SOROKIN, PITIRIM A. Social Philosophies of an Age of Crisis. Pp. xi, 345. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1950. $4.00
| Published date | 01 March 1951 |
| Author | Floyd N. House |
| Date | 01 March 1951 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000271625127400188 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
254
Popper’s
essential
positive
thesis
is
the
need
for
a
sense
of
personal
responsibility
by
men,
the
masters
and
the
makers
of
their
fate,
and
for
constitutional
democ-
racy,
the
technique
by
which
men
may
best
insure
the
conditions
needful
to
such
mas-
tery
and
creativity.
He
warns,
however,
that
institutions
are
not
self-preserving;
that
it
is
fearless
men
who
by
acts
of
will
and
consequent
action
preserve
them,
and
utilize
them
as
vehicles
for
their
purposes.
Popper’s
critical
thesis
is
that
historicism,
the
discovery
of
independent
pattern
and
necessity
in
history,
of
whatsoever
kind
the
pattern,
and
without
regard
to
whether
the
maker
of
it
bows
down
before
it
or,
accepting,
fights
to
escape
or
transcend,
is
the
enemy
of
the
open
society
of
men
as
seekers,
that
historicists,
those
who
accept
such
concepts
of
destiny,
whatever
specific
content
they
give
to
them,
are
the
enemies
of
the
fully
self-respecting
moral
person;
and
that
with
a
signal,
though
not
always
frank,
lack
of
courage
they
abdicate,
and
persuade
others
to
abdicate,
that
full
re-
sponsibility
which
is
the
inescapable
mark
of
man
the
maker.
In
a
series
of
articles
published in
Economita
in
1944-45,
Popper
painstak-
ingly
showed
by
critical
analysis
the
meth-
odological
inadequacy
of
historicists,
and
argued
the
rational
deductive
character
of
science.
I
note
the
point
because
it
is
im-
portant
that
from
his
attacks
on
historicist
idealism
here
presented
no
inference
be
made
that
he
is
a
supporter
of
either
posi-
tivism
or
relativism
as
these
terms
are
to-
day
commonly
understood.
His
concern
with
method
and
his
attack
on
historicist
analysis
are
not
a
plea
for
a
different
closed
society
where
man
is
made
a
creature
and
groveling
victim
of
supposed
scientific,
rather
than
historical,
laws
which
inescap-
ably
seal
his
fate.
That
position,
which
is
essentially
scientism,
Popper
equally
con-
demns.
His
concept
of
science
is
a
hu-
manistic
one,
and
his
ultimate
concern
is
man
the
moral
being.
In
the
present
work
he
criticizes
Plato
somewhat
harshly,
Hegel
justly,
and
Marx
with
a
sustained
and
devastating
mjodera-
tion,
as
alike
the
enemies
of
human
free-
dom.
I
myself
feel
that
he
is
at
points
unduly
severe
toward
Plato,
and,
despite
genuine
admiration,
pays
him
less
than
what
is due
his
soaring
vision;
as
he
some-
what
overemphasizes
both
Plato’s
back-
ward-looking
search
for
the
stable
society
in
his
own
day
lost
and
the
brutality
of
his
totalitarian
contempt
for
common
clay.
Popper
does
so,
with
some
excuse,
on
the
ground
that
the
past
idolization
of
Plato
makes
unsparing
thoroughness
in
criticism
necessary;
and,
for
all
my
dissents,
I
feel
that
he
has
on
balance
done
a
major
serv-
ice
to
comprehension
as
against
veneration.
He
has
cleared
the
ground
for
a
genuinely
enlightened
ethics
whose
essence
he
here
propounds.
He
has,
in
so
doing,
made
hosts
of
shrewdly
forceful
criticisms
of
false
viewpoints
and
erroneously
posed
questions
in
politics.
These
issues
and
attitudes,
hallowed
by
tradition,
do
indeed
stand
in
the
way
of
creative
political
thought,
as
he
insists.
Further,
they
mis-
lead
the
statesman,
and,
as
uncritically
ac-
cepted
fundaments
of
public
opinion,
seri-
ously
frustrate
or
hamper
ordinary
men
in
the
intelligent
pursuit
of
the
sort
of
order
which
would
serve
them
best.
What
ap-
plies
to
Popper’s
analysis
of
Plato
applies
mutatis
mutandis
and,
on
my
assessment,
a
fortiori
to
his
treatment
of
Hegel
and
Marx.
THOMAS
I.
COOK
The
Johns
Hopkins
University
SOROKIN,
PITIRIM
A.
Social
Philosophies
of
an
Age
of
Crisis.
Pp.
xi,
345.
Bos-
ton:
The
Beacon
Press,
1950.
$4.00.
This
book
is
correctly
titled.
The
social
sciences,
as
currently
conceived,
are
chiefly
concerned
with
the
quest
for
generaliza-
tions,
susceptible
of
being
tested
by
em-
pirical
evidence,
and
dealing
with
the
more
detailed
factors
and
mechanisms
operative
in
the
realm
of
human
society,
or
social
in-
teraction.
Philosophies,
on
the
other
hand,
are
generally
understood
to
be
systems
of
thought
which
seek
to
generalize
about
the
more
inclusive,
fundamental,
or
extensive
aspects
of
things
and
events.
A
philosophy
will
attempt
to
formulate
some
statements
which
reveal
meanings,
purposes,
or
values
in
the
realms
with
which
they
are
con-
cerned.
Social
philosophies,
presumably,
are
no
exception.
It
is,
then,
the
works
of
a
number
of
men,
who
may
be
said
to
have
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