The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s3: Sorokin's Denunciations of Monism and Avoidance of Racial Obsessions in Sociology
The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s3
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Sorokin's Denunciations of Monism and Avoidance of Racial Obsessions in Sociology
c5.s3.1
At the moment of writing the second edition (1936) it is possible to note that the cry for positivism in the approach to the problems of Hindu culture as well as the futuristic demand for reform in the methodology of social sciences, as raised during 1910-14, have to a certain extent justified themselves. Not only indologists and other Orientalists but students of anthropology, psychology, economics, politics and sociology have embarked upon a transvaluation of values according to an humaner, albeit more rational method. Perhaps the scientific world is gradually approaching the condition that was looked for in my *Chinese Religion Through Hindu Eyes* (Shanghai 1916 p. xv.), where it was claimed that the twentieth century demands a new synthesis, a fresh transvaluation of values, and as prolegomena to that, a new logic,—in order that the *idola* of the nineteenth century might be subverted.
c5.s3.2
An important publication of recent years may be singled out in this connection. This is the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin's *Contemporary Sociological Theories* (New York 1928). This work, encyclopædic as it is in its structure, is well calculated to furnish the "new logic",—the "critique" of sociological reason with which to demolish the *idolas* or superstitions associated with all the latter-day *isms* in social science. From the standpoint of the present author as developed since 1910 this historical and critical study by Sorokin is to be appraised as an embodiment, although mainly in a somewhat destructive form, of the "futurism" that is a desideratum in the study of human achievements and potentialities, race-questions and class-problems. Sorokin's denunciations of monistic interpretations constitute a conspicuous and sound landmark in the evolution of societal science. Another valuable achievement of his studies is to be found in the thoroughly objective manner in which he handles the data of the past and the present, the East and the West. He is not obsessed by the alleged "modernisms" but can discover their germs in the ancients and primitives. Nor is he possessed by the doctrine of "chosen races", but gives every race its due. Coming nearer home, i.e., to the special field of our present investigations, it is possible to mention several documents of substantial importance such as may be regarded as containing the rudiments of a "new indology", as demanded by the present author.