Answers:
1. The two
founding fathers of sociology to be discussed on are:
A. August Comte
B. Emile Durkheim
A. AUGUST
COMTE:
Isdore , Auguste,
Marie, Francois, Xavier Comte(19 January
1798 – 5 September 1857), better known as August Comte was a French philosopher.
He was the
founder of discipline of Sociology and of the Doctrine of Positivism. His
concept of sociology and social evolutionism, though now outdated, set the tone
for early social theorists and anthropologists such as Herbert Spencer evolving
into modern academic sociology presented by Emile Durkheim as practical and
objective social research.
Comte’s social
theories culminated in the Religion of Humanity which influenced the
development of religious humanist and secular humanist organisations in the
19thcentury.
Comte likewise
coined the word Altruism which means an ethical doctrine that holds that the
moral value of an individual’s actions depend solely on the impact of other
individuals, regardless of the consequences on the individual itself.
The term
Sociology which literally means Science of Society’ was developed by August Comte.
He brought the word sociology of his positive philosophy (a six volume work)
which he first published in 1838.
Comte in the
early 19th century asserted that man’s intellectual development had
progressed through three (3) stages:
The first was the
theological or fictive stage in which every natural occurrence was attributed
to some supernatural force and to the whims of the gods (ruled by priests then).
Man at this stage blindly believed in whatever he was thought by his ancestors.
Fetishism played a significant role during this time.
The second stage
was the metaphysical or abstract, which was ruled by philosophers and was the
era of logic; natural occurrences were given some hypothetical causal
explanation. This stage was the beginning of a world that questioned authority
and religion. It was as the stage of investigation because people started
reasoning and questioning although no solid evidence was laid.
The third stage
was the scientific or positive (phase of science) whereby scientific
explanations can be associated with human actions and natural occurrences. He
was therefore the founder of the doctrine of Positivism which is a philosophy
of science based on the view that information derived from logical and
mathematical treatments and reports of sensory experience is the exclusive source
of all authoritative knowledge, and there is valid knowledge (truth) only in
scientific knowledge. Comte argued that much as the physical world operates
according to gravity and other absolute laws so also does the society.
He regarded sociology as the doctrine of
progress, developing the society toward an era of peace and understanding. He
emphasised the need to study social phenomenon in relation to the condition in
which they occur. He also held the view that a science of sociology should
focus on a systematic observation and not on speculation. Comte successfully
developed his positivist thought to a level at which he evolved as science of
society. He upheld that human society could be studied scientifically hence
discipline of sociology.
The most important
thing to determine was the natural order in which sciences stand not how they
can be made to stand irrespective of the wishes of anyone, this Comte
accomplished by taking as the criterion of the position of each the degree of
what he called positivity’ which is simply the degree to which the phenomena
can be exactly determined. This as may be readily seen, is also a measure of
their relative complexity. The degree of exactness or positivity is moreover
that to which is not itself a concrete science is the general gauge by which
the position of every science is to be determined. Generalizing thus, Comte
found that there were five great groups of phenomena of equal classificatory
value but of successively decreasing positivity. To these he gave the names astronomy,
physics, chemistry, biology and sociology.
Comte saw this
new science, sociology a term coined by Comte himself as the last and greatest
of sciences, one which would include all other sciences and integrate and
relate their findings into a cohesive whole. It has to be pointed out however
that there was another science one even greater than sociology namely Comte
considered Anthropology or true science of man to be the last gradation in the
grand Hierarchy of Abstract Science.
The motto Ordem e
Progresso (Order and Progress), in the flag of Brazil is inspired by August
Comte’s motto of positivism: L’amour pour principe et l’ordre pour base le
progress pour but (Love as a principle and Order as the basis, Progress as a
goal.) Several of those involved in the military coup d’etat that deposed the
monarchy and proclaimed Brazil a republic were followers of the ideas of Comte.
