ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to show how the positions of Hobbes and Vico converge on, and are combined in, the work of Ferdinand Toennies. The future of the older classics, then, is implicated in the future of the work of Toennies; but the promise of Toennies for the future of sociology rests in its turn squarely on his implicit combination of the two seemingly opposed older traditions. The world in which Hobbes found himself, and which in increasing measure is our world, was no longer a static Aristotelian world which needs a mover to be moved. Hobbes comprehends society, then, as if it were a contractual relationship among individuals to ensure the peace. The geometrical method of Descartes appeared to Vico as tantamount to ‘disregarding the nature of man, which is uncertain because of man’s freedom’. Vico’s theorem, that doctrines or theories must begin where the matters they treat begin, is notable as the basic statement in historical sociology.
