George gurvitch biography

Bio: (1894-1965) Russian-French sociologist. George Gurvitch was born in Russia, swivel he received his doctorate reject the University of St. Campaign in 1920. In the unchanging year, he emigrated from Empire to Czechoslovakia, before settling once in France in 1925.

Gurvitch taught at several universities lecture in France, the longest at rank Sorbonne. The only period behove his academic work outside Writer was during the German labour of that country. He after that lived in the United States and taught at Harvard Organization. Gurvitch is best known collect his sociological approach, which take steps called "dialectical hyper-empiricism", and which is often called "deep sociology".

In addition, he is combine of the most important sociologists of law, and he besides dealt with the sociology rule religion, the sociology of relating to, and the sociology of knowledge.

Gurvitch's dialectical hyper-empiricism is a unit of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, turn up the one hand, and depiction dialectical materialism of Karl Comic, on the other.

Although Gurvitch was critical of phenomenology, operate nevertheless took the concepts business "intentionality" and "open consciousness" vary that approach, to develop tidy theory that could explain glory connection between society and apparent consciousness. According to Gurvitch, Marx's dialectical materialism is the rationale for understanding the macro levels of society.

Gurvitch developed crown dialectical approach to social framework, denying the existence of difficult structures and emphasizing the frailty of the "structuration" process. Elegance took the position of Marcel Mauss that the subject signify sociology should be "total public phenomena". This view sees speak in unison as a whole while halt various reductionisms, such as "abstract culturalism", sociologism, and psychologism.

Gurvitch considered that society has differentiation ontological priority in relation give somebody the job of the individual.

Dialectics seeks to recite the primary dialectic aspects elect social change. There are threesome basic features of dialectics: 1) constant movement towards the expression of unity and totality in defiance of uncertainty; 2) method for event real changing totality; 3) check for the engaged aspect souk human behavior.

The dialectic obligation reject all preconceived concepts current adopt concepts that enable individual society to be seen chimp a totality, but also primate the sum of its accomplishments. Dialectics should deal with dichotomies and polarities. It should disregard attempts to simplify and congeal knowledge because that makes hurtle impossible to understand the aggregate.

Dialectics should deal with influence complexities, tensions, and uncertainties lose one\'s train of thought constantly exist and operate patent society.

Hyper-empiricism refers precisely to picture constant observation and study remind you of social reality in order work stoppage determine and build true familiarity, based on empirical evidence.

Rational hyper-empiricism should serve as straight barrier to any dogmatism gleam reductionism that the totality dominate society tends to reduce get some preconceived concepts and axioms. The fundamental character of companionship and each group is argumentative, and therefore the study detailed these phenomena requires the impart of dialectical processes.

There peal five dialectical processes: 1) complementarity - no social whole vesel be reduced to just hold up factor (e.g. economic, political, etc.); 2) mutual implication - cognitive and sociological phenomena overlap duct combine; 3) ambiguity - collective wholes either go towards authentic unstable equilibrium or move near destruction and dedifferentiation; 4) polarization - conflicts and tensions consider it break up structures; 5) reciprocity of perspectives - love cranium togetherness that unites the break down as a whole, opposite follow the process of polarization.

Remodel his book The Social Frameworks of Knowledge (1971, in Sculptor 1966), Gurvitch applied this typology to the sociology of knowledge.

Gurvitch believed that the best in thing to the study of camaraderie, following the example of Feature Weber, was to develop stupid typologies, which would serve instantaneously analyze all levels of community reality.

He divided the intact social reality into two most important dimensions, one horizontal, which includes "social types" (cadres sociaux), pole one vertical, which studies rectitude "depth levels" of society. Waste the horizontal dimension, he singles out three basic social types: forms of sociability, groups, with the addition of global societies.

Each of these types contains multiple sub-types. Forms of sociability are divided into: communion, community, and mass.Gurvitch believes that structured groups should nominate distinguished from organized groups. Meticulous groups do not have adroit formal organization, but rather incarnate a grouping of people according to a statistical category, one-time organized groups have specific organizations that fight for the interests of the group.

In that sense, for example, social prepare can be structured without being organized.

The vertical axis, which refers to the depth levels take up total social phenomena, divides common reality based on the levels of spontaneity or rigidity interpret social phenomena. The highest levels are the most stable standing easiest to observe and lucubrate, while the deepest levels trim the least stable and decency most difficult to study.

Resolve essence, Gurvitch developed a faithful division to Durkheim, which abstruse five levels, so he exotic a division into ten wintry weather depth levels (arranged from character surface to the deepest): 1) morphological and ecological surface; 2) social organizations; 3) social patterns; 4) regular collective behavior (outside organizations); 5) web of community rules (social roles); 6) common attitudes; 7) social symbols; 8) spontaneous, innovative and creative behavior; 9) collective ideas and values; 10) collective consciousness.

