistic style of most of his works make it difficult to adequately understand and evaluate the work of Georg Simmel. And, nevertheless, one can highlight the general theme of his work - the interaction of society, man and culture. He viewed society as a set of forms and systems of interaction; man - as a “social atom”, and culture - as a set of objectified forms of human consciousness. What was common to creativity was also “an idea of ​​the subject, method and tasks of sociological science.”

Simmel wrote about 200 articles and more than 30 books. Let's name a few. "Social differentiation. Sociological and psychological studies" (1890), "Problems of the philosophy of history" (1892), "Introduction to ethics" in two volumes (1893), "Philosophy of money" (1900), "Religion" (1906), " Sociology. Study of forms of socialization" (1908), "Philosophy of Culture" (1911), "Goethe" (1913), "Rembrandt" (1916), "Fundamental Issues of Sociology" (1917), "The Conflict of Modern Culture" (1918 ) .

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Classic period of development of sociology

Sociology received real development and recognition only when the basic scientific concepts were developed and formulated and the opportunity arose to create theoretical foundations for the study of social phenomena. The honor of the actual “discovery” of sociology belongs to four outstanding thinkers who lived and worked from the mid-19th to the beginning of the 20th century. These are the German scientists Karl Marx and Max Weber, the Frenchman Emile Durkheim, and the Englishman Herbert Spencer.

4.1. The works of Karl Marx. Karl Marx (1818-1883) made a significant contribution to the development of sociology. The ideological prerequisites for Marx’s work were:

Hegel's idea of ​​contradiction as a source of development of society;

The philosophy of Feuerbach, thanks to which Marx arose the concept of alienation of labor;

English political economic thought, from which Marx borrowed the understanding of labor as the main source of product value;

Ideas of utopian socialism.

One of his main achievements is rightfully considered to be the scientific analysis of his contemporary capitalist society. As a tool for such analysis, Marx used class structure of society: all individuals belong to certain social classes, the division into which occurs on the basis of ownership of the means of production and the amount of remuneration received from this ownership. Class division is based on inequality, which means that one class (the class of owners of the means of production) is in a more advantageous position than the rest, and appropriates part of the results of the labor of another class (the working class).

The struggle of the working class to change the order of distribution of the produced product leads to the achievement of an unstable equilibrium based on a temporary agreement between the exploiters and the exploited. According to Marx, exploitation cannot be reformed, it can only be destroyed by replacing class society with a classless one. Thus, Marx put forward a completely different approach to understanding society than Comte. If for Comte or Durkheim the main thing is the stabilization of society, then for Marx it is its destruction and replacement with a new, more just one. Many believe that the entire world sociology arose and was formed almost as a reaction to Marxism, as a desire to refute it by all means.

Marx advocated a revolutionary way of changing society, and all other sociologists advocated a reformist one. Marx is the founder of the so-called conflict theories, resulting from inequality, which is constantly increasing with the dominance of some classes over others. He identified contradictions and conflicts as the most important factor in social change, as a driving force in history.

K. Marx was the first to present society as a product of historical development, as a dynamically developing structure. He substantiated the emergence social inequality and analyzed social conflicts as a phenomenon necessary for social development and progress.

The main fundamental work of K. Marx is the four-volume work "Capital"(1843-1883), in which it received general development materialistic understanding of history. It proceeds from the position that the method of production, and after it the exchange of its products, constitute the basis of any social system.

4.2. ideas of Herbert Spencer. G.Spencer(1820 - 1903), outstanding English. thinker, creator of the doctrine of social evolution, made a significant contribution to the development of world sociology. The evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin had an important influence on him. Spencer is considered the founder of the school of organic analogy; he compared societies with biological organisms, and individual parts (state, church, education, etc.) with parts of the body (heart, nervous system, etc.). Each part brings some benefit to the whole and performs vital functions.

The basic law of social development, according to Spencer, is the law of survival of the fittest individuals. The work laid down by Spencer received scientific recognition. theory of social evolution. The concept of survival of the fittest applied to the social world is called social Darwinism. Spencer's concept of social Darwinism became widespread in England and the USA as a theoretical basis justifying the existence of “wild” capitalism.

John Rockefeller, an American oil magnate, echoing Spencer, noted: “The growth of big business is simply the survival of the fit... This trend in business cannot be called vicious. It is simply the result of the laws of nature."

Spencer contributed to the introduction into science and widespread dissemination of such an important sociological concept as "social institution", highlighting and describing its main varieties. Spencer was an adherent of the theory of functionalism, competing with the Marxist theory of conflict.

4.3. “understanding” sociology of M. Weber

Max Weber(1864-1920) - German economist, historian and sociologist. Being influenced by Marx and Nietzsche, Weber nevertheless developed his own sociological theory, which to this day has a decisive influence on all scientific sociological theories and on the activities of sociologists in all countries of the world.

The views of Marx and Weber differed significantly. Marx considered economic factors to be the main thing for progress and believed in the historical mission of the proletariat. Weber put the individual above all else and called it the reason for the development of society cultural values. According to Weber, only the individual has motives, goals, interests, and consciousness. Collective consciousness is more of a metaphor than a precise concept. While recognizing Marx as a great scientist, Weber does not accept the path he proposed for the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society.

Sociology, according to Weber, is "understanding", because it studies the behavior of an individual who puts a certain meaning into his actions. In this sense, Weber's views were fundamentally different from the views of Comte, Marx and Durkheim, who completely ignored statistics and the study of motives of behavior. In order to identify these motives, a sociologist, according to Weber, must mentally put himself in the place of the one he is studying and figure out why he acted this way and not otherwise, what guided him, what goals he pursued.

One of the central points of his theory was his identification of the elementary particle of individual behavior in society - social action, which is the cause and consequence of a system of complex relationships between people.

