Constructive Sociological Theory

Forgotten Legacy of Thomas G. Masaryk

Thomas G. Masaryk, Alan Woolfolk, Jonathan B. Imber, Alan Woolfolk, Jonathan B. Imber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781560001645
• eBook ISBN: 9781000675238
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Thomas G. Masaryk was founding and first president of the State of Czechoslovakia. He was also a dissident charter member of the theoretical vanguard that established modern sociology in the nineteenth century. Many social scientists are aware of Masaryk's political role, but do not know about his significant contributions to sociology. With the publication of this book, Imber and Woolfolk hope to restore Masaryk to his rightful place in history as a founding sociological theorist.

This compilation of some of Masaryk's major writings reveals the intertwining of politics and social theory that is characteristic of his thinking. Chapters in Constructive Sociological Theory include The Development of the Modern Suicide Tendency"; "Essence and Method of Sociology"; The Epistemological Problem of Russian Philosophy"; "The Religious Question and Modern Philosophy"; The Class Structure of Society"; "Central Problems of Marxist Policy"; and "Democracy versus Theocracy."

Constructive Sociological Theory also presents these writings together in English for the first time. Alan Woolfolk's substantial introduction extensively discusses Masaryk's biographical background, academic life, political career, religious views, and interpretations of Marx and Comte, among other subjects. This landmark volume will be an essential addition to the libraries of political theorists, sociologists, philosophers, and theologians.

Part One "Sacrifices of the Kulturkampf"

DOI: 10.4324/9780429336645-2

1 The Development of the Modern Suicide Tendency

DOI: 10.4324/9780429336645-3

1. Our investigation has shown that in the final analysis the morbid suicide tendency of the present is caused by the irreligiosity of the masses. Moreover, since we know that the suicide tendency increased in recent times and is increasing, irreligiosity must also have increased and be increasing with it. But if the morbid tendency appears periodically, it appears as an external sign of the periodic irreligiosity of the peoples. The problem that we must solve in this part of our work is then clear: it must be established through a cultural history whether and how the religiosity of peoples changes in certain periods to bring about that strange and harmful pessimistic mass mood in which suicide is practiced as a legitimate escape from every kind of misfortune and dissatisfaction.

That this investigation—in the manner of a philosophy of history— must be as brief as possible is clear from the whole plan of this book, and therefore the reader should not object because a great deal is assumed, much only indicated and outlined: the principles can still be correct nevertheless, and it is these that matter.

2. We proceed on the assumption that we have identified the nature of suicide as a social mass phenomenon of the present day, and interpreted it from a psychological point of view. Accepting this, we conclude that the nature of the suicide tendency has been the same in all times, and that the same fundamental causes have always generated this morbid tendency. Exceptions can appear, but in and of itself the phenomenon has always been the same: "Men are what men always were."

In order to find the empirical law according to which the morbid suicide tendency periodically develops, we begin with the following consideration. Considering the variable degrees of the suicide tendency among extant peoples, we find two extremes: the primitive peoples show no suicide tendency at all; the civilized peoples, on the other hand, show a very intensive one. If one were to compare a particular Negro tribe of the African interior which has not yet been touched by European influences with the North Germans and the Danes, he would have the two extremes factually defined: in the latter a large suicide tendency, in the former none. Between these two extremes the remaining peoples may be classified according to a statistical measure, so that we can in this way "represent" in the proper sense of the word the development of the suicide tendency. With this classification, the entire historical sequence can be seen, since the psychical mass mood of the present corresponds perfectly to similar past mass moods. It is the task of the sociologist to provide a proper methodological evaluation of this cross-section as a means to a longitudinal history.

In contradistinction to the irreligiosity of the civilized, one could cite the religiosity of the primitives as the basis for the fact that among the latter the suicide tendency does not appear. This conclusion would be justified, but I do not know whether in this way we would understand the significance of the fact in question. For it could also be said that children in Denmark, Germany, and wherever suicide is frequently committed, do not commit suicide because they in contrast to adults are religious. But the primitive is like a child unfinished, lacking every higher striving; lazy and indolent, he is intent only on his immediate material gratification; his world-view is the simplest imaginable: lost in a sensual outlook, he has not yet reflected on life and its value, and is satisfied with everything. Therefore the morbid suicide tendency cannot develop in him at all. The primitive is interested only in the external world; what is inside him is and remains invisible; he lives entirely in vision, hearing, etc. This objectivity of the primitive (and children) itself explains to us why he does not commit suicide. In order to wish for death, a man must have recognized what is inside him, must have observed not only the external world, but also his internal world. Whoever loves death is psychically ill and deranged and relates everything to himself. The man of nature is objective, the civilized man subjective. Thus we find murder, manslaughter, and war to be the order of the day among primitives; everything which excites the primitive he relates to the external world, and thus never arrives at the point of relating anything uncomfortable to his own ego. The educated, on the other hand, relates much or everything to himself, is in himself where the primitive is outside himself and is thus more likely to commit suicide rather than murder. Thus, also, is explained the fact that everywhere that murder frequently occurs, suicide is infrequent and vice versa; thus, for example, Italy on the one side and Germany on the other.¹

