ABSTRACT
The ‘social influences’ around a man are conceived as so many determining forces which form between them a parallelogram, and whose resultant is the mind of the man in their midst. Radcliffe-Brown was deeply influenced by Emile Durkheim, and the latter provides an obvious example of functionalism. If a society is to function, i.e. if there is to be effective communication and co-operation between its members, certain common categories of thought are obviously an absolute necessity. The salient characteristic of this third theory is that it ascribes to human thought even more freedom than does the functionalist-organological alternative. Max Scheler’s theory is very similar to this, save only that it is a good deal more sophisticated, for Scheler connects ideas of this kind with the tenets of the essentially neo-platonic Husserlian school to which he belonged, and whose creed is known as phenomenology.
