The Essence and Concept of a Sociology of Culture
The following pages pursue a limited goal. They are an attempt to denote the unity of a sociology of knowledge as part of the sociology o f culture, above all to develop systematically the problems of such a science. They do not pretend to solve any of these problems conclu sively but only to discuss in detail the directions in which their solu tions appear to lie for the author. They attempt to achieve some sys tematic unity in the disordered mass of problems, some of which have already received scientific formulation, while others have been con ceived only vaguely or are barely suspected. These are problems posed by the fundamental fact of the social nature of all knowledge— its preservation, transmission, methodical expansion, and progress. The relationship of the sociology of knowledge to the theory of the origin and validity of knowledge (epistemology and logic), to genetic and psychological studies of the evolution of knowledge from brutes to humans, child to adult, primitive to civilized people, stage to stage within mature cultures (developmental psychology), to the positive history o f various kinds of knowledge, the metaphysics of knowledge, other areas in the sociology of culture— religion, art, law, etc.— and to the sociology of real factors, i.e., blood (kin), power, and economic groups, and their changing organization— all this must necessarily be touched upon.
In establishing the overall concept of “ sociology” two criteria will
This essay was originally published as “ Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens” in Die Wissenformen und die Gesellschaft (Forms of knowledge and society) (Leipzig: Neue Geist Verlag, 1926), and reprinted in vol. 8 o f Gesammelte Werke, ed. M aria Scheler (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1960). The first published English translation of the essay was by Ernst Ranly in Philosophy Today 12 (1968), 42—70. A slightly modified translation by M anfred S. Frings w as published in Problems o f a Sociology o f Knowledge, ed. Kenneth W. Stikkers (London: Routledge &i Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 3 3 -6 3 . Professor Donald Levine kindly supplied me with an unpublished translation of the essay by Kurt H. Wolff, n.d. The present translation is my own, although I have benefited by consult ing all of the earlier translations. Frings’s distinction between “ mind” and “spirit” has largely been retained, and I have adopted some o f Wolff’s subheadings.
serve us. First, this science does not deal with individual facts and oc currences in history, but with rules, average and logical-ideal types, and, where possible, laws. Second, sociology analyzes the whole ga mut, subjective and objective, of the chief human contents of life. So ciology does this descriptively as well as causally according to the fac
tual determination of these contents only, not the “ normative” or ideal
projections of what the contents of life should be. These contents are investigated in the temporally successive or simultaneous forms of as sociation that exist among people in experiencing, willing, acting, and understanding, in action and reaction, as well as in a real and causal way that does not necessarily involve the consciousness-of-something by the person involved.1
The principal divisions of sociology, which we introduce here with out further analysis, can be arranged according to the following con siderations: (1) Investigation of essential considerations in contrast to that of contingent facts, that is, a pure a priori sociology2 in contrast to an empirical inductive sociology. (2) Investigation of simultaneous and successive relationships of people and groups, that is, sociological
statics and dynamics (Comte). Sociological dynamics differs from all
philosophies of history by excluding from consideration goals, values, and norms viewed as objective; this is a strictly causal and (artificially) value-free position. Of course, this does not exclude taking into ac count values, ideals, and the like as psychological and historical causal factors. (3) Investigation of the chiefly spiritually and intellectually conditioned activity of humans directed toward “ ideal” goals, and in vestigation of activity resulting chiefly from drives of procreation, nourishment, and power which at the same time are directed toward the factual alteration of such realities.
Ideal and Real
This “ chief” intention— for every human act is at once ideational and determined by drives— more precisely, the intention ultimately di rected toward the ideal or the real goal is such that we have to distin guish between a sociology o f culture and a sociology o f real facts. Cer tainly the experimental physicists, painters, or musicians also change reality when they perform an experiment, paint, play music, or com pose. They do this, however, only to reach an ideal goal— to acquire knowledge of nature or to obtain for themselves and others an aesthet ically worthy meaning to be understood and appreciated. But surely, on the other hand, the business administrator as well as the simple unskilled industrial worker, man in general as a producing and con
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suming being, any worker whose goal is to change realities (e.g. the practical technician as distinct from the scholar and technologist), the prominent statesman as well as the voter in an election, still deal with a great many preparatory cognitive activities directed toward the ideal realm. They do so only for the sake of a real objective, however, to affect a change in reality. On one hand, the activity terminates in the ideal realm, on the other, in the real world. I reject as fatuous forms of spiritualism all theories that try to delimit the foundation o f econom ics without going back to the hunger drive, of the state and kindred structures without reference to the drive for power, of marriage with out reference to the sex drive. It is absurd to maintain that economics has nothing to do with the drive for nutrition and the feeding of hu mans because there are publishing houses and art shops, because one can buy and sell books and buttercups, and because even animals have a drive for nutrition and nourish themselves without economics. It is equally inane to maintain that economics is, thus, intellectually and rationally conditioned and achieved in exactly the same sense as art, philosophy, science, etc. This is simply not so! Without the hunger drive and the objective goal this serves biologically, namely nourish ment, there would be no economics— and no publishing houses or art shops either. Without the drive for power there would be no state, no political culture, no law laid down by the state, no matter what affairs the state may deal with. The only thing correct about the above thesis is that without the mind and its normative regulation there would be no economics, no state, etc. Therefore, a spiritual-intellectual theory o f humanity is a necessary presupposition for the sociology of culture, and an instinct-drive theory of humanity is a necessary presupposition for the sociology of real facts.3
The division o f sociology into the sociology of culture and the soci ology of real facts, the sociologies o f the superstructure and swbstruc- ture o f human life, sets up two extreme poles between which there are a great many intermediate transitions. Technology, for example, de pends for its growth on economic and political-juridical as well as on scientific factors; a purposive utilitarian kind o f art, in contrast to a “ pure” art, is conditioned by the values and ideals of those in power, say a religious ruling class. The main task o f sociology is to character ize typologically and determine by specific rules a sociological event with reference to these two poles, to establish what in this event is conditioned by the autonomous self-development of spirit, such as the logical-rational development of law or the immanent logic of religious history, and what is conditioned by the relevant sociologically real fac
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tors, which have their own causality. Without the distinction between the sociology of culture and the sociology of real factors this task can not be accomplished.
