Description
Ferdinand Tönnies
GEMEINSCHAFT
und
GESELLSCHAFT
Abhandlung
des
COMMUNISMUS und des SOCIALISMUS
als
Empirischer Culturformen
Ferdinand Tönnies
Community and Society
Treatise on Communism and Socialism as Empirical Patterns of Culture
Published by Fues’s Verlag (R. Reisland) Leipzig in 1887
EX LIBRIS Heinrich Rickert
First Edition
Contemporary Half Leather Binding
XXX+ 294 Pages
14 cm x 22 cm
Ferdinand Tönnies (1855 – 1936) was a German sociologist, economist, and philosopher. He was a significant contributor to sociological theory and field studies, best known for distinguishing between two types of social groups, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (community and society). He co-founded the German Sociological Association together with Max Weber and Georg Simmel and many other founders. He was president of the society from 1909 to 1933 after which he was ousted for having criticized the Nazis. Tönnies, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel are considered the founding fathers of classical German sociology.
About the book:
Tönnies was a Thomas Hobbes scholar—he edited the standard modern editions of Hobbes’s The Elements of Law and Leviathan. It was his study of Hobbes that encouraged Tönnies to devote himself wholly to the philosophy of history and the philosophy of law. And it has been argued that he derived both categories from Hobbes’s concepts of “concord” and “union”. After the first edition of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft was published in 1887 with the subtitle “Treatise on Communism and Socialism as Empirical Patterns of Culture“. Seven more German editions followed, the last in 1935, and it became part of the general stock of ideas with which pre-1933 German intellectuals were quite familiar. The book sparked a revival of corporatist thinking, including the rise of neo-medievalism, the rise of support for guild socialism, and caused major changes in the field of sociology.
Heinrich John Rickert (1863 – 1936) was a German philosopher, one of the leading neo-Kantians. He is known for his discussion of a qualitative distinction held to be made between historical and scientific facts. Contrary to philosophers like Nietzsche and Bergson, Rickert emphasized that values demand a distance from life, and that what Bergson, Dilthey or Simmel called “vital values” were not true values. Rickert’s philosophy was an important influence on the work of sociologist Max Weber. Weber is said to have borrowed much of his methodology, including the concept of the ideal type, from Rickert’s work. Also, Martin Heidegger started out his academic career as Rickert’s assistant, graduated with him and then wrote his habilitation thesis under Rickert.