The State of Contemporary Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research (1931)

Abstract

Although social philosophy is the focus of general philosophical concern, it is in no better shape today than most philosophical, indeed most fundamentally intellectual, efforts. Social philosophy, thus understood, became in the history of classical German Idealism the decisive philosophical task. Its most brilliant achievements are in turn the most powerful aspects of Hegel’s system. Social philosophy appears to be part of the philosophical and religious efforts to plant the hopeless individual existence back into the womb, or to put it, in Sombart’s term, in the ‘golden ground’ of meaningful totalities. The authors like to direct them towards a very important and particular social group in Germany, skilled labor and white-collar employees, and continue after that with the corresponding segments in the other highly developed European countries. For the design of questionnaires American social research has done important preliminary work which the authors assimilate and advance for their own purposes.