The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology

Abstract

Essentially, the historicist conception of sociological knowledge, central to the thought of Max Weber and ably restated by Barrington Moore, Jr., and C. Wright Mills, is a sound one. The most fruitful questions for sociology always refer to the realities of a particular historical situation. Sociology itself is an effort, under unprecedented historical conditions, to find novel answers to them. Internalization has imperceptibly been equated with "learning", or even with "habit-formation" in the simplest sense. Modern sociology, after all, originated as a protest against the partial views of man contained in such doctrines as utilitarianism, classical economics, social Darwinism, and vulgar Marxism. The chapter examines the processes sociologists appeal to in order to account for the elimination of the war of all against all from human society. The insistence of sociologists on the importance of "social factors" easily leads them to stress the priority of socialized or socializing motives in human behavior.