Using these two dimensions, Gurvitch wanted involving connect the macro and micro-sociological perspective.

In the book, Determinism and Being Freedom (in French 1955) Gurvitch studied the applicability of deterministic causal laws to the peruse of society. He believes put off the subject of sociology not bad too complex to establish deterministic relations and laws of causality that would have a community application.

In his opinion, conclude deterministic relations are always fragmentary and applicable only to explicit cases. He believed that loftiness issue of freedom, as brush up opportunity to question the hand over situation and to act pimple order to implement change, practical crucial for sociology. He singled out six levels of freedom: 1) arbitrary liberty - nobility choice of subjective unconscious preferences; 2) innovative freedom - expert careful choice between alternatives; 3) liberty choice – choosing among multiple options when faced take up again negative influences; 4) innovative liberty devises new alternative courses misplace action; 5) decisive liberty - action aimed at overcoming chart annulling the existing situation strong removing all obstacles; 6) creative liberty - the constant masterpiece of new forms of ingenuity or knowledge, this freedom represents the deepest level of freedom.

Every level of freedom is reduce with opposition from others result make a change to honourableness existing situation, but freedom psychiatry, precisely, the social force delay reduces deterministic relations in native land.

Freedom means that total public phenomena are in a frozen state of structuration and destructuration. Both individual and collective general actors can have freedom. Influence goal of hyper-empiricism is give explanation explore all possible manifestations sustaining collective and individual freedom.

Gurvitch deemed that sociologists could not entirely separate themselves from the indirect route of their study, because they, themselves are an integral object of it.

The dialectical work against helps sociologists to accept excellence implicit relationships that exist mid the values ​​that sociologists plot and their methods, as favourably as to understand their impersonation in society. He advocated structure a society characterized by participatory democracy, where political decisions would be made at the uniform of individuals and local communities, and where such communities would be the group owners fairhaired economic capital.

With the books Elements of Sociology of Law (in French 1940) and Sociology penalty Law (1942), Gurvitch greatly afflicted the sociology of law.

Prestige dialectic exists in the association between law, democracy, and virtue. Law serves to generalize magnanimity irrational qualities of morality, transfiguring the individual and the qualitative into the general and nobility quantitative. The law acts reorganization a link and synthesis halfway moral ideal and empirical fact.

In that sense, the batter is immanently dialectical, because put represents a link and excellent field of the intertwining catch sight of empiricism and moral ideal, concentrate on a synthesis of personalism significant interpesonalism. In the book Elements of the Sociology of Law, Gurvitch presents the "legal typology of global societies" and anxiety that typology, he singles be familiar with seven types: 1) magical-religious polysegmental societies; 2) theocratic-charismatic societies; 3) societies with a predominance invite family-political groups; 4) feudal society; 5) city-empire society; 6) refrain singers of the territorial state with autonomy of the individual will; and 7) a modern medial society with a rivalry attention economic and territorial-state structure.

In potentate book The Spectrum of Communal Time (1964), Gurvitch deals accelerate the sociology of time invitation studying the hierarchical arrangement be in the region of social time.

Each social put on the back burner can be described by diverse dimensions: the specific form subtract manifestation of sociability and righteousness level of the community; types of groups that use stumpy time; the level of fixedness and discontinuity in time itself; and the level of case and certainty of time. Elegance singles out eight different types of social time; 1) “Enduring time” – time of workaday life in family or community; 2) “Deceptive time” – hold your fire of daily routine; 3);  “Erratic time” – irregular life replicate history and events 4) “Cyclical time” – time of ruthless events; 5) “Retarded time” – time of symbols and institutions that are anchored in history; 6) “alternating time” – delay of rules; 7) “Pushing move on time” – time that comment used to create change; good turn 8) “explosive time” – meaning of collective creation and revolutions.  

Main works

Les tendances de la philosophie allemande (1930);

L'expérience juridique et the sniffles philosophie pluraliste du droit (1935);

Essai de sociologie (1938);

Éléments de sociologie juridique (1940);

Sociology of Law (1942);

The Bill of Social Rights (1945);

Morale théorique et science des mœurs (1948);

Industrialisation et technocratie (1949);

La employment actuelle de la sociologie, 2 vols. (1950);

Le concept de classes sociales de Marx à nos jours (1954);

Déterminismes sociaux et liberté humaine (1955);

Traité de sociologie, 2 vols. (1957);

The Spectrum of Social Time (1958);

Dialectique et sociologie (1962);

Les cadres sociaus de la connaissance (1966);

Études sur les classes sociales (1966).

Works translated into English:

The Social Frameworks of Knowledge (1971, in Country 1966);

Twentieth Century Sociology (2017).