This volume explores the work of classical social thinkers starting with the pre-sociological and proto-sociological approaches of Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Ibn Khaldun, de Tocqueville, Martineau and Hegel. Our aim here was to trace the intellectual sources that have shaped thinking about the social world before and in the immediate aftermath of modernity. The first part concludes with the chapters zooming in on the four key classical theorists who have influenced the formation of sociological thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century – Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel. In addition, we also analyse two sociological perspectives that had enormous influence for the birth of sociology as an academic discipline but have largely been ignored by the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century scholars – the elite theory (Pareto, Mosca and Michels) and the bellicist theory (Hintze, Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer).2 Although classical theory derives for the most part from Continental Europe, two key North American figures, DuBois and Mead, are also discussed.
Each chapter is intentionally structured in a similar way so that the reader can get the sense of the time, place and key structural influences that have shaped individual theorists. Thus, we explore the biographical and intellectual context of the theorists and then focus on the wider historical, social and political environment in which respective scholars have lived and worked. Each chapter also discusses the central ideas and arguments associated with a specific theoretical approach and then looks at the contemporary relevance and applications of their ideas. The chapters end with the criticisms of each perspective and we also provide lists of references for each theorist.
One of the key ambitions of this book is to contextualise sociological thinking and to do this it is paramount to situate each theoretical contribution within its social, economic, political, historical and biographical context. Since sociology is an intellectual endeavour that is continuously shaped by its own social environment, it is crucial that the knowledge we produce, use and disseminate to others is understood within this wider context in which it is forged. Unlike physics, which perhaps can advance with the use of abstract and de-contextualised knowledge, sociology is a social and historical project that can never be completely removed from the time and place in which it is created.
Notes
1 Even these three ‘non-establishment’ scholars, as will be evident in the book, were relatively privileged in their own societies.
2 On the reasons for this, mostly deliberate, neglect of these two classical perspectives, see Malešević (2010: 17–49).
References
Collins, R. (1998) The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Coser, L. A. (1971) Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Hobsbawm, E. J. and Ranger, T. O. (1983) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malešević, S. (2010) The Sociology of War and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mouzelis, N. P. (1995) Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong? Diagnosis and Remedies. London: Routledge.
I Plato and Aristotle
It may seem odd to begin a book on sociological theory as far back as ancient Greece, but what is distinctive about Western thought and rationality – the view that the world has fundamental properties and processes accessible to the human mind – finds its origins there (Rossides, 1998: 2). Given the limited development of the division of labour the Greeks did not comprehend society in a compartmentalised way as contemporary thinkers do. Although the word ‘sociology’ does not appear until the eighteenth century with Comte, the ancient Greeks provided a number of terms that we now take for granted and use in the social sciences and humanities generally. These include the word theory theóría (θεωρία), from the Greek contemplation, often contrasted with the word ‘practice’ (praxis, πρα∼ξις) – for doing. But other indispensable concepts including science, art, criticism – for judging, as in a court case, or at a theatrical performance – also derive from ancient Greece. In addition to his philosophy Plato was one of the first thinkers to reflect systematically upon political society or the polis, and on the idea of what a just society should look like. However, it was with Aristotle that a more general analysis of human association became possible especially through his discussion of koinonia, which simultaneously included the notions of association, community and society since these were not conceived as separate (Frisby and Sayer, 1986: 13–14).
However, language as a practice is always embedded in broader social practices and relations (Wittgenstein, 1968), and there were fundamental differences between the ancient Greek structure of language, thought and life and modern ways of thinking. The writings of Plato and Aristotle, two thinkers whose thought not only directly shaped subsequent philosophy, but also, indirectly, sociological thinking and theorising, are indeed deeply rooted in the social, political, economic and cultural context of their time. This shaped and served as a frame of reference for many of the questions they asked about the human condition, and their diagnoses of the problems they faced, through philosophy (philosophia, ϕιλοσοϕία), meaning ‘love of wisdom’, and the images and metaphors with which to think about humans and human societies.
Plato
Life and Intellectual Context
Some of the biographical facts concerning Plato’s life are based on disputed evidence and much of what we know comes from the doxographer Diogenes Laërtius. Plato was born in 428 bce in Athens to a highly distinguished aristocratic family during a period in which the Peloponnesian War was already underway. The family was steeped in politics: Ariston, his father, was said to be a direct descendant of the last king of Athens, while his mother, Perictone, was reputed to have been related to the famous law-maker Solon (638–558 bce), who is credited with laying the foundations of Athenian democracy. When Plato’s father died his mother remarried, to Pyrilampes, a close acquaintance of Pericles. Plato, had two brothers, Adiemantus and Glaucon, a sister, Potone, and a half-brother, Antiphone. It is reputed that Plato’s birth name, Aristocles, was replaced by the nickname Plato, referring to his broad shoulders. As a child he studied music, rhetoric, mathematics and poetry at a gymnasium owned by Dionysios and Palaistra of Argos. He served and fought in the military three times between 409 and 404 bce. In 407 he met and became a pupil of Socrates (470/469–399 bce) who would be of central influence for the rest of his intellectual life, and whose thought is difficult to disentangle from his.
Peloponnesian War
In 404 bce, following the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta (431–404 bce), Plato witnessed an oligarchic revolution, led by his uncles Critias and Charmides. Many of these oligarchs, who became known as the ‘Thirty Tyrants’, blamed the system of democracy for the defeat. However, after their removal, Socrates was executed on the grounds of impiety and corrupting the minds of the youth. Plato abandoned politics and left Athens, travelling and studying for a dozen years or so. During his travels he first went to Megara, Theodorus in Cyrene, then to Sicily and lastly to Egypt. In Syracuse in Sicily, as well as under Archytas at Taras, in the south of Italy, he studied Pythagorean philosophy.
Steeped in politics Plato travelled to Syracuse on three occasions in the hope of educating its tyrants, Dionysius I and II, to become philosopher kings, and to facilitate an end to the malaise of the times by unifying Greece against Persian influence (Gouldner, 1967). His first visit had been arranged by Dion, cousin to Dionysius II, and a favourite disciple of Plato’s and possibly an object