ABSTRACT

My objectives in the chapter are to provide some sense of the way in which we have historically become conscious of the social level of reality; and to introduce the sociological perspective by exploring central issues, problems, and ideas in the works of selected social philosophers and the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century founders of sociology. My goal here is to stimulate an initial “feel” for the sociological way of looking at the world. I do not offer an in-depth history or a detailed analysis of social and sociological theories. Analytically, history is not merely a plaything for antiquarians. Besides being inherently interesting, history is related to the present in several ways: (1) it increases the range of our effective experience; (2) it sensitizes us to the epochs and trends into which we have been born; (3) it is a source of data on long-term patterns which may be historically specific or widely, if not universally, invariant; (4) it opens up pathways to ideas which may have a direct (immediately applicable) or indirect (stimulating) impact on contemporary problem-solving.