Religion does not have that practical significance for the primitive which it has for us; this is attained only when a man puts aside primitive and childish things, when he recognizes his inner life and reflects upon the value of life. Then he no longer lives blindly for the day alone, but orders his actions in accordance with a cultivated world-view. Religion then exercises an elevating and proverbial influence on him; then does he first decide for or against life according to ethical principles. Religion does not really prevent suicide in the man of nature, but his nature itself prevents it, his natural instinct for self-preservation; among the civilized, on the other hand, their ethico-religious world-view bestows on life all value or all lack of value. Religion impedes their suicide.

What has been said is not contradicted by the exceptional appearance of suicide among primitive peoples, but confirmed by it. We are informed, for example, that the primitives who take most readily to the use of European liquor commit suicide more frequently than other tribes; the American Indians also frequently committed suicide—in addition to abortion—to escape the unusual torture and severe treatment of the Spaniards. Boudin assures us that the Negro in America very frequently commits suicide for the same reason. The ancient inhabitants of Spain killed themselves in droves when the Romans conquered their country and disarmed the people. All such cases are to be explained by the primitive people concerned becoming acquainted with a higher civilization. It is a well-known law that sudden, abrupt contact with a higher culture ruins and destroys the less developed peoples. Suicide is then only a special phenomenon in the general decline and it is not committed by pure primitives, but by those who are corrupted (see no. 10 below).

Suicide appears among many primitive peoples as a result of certain social, political, and national-economic views. Thus, for example, the ancient Celts and Scandinavians killed themselves because they considered natural death shameful and only death by choice honorable; aging men threw themselves from cliffs, and Valerius Maximus tells us that birthdays were celebrated with wine, funerals with jubilation and singing. Today, the same custom predominates among the Battas of Sumatra, whose aged must kill themselves. The old, ill, and infirm often must kill themselves out of regard for the means of subsistence; if they do not do it themselves, they are killed.

When we speak of the state of nature, we mean the true state of nature which is little in evidence today but which must be interpreted sociologically on the basis of the excellent work of Waitz, Tylor, and others, if order and method are to be brought into the chaos of studies concerning the "state of nature." Contemporary primitives have evolved in many ways from this ancient condition and have developed in their own way; what has been said is valid therefore only to the degree to which the level of primitivism—and a certain degree of development does not exclude this—has not been superseded. In the proper sense of the state of nature, we say that there should be no tension, no psychosis, no pessimism, and therefore, also, no morbid suicide tendency among primitive peoples. The cases which do occur among them are really self-slaughters and not suicide, and the known cases of suicide do not show any morbid love of death. Among primitive peoples, war is the rule and an exceptional love of peace in one or two tribes is an exception; suicide is also an exception to the rule.²

The fact that the man of nature does not know the morbid suicide tendency, as compared with the civilized man, explains the periodic appearance of the morbid suicide tendency. Recognizing that all contemporary civilized peoples gradually developed from the state of nature, and that the morbid tendency to suicide is absent among primitive peoples but is present among the civilized to a high degree, it thus follows that the morbid suicide tendency gradually increases among all peoples who have progressed in their development; the social mass phenomenon of suicide is the fruit of progress, of education, of civilization.³

If one shows therefore where and when civilization is greater among a people, or among different classes of a people, one can thus determine with approximate certainty the intensity of the suicide tendency. For example: the educated Germans should show a higher suicide frequency today than the less educated Spaniards; accordingly, the suicide tendency is generally greater today than in the Middle Ages, and, finally, the same law is also valid for the development of the Roman, Greek, and other cultures; the Romans of the Republic certainly did not have the high suicide tendency they had at the time of the emperors. The same law likewise holds for various educated classes of one and the same population; rural inhabitants, for example, show a lower suicide frequency than urbanites, and so on.

The statistics and history of suicide completely verify our law. But one should guard against thinking at the same time of a natural law. this is the situation, but it does not always hold under all conditions.⁴ The English, for example, who are at least as civilized as the Germans and French, show a lower suicide frequency in spite of their education. Half-education, not education, is the proper cause of the suicide tendency, for it manifests itself in irreligiosity and in the lack of a unified world-view. For this reason, one may not say that want of education hinders the suicide tendency; Spaniards, Italians, and other peoples show a low suicide frequency, not because they are uneducated, but because they are at the same time religious and spiritual. Spain and Scotland both have a small suicide frequency despite differences in their education; both countries are very religious, overlooking for the present the quality of their respective religions.