This division is not only “ methodologically” but also ontologically grounded. Given sociology’s ultimate aim, however, this is only a pro visional division. The proper task of sociology is to examine the kinds and orderly sequence of reciprocal effects of ideal and real factors, the spiritual and drive factors— for social life is always conditioned by na ture— which determine the contents of human life. Indeed, in my view the highest goal of all nondescriptive and nonclassificatory sociology, that is, of all causal sociology, is in attaining knowledge of a first law
o f sequential order. I do not mean this in the same sense as Comte’s
ideal of a law of mere temporal succession— which was absurd since history only passes once. I mean a law governing the achievements o f
ideal and real factors in determining all life contents belonging to hu
man groups. These factors are sociologically conditioned through kinds of human relationships. This sociology treats not only the phase rules of temporal development of economic, political, and reproduc tive relationships of different groups and cultures, to name the most important kinds of real factors, or of the temporal development of the ideal factors of religion, metaphysics, science, art, and law. Important as this descriptive task may be as a preliminary undertaking, this soci ology would also treat something altogether different, namely, the law
o f order governing the realization o f ideal and real factors. Out of this
realization there ensues, at each point of time within the historical- temporal passage of human life processes, the undivided totality of the life of the group. This is not a law of completed, temporally successive events, but a law of the possible dynamic development o f any com pleted event in temporal order.
The Law of Realization of Ideal and Real Factors
I have sought such a law for years and believe I have found it in prin ciple, but cannot give its full demonstration here.4 However, it has a number of characteristics that can be accurately described.
1. First, this law defines the principal kind of interdependence in which ideal and real factors affect the potential movement of social- historical being in preserving itself and changing. My thesis is as fol lows:
Mind, in the subjective, objective, individual, and collective senses, determines only the particular quality of a certain cultural content that
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may come to exist. Mind as such has no original trace of “ power” or “ efficacy” to bring this content into existence. Mind may be called an “ ascertaining factor” but not an “ accomplishing factor” of possible cultural developments. The negative, or selective, factors of what is
possible through understandable motivation are always the real, drive- conditioned factors o f life. These are in each case the unique combi
nation of political powers, economic production, and qualitative and quantitative conditions of populations as well as geographical and geopolitical factors. The “ purer” the factors of mind, the less they af fect society and history.5 This is the great common element of truth in all skeptical, pessimistic, and naturalistic conceptions of history, whether economic, racial, power-political, or geographic-political. Only to the extent that “ ideas” of any kind, whether religious or scien tific, are united with interests, drives, and collective drives or “ tenden cies,” as we call the latter, do they indirectly acquire the power of being realized. The positive, realizing factor of a purely cultural content is always the free act and free will of a few persons, primarily those who are leaders, models, and pioneers. By virtue of the well-known law of psychic contagion, of deliberate and fortuitous imitation (copying), these few are followed by a “ large number,” a majority. It is in this way that culture “ spreads.” 6
Quite different is the relationship of existing ideal and real factors and their subjective correlates in humans (spiritual-intellectual and drive structures) in the determination of emerging real factors, such as a new international allocation of political power, economic relations o f production, racial miscegenation and tension. The extent of the ob jective, possible development of such real factors is not determined by ideal factors at all but only by the particular makeup of real factors previously given. In such cases, which are precisely the inverse of the preceding ones, everything we call “ mind” has only a negative “ guid ing,” that is, a restraining or nonrestraining, causal role. In principle, this merely negative role o f mind in the fulfillment of real possibilities does not determine their qualities in the slightest. The human mind and will of the individual and collective can do but one thing: retrain or release that which operates according to a strictly independent, real causality, is insensible to meanings, but presses to come into existence. If mind seeks to transform real factors in a way outside the scope of the causal relationships peculiar to them, it bites on granite and its “ utopia” crumbles to nothing. A planned economy, a “ constitution for world politics,” a planned, legal eugenics, and racial selection are uto pias of this kind.