B. EMILE
DURKHEIM;
David Emile
Durkheim (April 15 1858-November 15 1917) was a French sociologist. He formally
establish the academic discipline and with Karl Marx and Max Weber is commonly
cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of
sociology. He was one of those that gave the most notable early demonstration
of scientific methodology in sociology. He was born in France in 1858 to
parents of Jewish origin. He was employed primarily to teach pedagogy in a French University
(Sorbonne). France during Emile’s days was full of turbulent society and full
of social problems like Nigeria today. Emile was interested in investigating
these social problems and through the course pedagogy he introduced Sociology
in a French University-a course that was very new then incomparable to other
disciplines.
Much of
Durkheim’s work was concerned with how societies could maintain their integrity
and coherence in modernity; an era in which traditional, social and religious
ties are no longer assumed and in new
social institutions have come into being . His first major sociology work is
the Division of labour in Society (1893). In 1895 he published his Rules of
Sociological method and set up the first European department of sociology,
becoming France’s first Professor of sociology. In 1898 he established the Journal
L’Annee Sociologique. Durkheim‘s seminal monograph, Suicide(1897) a study of
Suicide rates in Catholic and Protestants populations, pioneered modern social
research and served to distinguish social science from psychology and political
philosophy. The Elementary forms Religious Life (1912) presented a theory of religion,
comparing the social and cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies.
Durkheim was also deeply preoccupied with the acceptance of sociology as a
legitimate science. He refined the positivism originally set forth by august
Comte, promoting what could be considered as a form of epistemological realism
as well as the use of the hypothetico-deductive model in social science. For
him, sociology was the science of institutions if this term is understood in
its broader meaning as beliefs and modes of behaviour instituted by the
collectivity and its aim being to discover structural social facts. Durkheim
was a major proponent of structural functionalism, a foundational perspective
in both sociology and anthropology. In his view, social science should be
purely holistic that is sociology should study phenomena attributed to society
at large, rather than being limited to the specific actions of individuals.
He remained a dominant
force in French intellectual life until his death in 1917 presenting numerous lectures and
published works on a variety of topics, including the sociology of knowledge,
morality, social stratification, religion, law, education and deviance.
HIS THOUGHT:
Throughout his
career, Durkheim was concerned primarily with three goals. First to establish
sociology as a new academic discipline, Second to analyze how societies could
maintain their integrity and coherence in modern era, when things such as
shared religious and ethnic background could no longer be assumed; to that end
he wrote much about the effect of laws , religion, education and similar forces
on society and social integration. Lastly Durkheim was concerned with the
practical implication of scientific knowledge. The importance of social integration
is expressed throughout Durkheim’s work.
CHILDHOOD AND
EDUCATION:
Durkheim was born
in Epinal in Lorraine, coming from a long life of devout French Jews, his
father, grandfather and great grandfather had been rabbis. He began his
education in a rabbinical school, but at an early age, he decided not to follow
in his family’s rabbinical footsteps, and switched schools. Durkheim himself
would lead a completely secular life. Much of his work was dedicated to
demonstrating that religious phenomena stemmed from social rather than divine
factors. While Durkheim chose not to follow in the family tradition, he did not
sever ties with his family or with Jewish community. Many of his most prominent
collaborators and students were Jewish and some were his relations. A
precocious student, Durkheim entered the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) in 1879
at his third attempt. At the ENS, Durkheim studied under the direction of Numa
Denis de Coulanges, a classicist with a social scientific outlook. At the same
time, he read August Comte and Herbert Spencer. Thus Durkheim became interested
in a scientific approach to society very early on in his career. This meant the
first of many conflicts with the French academic system, which had no social
science curriculum at that time. Durkheim found humanistic studies uninteresting,
turning his attention from psychology and philosophy to ethics and eventually
sociology.
INFLUENCES AND
LEGACY:
His description
of collective consciousness deeply influenced Ziya Gokalp’s, the founding
father of Turkish nationalism.
DEATH:
Durkheim died in
Paris, France on the 15th November, 1917. He was buried in the
Cimetiere de Montparnesse in Paris.
2. RELATING AUGUST COMTE’S SOCIOLOGICAL IDEAS
TO THE CONTEMPORARY NIGERIAN SOCIETY
The benefits of Comte’s sociological ideas to
present day Nigerian society cannot be over emphasised. Comte’s progression of
man intellectual development through these three (3) stages; the theological or
fictive, the metaphysical or abstract, the scientific or positive gave the new
generation students like us the true nature and outlook of the society during
the pre-missionary and missionary era. This Comte’s idea of three (3) stages
also serves as a guide for both the present Sociologist and the upcoming Sociologist.