Finally, it must still be noted that the state of nature sketched above should not be confused with the conception of uneducated (applied to Christian peoples). When it is said that the Spanish and Portuguese are uneducated or uncivilized, it does not mean that they live in a state of nature; this condition may be approached here and there in a few districts, but, on the whole, all Christian nations have gone beyond the state of nature. Therefore, religion has for them the great significance we have ascribed to it because their entire social and private life is no longer guided by instincts but by ethical norms which become more necessary the more involved and complicated the collective condition of the civilized world becomes.

3. In order to understand modern civilization, one must know the Greek, Roman, and Mosaic-Oriental culture that rests at the base of our culture; the secondary influences of the ancient Orient can remain unmentioned here because of their slight significance.

We begin with the Greek.

In the state of nature and the related so-called Heroic Age, the Greek people, as mirrored in the poems of Homer, had a healthy lust for life and a naive serenity which every energetic and industrious nation partly achieves. Happy and satisfied with their situation, sentimentality and a pessimistic evaluation of life were strange to them, and suicide appears only as an exception.

This objective state lasted until about the sixth century B.C. We see this clearly in the development of poetry and philosophy. Subjectivity awoke in the sixth century, forcing itself freely into political reorganization and contemporary lyric poetry. The philosophy of the period, however, is still completely objective and simple: the thinkers are still interested in the external world, although the poets are already intoxicated with their feelings. When drama reached its heights in the following century—a culmination of poetry and the dominance of the people's vital energies—Socrates brought philosophy from heaven down to earth; the Greek people then worked at the conscious shaping of life.

At about this time, however, the struggle of philosophy with folk religion began, and Socrates was not its only victim.⁵ The missionary activity of these men and their students greatly shook the already shaky edifice of polytheism; the uneducated themselves became philosophical, so that even as cynics the dregs of the people became interested in the teachings of Socrates.

The beginning of the Greek people's decline is already mirrored in Plato. The disastrous Peloponnesian War and the Macedonian invasion following it, with all its tragic results in the political sphere, are only the external signs of an inner spiritual disintegration of the people. In Plato's writings we can clearly see this disintegration: folk religion was no longer able to satisfy or guide the people, and this great thinker therefore wished to make his philosophy into a religion. The whole life of this great and noble man is understood and valued only when seen in this light.

The power of Greek thought reached its culmination in Aristotle. Social life was already so disintegrated and corrupt, inasmuch as the people were particularly in need of ethical leadership, that from then on no Greek of theoretical significance appeared. The Epicurean and Stoic schools were exclusively concerned with the practical question of life, and, although basically different in principle, both nevertheless sought to answer the same questions: how to find and to bestow peace and satisfaction in an age of despair? But what peace did these educated religions give to the human spirit? One leads directly, the other indirectly, to suicide—a dogma of belief in Stoicism!

No wonder that after such an intellectual decline in philosophy a disintegrating skepticism was spread abroad. But instability and insecurity only became greater; incapable of independent thought, men grasped at eclecticism, and finally were completely swallowed up in the Oriental and mystically oriented religions, as were also the Romans and the Egyptians.

That is, in short, the course of development of Greek culture, and the ethical outlook on life of the heathen Greeks corresponds to it. They always treated morality naturalistically; Plato himself, among the most idealistic of all Greek thinkers, lacked a true moral sanction for ethical law, which he so frequently confused with natural law. Ethics became at most a permanent part of politics. Certainly individual virtues were practiced and certain striking characteristics were developed, but no individual or social emphasis is given to a perfectly educated moral character, and men lacked the unifying and elevating bond of love. Thus the political disunity in things great and small; thus such a small people was unable to unify itself with its own power; thus the relatively swift dissolution of the Greek states and tribes. Intellectual education was unable to rescue the people; morality soon disappeared and was replaced by widespread licentiousness; finally, the best despaired of life and taught the people to die with dignity and decorum, even though they were not able to live with dignity and decorum.

This development of the life of the Greeks corresponds to ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents Page
• Foreword Page
• Acknowledgments and Sources Page
• Introduction
• Part One "Sacrifices of the Kulturkampf"
• Part Two Philosophical Sociology
• Part Three The Religious Question and Humanity
• Part Four Contra Marx: "Reform, Not Revolution"
• Part Five Nationalism without Chauvinism
• Part Six The Democratic Spirit and the Work Ethic
• Sentences
• Index