Inner Laws of Sociology. A New Sociology by Luigi Sturzo

Abstract

BOOK REVIKWS Inner Laws of Sociology. A New Sociology. By LuiGI STURZO. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1944. Pp. xxxvi +314. In this review we shall confine ourselves to the consideration of several main topics that seem particularly relevant for readers of a theological and philosophical magazine. To cover the book in any wider detail would be of interest primarily to those directly engaged in the study of sociology. We urge those concerned to read the book fully and carefully, for it has a profundity of observation and wealth of material notably lacking in the books usually written on sociology. We shall, accordingly, divide this review into three parts. The first will concern a very broad outline of the book as a whole, commenting only on certain parts which require special consideration; this will serve also to sketch the extent of Don Sturzo's system of sociology. The second part will take up a crucial question, namely, the relation of society and the individual. The third part will consider, though inadequately, sociology as a science and its relation to other knowledge. I. The first pages of the Introduction set out the scope and method of Don Sturzo as a sociologist. Taking sociology as the " study of social life in its complexity and in its synthesizing factors," Don Sturzo assigns two possible methods to it: the experimental, an "analytic study of social facts, to bring out their constant elements and from these to derive their nature and laws "; and the historical, which is " studying the social syntheses and their factors in their concreteness and in the dialectic of human process." He chooses the hitter method while not ignoring the advantages to be gained in the former. He rejects the school of positivist sociologists who have attempted to create a social biology with emphasis upon an organistic or mechanical conception of society. He likewise rejects those who have a " metaphysical " conception of society wherein society is variously conceived as principle, will, idea, or spirit. For Don Sturzo, " the basis of society is simply the human individual taken in his concreteness and complexity as an original and irresolvable principle." Society is not an entity or an organism outside and above the individual, nor is the individual a reality outside and above society. Either taken in itself, as distinct and opposed to the other, is a logical abstraction. 520 BOOK REVIEWS 521 Hence society is the " sum total of individuals." In an attempt to avoid the conclusion that society would " thus be reduced to a mere movement of individual actions and reactions," Don Sturzo maintains that he gives " to the associate instinct its full value as an ever-developing exigency and social impulse, and by this very fact we resolve the individual into society." This, however, is not an evident conclusion of the author's analysis of the relation of society and the individual in the main body of the book. This initial view of sociology and its use of the historical method is the basic presupposition of Don Sturzo as a sociologist. His. understanding of historicism is contained in the following definition: " Historicism is the systematic conception of history as human process, realized by immanent forces, unified in rationality, yet moving from a transcendental and absolute principle towards a transcendental and absolute end." This concerns, rather, the philosophy of history, which is not the same thing as history conceived as philosophy. The latter position is taken by Don Sturzo: " ... history, thus conceived, presents itself with all the characteristics of philosophy. . . . Basically, philosophy and history might be said to be convertible, since both in different ways have as object the rationality that finds realization in human events according to the general laws governing reality." The full explanation sought in history requires philosophical knowledge, but this means that a historian, to the extent necessary , should also be a philosopher; he is not equipped to give such knowledge in virtue of his ability as a historian (though in fact many historians write as though history were the universal science). To insist upon the distinction between philosophy and history being kept clear is not by way of opposing them but rather of relating them in such a...