On the other hand, it is always pointless to try to derive the positive meaning and value content of an existing religion, art, philosophy, sci ence, or juridical system solely from real conditions of life such as kin ship, economy, power politics, or geopolitics. The role of existing com bination of real factors may be “ explained” by considering that which did not, but could have, come into existence given the scope of the autonomous law of meaning intrinsic to the qualitative determination7 of religion, law, and mind. Raphael needed a brush— his ideas and artistic visions did not create the brush; he needed politically and so cially powerful patrons to employ him to exalt their ideals, otherwise he could not act out his own genius. Luther needed the interest of dukes, cities, territorial lords leaning toward particularism, and the rising bourgeoisie; without these nothing would have come of the dis semination o f the doctrine of spiritus sanctus intemus (internal spiri tual sanctity) and sola fides (solitary faith), which Luther derived from his reading o f the Bible.
Just as we reject all naturalistic sociological interpretations of the development of the meaning content of culture, so too we must reject on the basis of a pure sociology of culture any theory (reminiscent, for example, of Hegel) that holds that the course of cultural history is a
purely spiritual process determined by its own logic. Without the neg
atively selecting forces of real conditions and without the free volun tary causality of “ leading” persons— though, o f course, this freedom refers only to the “ if” or “ if not” of the action, never to the “ what” of logical meaning— absolutely nothing is affected by merely spiritual de termining factors, even on the basis o f the purest intellectual culture. And nothing at all is affected in the realities with which the sociology of real facts deals. These realities follow a strictly necessary course with respect to existence, quality, value, so-called progress or regress. This course is “ blind” to the meanings and values held by the human mind, for it is a course of fate.8 Only one sovereign changeless privilege remains to us: with our mind we are able to “ reckon” — not calcu late— the future, to formulate a hypothetical and probable expecta tion. And through our will we are able to restrain temporality, ward off something coming into existence, or accelerate or slow down some thing in its temporal succession (not, however, in the order of time, which is predetermined and unchangeable) much as a catalyst does for a process o f chemical synthesis.
In the spiritual-cultural sphere there is, therefore, potential “ free dom” and autonomy of the quality, meaning, and value of an event, yet in practical expression these can always be suspended through the
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causality of the “ substructure” proper to it: “ liberte modifiable” (or “ suspendable” ) one might call it. Conversely, in the field of real factors there is only a “fatalite modifiable,” which Comte aptly and correctly discussed. In the former case, the real circumstances have a suspending effect on that which is being realized from among the spiritual- intellectual potentialities. In the latter case, mind has a suspending ef fect, in the sense of temporal displacement, upon that which corre sponds to the fate of historical tendencies.
2. A second characteristic of the law of causal factors is that it in cludes and joins in a unified way three dynamic and static modes and relations:
a. The relations of the ideal factors with one another— the static, the dynamic, and those such that in actual situations the static modes present themselves as the result, the relative momentary represen tation, of the dynamic ones, that is, as the stratification of older and newer power effects. Every concrete culture is in this sense strati fied.
b. The relations of the individual kinds of real factors to one an other— again from the three viewpoints above.
c. The relations of the three chief groups of real factors to the various kinds of ideal factors— within the scope, of course, of the universal laws of ideal and real factors already defined and described.
In each time and place that we find human society we confront some kind of “ objective mind,” 9 a meaning incorporated in some ma terial or reproducible psychophysical activity such as tools, works of aft, language, writing, institutions, morals, customs, rites, ceremonies. Corresponding exactly to this subjectivity we encounter a changing structure of the “ mind” of the group possessing a more or less binding significance and power for the individual, or at least experienced by the individual as “obliging.” Is there an order in which these objective meaning contents of culture and the meaningful structures of acts are constituted, in which they “ maintain,” alter, mutually establish them selves according to laws? What is the relationship among myth and religion, metaphysics, science, saga, legend, and history; among reli gion, mysticism, and art; among art, philosophy, and science; between philosophy and science; between the realm of current values and the theoretically “ assumed” existence and quality of the world?
The simultaneous relationships o f meaning, and the relationships o f motivations between these objective structures of meaning, are ex tremely numerous, and each requires extensive special study. One might think that although all these should somehow be “ mutually” dependent and reciprocally motivating, there is no lawful order of
Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge
foundation among them. But I am of the opposite opinion without being in the position to prove this in detail.
Laws of Culture
There are essential, not merely contingent, existential dependencies among the ideal factors in their being and becoming— difficult as it may be to discover them. There are such dependencies, for example, between religion, metaphysics, and positive science, philosophy and positive science, technology and positive science, religion and art, etc. These correspond exactly to the order of the genesis and structure of the acts inherent in the human mind. There are, for example, compre hension and preference of values on one side versus willing and doing