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Sociology's Dostoyevski: Pitirim A. Sorokin
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15022 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1988 |
5,401 Words |
| Author
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Edward A. Tiryakian
Edward A. Tiryakian is professor of sociology and director of
International Studies at Duke University. |
As practitioners who seek to make sense of the major parameters of modern society, including linkages within and between societies, professional sociologists are committed to the objective, dispassionate search for valid knowledge. In a secular age, most sociologists would eschew that their scholarly pursuits have a religious dimension. Yet, in A Sociology of Sociology (1970) Robert W. Friedrichs proposed that a great deal of the sociological tradition, including paradigms, theories and interpretations, embodies two complementary religious stances: the "prophetic" mode and the "priestly" mode. As the terms suggest, the former has a primary vision of a future vastly different from the present and seeks to prepare its audience for what is to come; the latter, on the other hand, helps accommodate its audience to present reality. The very beginnings of sociology stem from Henri Saint-Simon's (1760-1825) prophetic vision of an emerging new industrial social order. His was a highly utopian, optimistic vision of science, industry, and technology interacting to enable men to live harmoniously in a society whose laws could be understood as the science of "social physiology" (see Frank E. Manuel, The New World of Henri Saint-Simon, 1956).
Nearly a hundred years ago, on January 21, 1889, another sociologist prophet was born--one with a starker vision of the future than Saint-Simon's, and whose prodigious breadth of knowledge and voluminous writings made him a giant of twentieth-century social science. Like many of the great prophets of all ages, he was frequently "without honor in his own country." That dynamic person, who embodied so much of what many associate with the "Russian soul," was Pitirim Alexandrovitch Sorokin. (I had the privilege in my formative years as a sociologist to have Sorokin as a teacher and as a friend.)
As an introduction to Sorokin, it might be well to explain the title of this article. Some years ago Robert Nisbet, one of sociology's most literate citizens, published a seminal work, Sociology as an Art Form, in which he cogently argued that "sociology and art are closely linked" (p.4). He found an intriguing overlap in the themes and depictions of the social landscape between sociology, on the one hand, and literature, aesthetics, and the arts in general, on the other. Applying this insight, I think the great novelist Dostoyevski and the great sociologist Sorokin form a natural pair. The two Russians explored in depth the modern human condition, including the question of values and meaning in social existence. Like Dostoyevski, Sorokin faced death before the firing squad at the hands of the czarist regime (condemned for youthful political radicalism) and was also under a death threat
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