スペンサーにおける社会有機体説の社会学的重要性

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  • The Sociological Importance of Herbert Spencer's Organic Theory of Society
  • スペンサー ニ オケル シャカイ ユウキタイセツ ノ シャカイガクテキ ジュウ
  • 群相としての社会と人口

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説明

It was not accidental that Herbert Spencer paid attention to the concept : “population”. Population was a crucial indicator that lead him to find that the industrial society inherited the problems arising from its theoretical bases : social contract. His concept of the “industrial type of society” was not an ideal society, neither was it a goal to which human societies should aim, but it reflected the very problems stated above. This was especially evident in his The Principles of Sociology and Man versus the State. This paper makes it clear through the cross examination of Émile Durkheim's criticism on Spencer. The idea of “population” implies not only a demographic quantity, but more importantly it implies the antinomy between the items : “individuality vs. the whole”, “nature vs. human being” and “organic theory of society vs. contract theory of society”. This paper clarifies that Herbert Spencer, for the first time, declared the importance of the former item within each of the above antinomy to sociology.<BR>At the very dawn in the making of sociology, Herbert Spencer, through stressing the importance of population as well as of biological concept of species, has developed his unique view that a society should be considered as an organism itself. To him, this was not merely an analogy but the statement which should be taken exactly as such. The core of Spencer's organic theory of society was that a human society should be seen in the phase of species like animals and plants. The position of his study of biology to sociology lied in this. In this paper, his assertion is also verified through the examination of the cultural anthropological point of view in Lévi-Strauss.

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