ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an auto-biographical review of Pierpaolo Donati's journey into the intellectual and social-political contexts. Sociology for Pierpaolo was a vocation to realize such world, whose vision was inspired by authors such as the French philosopher Jacques Maritain, the Italian philosopher Felice Balbo, and the Italian sociologist Achille Ardig. His researches started with the idea of building a useful sociology to reform society according to a humanistic perspective. Marxism was a dominant strand in Italy, as well as in a large part of Europe, but he considered it an ideology rather than a scientific analysis of the social reality. He felt the Frankfurt theory as very attractive, most of all for its criticism towards positivism and capitalism. Talcott Parsons thought was actually marginalized in the Italian universities, Pierpaolo perceived the charm of his theory because it introduced the sociological discipline in a systematic and rational way.