Weber introduced the concept into sociological terminology ideal type. He argued that we talk about an entrepreneur, a worker or a king as a typical (statistically average) representative of a given stratum. However, in real life, an “entrepreneur” or a “king” does not exist at all. This is an abstraction invented in order to designate entire sets of facts, people, and phenomena with one name.

Weber analyzed in detail power relations, as well as the nature and structure of organizations where these relations are most pronounced. He considered the ideal mechanism for implementing and maintaining power relations in an organization bureaucracy(from French. bureau and Greek kratos, literally means: the dominance of the office) is an artificially created apparatus for managing an organization, extremely rational, controlling and coordinating the activities of all its employees.

In the theoretical works of Max Weber, the subject of sociology as a science was not only clearly defined, but also laid the foundations for its development in both theoretical and practical terms. Thanks to the theoretical contributions of Weber, as well as his colleagues Ferdinand Tönnies and Georg Simmel, it can be argued that the German school of sociology dominated world sociology until the First World War

Georg Simmel(1868-1918) proposed his own version of the interpretation of the subject, the main method and the basic theoretical structure of sociology. The object of sociology, in his opinion, is society, which he understood as a process of social interactions and the result of these interactions. The subject area of ​​sociology, according to Simmel, is limited to the study “societies”- sustainable forms of social life that give integrity and stability to society. We are talking about such well-known forms of human society as domination, subordination, culture, division of labor, competition, conflict, morality, social control, fashion, etc.

Study of “societies”, establishing the degree of stability of “pure” forms of sociality, involves the use of the historical-comparative method. It is this method, according to Simmel, that is the main method of sociological analysis. He did not exclude other methods of sociology (including observations, surveys, experiments), he himself used them in the study of urban lifestyle, social personality types, interpersonal and other social conflicts, but regarded them as additional to comparative historical analysis.

Born into a wealthy family; Simmel's parents were of Jewish origin, his father converted to Catholicism, his mother to Lutheranism, Simmel himself was baptized into Lutheranism in childhood.

After graduating from the University of Berlin, he taught there for more than 20 years. Due to the anti-Semitic sentiments of his superiors, his career was not very successful.

w:Georg Simmelas Simmel died in 1918Source unknown, Public Domain

For a long time he served in the low position of privatdozent, although he enjoyed popularity among students and the support of such scientists as Max Weber and Heinrich Rickert.

A freelance professor since 1901, a full-time employee at the provincial University of Strasbourg (1914), where he found himself isolated from the Berlin scientific community, and with the outbreak of the First World War in the same year, this university ceased its activities.

Shortly before the end of the war, Simmel died in Strasbourg from liver cancer.

Philosophical ideas

As a philosopher, Simmel is usually classified in the academic branch of the "philosophy of life" branch, and his work also contains features of neo-Kantianism (his dissertation is on Kant).

In sociology, Simmel is the creator of the theory of social interaction. Simmel is considered one of the founders of conflictology (see also the theory of social conflict).

According to Simmel, life is a flow of experiences, but these experiences themselves are culturally and historically conditioned. As a process of continuous creative development, the life process is not subject to rational-mechanical knowledge.

Only through direct experience of historical events, diverse individual forms of realization of life in culture and interpretation based on this experience of the past can one comprehend life.

The historical process, according to Simmel, is subject to “fate”, in contrast to nature, in which the law of causality prevails. In this understanding of the specifics of humanitarian knowledge, Simmel is close to the methodological principles put forward by Dilthey.

unknown, Public Domain

Formal sociology

Pure (formal) sociology studies the forms of socialization that exist in any of the historically known societies, relatively stable and repeating forms of interhuman interactions.

Forms of social life are domination, subordination, competition, division of labor, formation of parties, solidarity, etc. All these forms are reproduced, filled with appropriate content, in various groups and social organizations, such as the state, religious society, family, economic association etc.

Simmel believed that pure formal concepts have limited value, and the F. s. project itself. only then can it be realized when these identified pure forms of social life are filled with historical content.

Basic forms of social life

1. Social processes - these include constant phenomena independent of the specific circumstances of their implementation: subordination, domination, competition, reconciliation, conflict, etc. A phenomenon such as fashion can serve as an example. Fashion presupposes both imitation and individualization of personality. A person who follows fashion simultaneously distinguishes himself from others and asserts his belonging to a certain group.
2. Social type (for example, cynic, poor man, aristocrat, coquette).
3. “Development models” are a universal process of expanding a group with strengthening the individuality of its members. As their numbers grow, group members become less and less similar to each other. The development of individuality is accompanied by a decrease in group cohesion and unity. Historically, it develops towards individuality due to the loss by individuals of their unique social characteristics.

Classification of forms of social life according to the degree of their remoteness from the immediate flow of life:

1. The closest to life are spontaneous forms: exchange, personal inclination, imitation, crowd behavior, etc.
2. Somewhat further from the flow of life, that is, from social contents, stand such stable and independent forms as economic and other forms of state-legal organizations.
3. “Game” forms maintain the greatest distance from social life. These are pure forms of sociation, which are not just a mental abstraction, but forms that actually occur in social life: the “old regime,” that is, a political form that has outlived its time and does not satisfy the needs of the participating individuals; “science for science’s sake,” that is, knowledge divorced from the needs of humanity, which has ceased to be “a weapon in the struggle for existence.”

Forms of sociation were abstracted by Simmel from the corresponding content in order to develop “strong points” of scientific analysis. Through the creation of scientifically based concepts, Simmel saw the path to the establishment of sociology as an independent science. Scientifically based concepts must first of all reflect reality, and their methodological value lies in the extent to which they contribute to the understanding and ordering of theoretically important aspects of various social processes and socio-historical life in general.