Sociology of
Education as introduced by Comte has an advantage today helping the young ones
by exposing them to the society’s expectations and how they could meet up
through the process of socialization.
Comte upheld that
human society could be studied scientifically, relating this Comte’s idea to
contemporary Nigerian society, one would conclude that sociology is of a huge
benefit as it uses scientific methods such as expost facto and survey method in
carrying out its research and solving research problems relating to the
society.
Comte regarded
sociology as the doctrine of progress, developing the society toward an era of
peace and understanding. In the contemporary Nigerian society, Comte’s idea of sociology
as doctrine of progress and developing the society towards an era of peace and
understanding, one would say is a failure because even with the scientific
study of the society and inculcating Sociology in our various school’s
curriculum, Nigeria remained a turbulent society full of social problems, example,
the recent religious/political social problem Nigeria is facing today as ‘Boko-haram’.
Nevertheless there is a common knowledge that we are in the era of church
denominationalism (church proliferation) yet crime rate and moral decadence increase
daily in a geometrical progression thereby constituting a variance to the
expected morality level. This is brought about
mainly by modern science and technology amidst other predisposing sub variables such as peer group influence,
examination mal practice, poverty, problem of heritance and succession as they
affect our daily living and general
wellbeing. Meanwhile in the contemporary
Nigerian society, the effort of August Comte to develop Sociology as well cannot
be under emphasised because scientific study of society helps today’s
sociologist, social workers and educationist to use scientific method in
solving societal problems.
RELATING EMILE DURKHEIM’S SOCIOLOGICAL IDEAS TO THE
CONTEMPORARY NIGERIAN SOCIETY
Throughout Durkheim’s
career, he was concerned primarily with three goals;
First to
establish sociology as a new academic discipline, this still holds water in the
present Nigeria context. Sociology in the contemporary Nigeria is one the
important and valuable academic discipline in the faculty of social science in
Nigerian universities.
Second to analyze
how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in modern era, when
things such as shared religion and ethnic background could no longer be
assumed; to that end he wrote much about the effect of laws, religion,
education and similar forces on society and social integration. To this second
goal of Durkheim, one would say is yet to be achieved in Nigeria because in
this present time in Nigeria, religion and ethnic group affects the way Nigerians relate, regard and socialise with each
other, the well educated politicians and developers in the country not excluded.
An example is the recent event that happened that the government of Lagos state
has to deport 19 eastern youths back to east, reactions to this issue by our
ministers and others opened our eyes to lack of oneness in Nigeria today
despite we are ‘one Nigeria’ so
to say.
Lastly Durkheim
was concerned with the practical implication of scientific knowledge. In the
present Nigeria’s situation, these implications and developments are explored
from a variety of economic, environmental, ethical, moral, social and political
perspectives.
Emile realised
that through education, the society could perpetuate itself and find solutions
to its various social problems. And
actually most of his ideas are still relevant and are applicable to the present
Nigeria’s context.
He believed that in every society, education
could be used as a means of developing our youths to acquire their essential
conditions for the future potentialities which is very true even in recent
times because major source of developing our youths today is through the
availability of education in our society.
He also analysed the idea of an individual being
made up of two (2) beings; the individual being and the social being. The
individual being is made up of mental state that applies to that person alone
and to one’s personal experiences and lives alone and the social being which is
made up of system of ideas, sentiments and practices which express in us the
group traits we belong, these include religious belief, moral beliefs and
practices and collective opinion. This Emile’s idea is still very relevant in
the contemporary Nigerian society because every individual has personal
experiences that make them take personal decisions and accept certain view
about life in its entirety which with time makes who they are, that is their
individual being. On the other hand, individuals especially children and youths
tend to imitate and make adults around them their model, we emulate and tend to
do what our mothers and teachers expects, this conforms us to the social norms
and build our social being. The importance of social integration is expressed
throughout Durkheim’s work.