Gemma Lou I. VargasB.S. Accounting TechnologyMKGE202SOC & CULAssignment

1. Definition of Sociology

“Sociology is the study of human social life, groups and societies. It is a dazzling and compelling enterprise, having as its subject matter our own behaviour as social beings. The scope of sociology is extremely wide, ranging from the analysis of passing encounters between individuals in the street up to the investigation of world-wide social processes”. The science or study of the origin, development, organization, and functioning of human society; the science of the fundamental laws of social relations, institutions, etc. The Latin word: socius, "companion"; the suffix -logy, "the study of" from Greek -λογία from λόγος, lógos, "word", "knowledge".

2. Importance of Sociology

Sociology makes a scientific study of society: Prior to the emergence of sociology the study of society was carried on in an unscientific manner and society had never been the central concern of any science. It is through the study of sociology that the truly scientific study of the society has been possible. Sociology because of its bearing upon many of the problems of the present world has assumed such a great importance that it is considered to be the best approach to all the social sciences.

Sociology studies role of the institutions in the development of the individuals:  It is through sociology that scientific study of the great social institutions and the relation of the individual to each is being made. The home and family ,the school and educaton,the church and religion, the state and government ,industry and work ,the community and association, these are institutions through which society functions. Sociology studies these institutions and their role in the development of the individual and suggests suitable measures for restrengthening them with a view to enable them to serve the individual better.

Study of sociology is indispensable for understanding and planning of society: Society is a complex phenomenon with a multitude of intricacies. It is impossible to understand and solve its numerous problems without support of sociology. It is rightly said that we cannot understand and mend society without any knowledge of its mechanism and construction. Without the investigation carried out by sociology no real effective social planning would be possible. It helps us to determine the most efficient means for reaching the goals agreed upon. A certain amount of knowledge about society is necessary before any social policies can be carried out.

Sociology is of great importance in the solution of social problems: The present world is suffering from many problems which can be solved through scientific study of the society. It is the task of sociology to study the social problems through the methods of scientific research and to find out solution to them. The scientific study of human affairs will ultimately provide the body of knowledge and principles that will enable us to control the conditions of social life and improve them.

Sociology has drawn our attention to the intrinsic worth and dignity of man: Sociology has been instrumental in changing our attitude towards human beings. In a specialized society we are all limited as to the amount of the whole organization and culture that we can experience directly. We can hardly

know the people of other areas intimately. In order to have insight into and appreciation of the motives by which others live and the conditions under which they exist a knowledge of sociology is essential.

Sociology has changed our outlook with regard to the problems of crime etc:It is through the study of sociology that our whole outlook on various aspects of crime has change. The criminals are now treated as human beings suffering from mental deficiencies and efforts are accordingly made to rehabilitate them as useful members of the society.

Sociology has made great contribution to enrich human culture: Human culture has been made richer by the contribution of sociology. The social phenomenon is now understood in the light of scientific knowledge and enquiry. According to Lowie most of us harbor the comfortable delusion that our way of doing things is the only sensible if not only possible one. Sociology has given us training to have rational approach to questions concerning oneself, one's religion,customs,morals and institutions. It has further taught us to be objective, critical and dispassionate. It enables man to have better understanding both of himself and of others. By comparative study of societies and groups other than his existence ,his life becomes richer and fuller than it would otherwise be. Sociology also impresses upon us the necessity of overcoming narrow personal prejudices, ambitions and class hatred.

Sociology is of great importance in the solution of international problems: The progress made by physical sciences has brought the nations of the world nearer to each other. But in the social field the world has been left behind by the revolutionary progress of the science. The world is divided politically giving rise to stress and conflict. Men have failed to bring in peace. Sociology can help us in understanding the underlying causes and tensions.

The value of sociology lies in the fact that it keeps us update on modern situations:  It contributes to making good citizens and finding solutions to the community problems. It adds to the knowledge of the society. It helps the individual find his relation to society. The study of social phenomena and of the ways and means of promoting what Giddens calls social adequacy is one of the most urgent needs of the modern society. Sociology has a strong appeal to all types of mind through its direct bearing upon many of the initial problems of the present world.

3. Branches of Sociology Social morphology - a study of geographical data and settings Social physiology - the study of religion, law, economics, politics and other influences of society General sociology - the study of how different social laws are derived from various processes Criminology: What the evil in all of us is capable of doing Crowd psychology: How riots can start with otherwise normal participants Demography: Who we are as groups Geodemography: Focuses on the effects of geography Human ecology: How we live with what has been granted to us Nationalism studies: The causes of war and conflict Penology: The punishment part of crime and punishment Semiotics: The study of symbols and signs Social epistemology: The study of knowledge and belief Social ethics: Being good to each other Social geography: The study of people in their environments Social philosophy: The study of social behavior Sociobiology: The study of the biological determinants of social behavior Sociolinguistics: The use of languages and slang Sociology of cultures: How cultures evolve based on their surroundings Suicidology: The study of terminating one's own life

Victimology: How victims are affected by bad circumstances such as crime

4. Idea about society of the following philosophers :

PLATOPlato in his famous book “The Republic” believed that the best society was one that consisted of three classes that reflected the needs of that society. These classes were:

The rulers to administer (Philosopher Kings) The warriors to defend and control The artisans to provide the essentials of life These should all function harmoniously with power concentrated in the hands of the rulers.

This model closely followed Plato’s ideal man definition. Society was ‘the individual writ large.’ Plato’s individual consisted of three elements:

The rational element (should govern) The spirit (courage, emotions) The appetites (passions, desires)Thus Plato’s ideal society reflected the knowledge of man’s nature at the time. If one of the secondary elements dominated then the individual (or society) became unbalanced.

ARISTOTLE

For Aristotle, the state is a natural society. He shows how man is impelled by his very nature to form the societies of family, village, and state. Man’s natural end is the good life which is to be found only in the state. Therefore, the state is a natural society. “Man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity.”[6] That nature intended man to lead a social life is proven by man’s faculty of speech, which no other animal possesses. Now nature does nothing in vain, from which it follows that men were made to associate with one another.

Aristotle opens his “Politics” by stating the obvious fact that the state is a community of some kind. (By state Aristotle has in mind the Greek City-State). Like all other communities, the state must exist for an end, and the end of the state is the highest good of man, which for Aristotle means the life of virtue and contemplation.  “But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at the good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.”[1]

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

“All’s fair in love and war?” “The end justifies the means”. Many people sympathize with such sayings, but fewer act on them; most people come to a sticking point where they will not do something just because it benefits them. They are prevented by their morality, their principles or their religious faith.

Yet there are some people who appear unconcerned about principles of any kind and do what they want to get what they want. For these people pragmatism, not principle, is the guiding rule. Their behaviour is often described as ‘machiavellian’, after Niccolo Machiavelli, a political writer born in the renaissance Florence of the fifteenth century. Machiavelli was the great political pragmatist of all time. His views

were drawn wholly from his own observation and experience. They were shocking and remain shocking, to the extent that many people believed his work was inspired by the devil.

LOCKE (l632-l7O4)

Came from a Puritan family, living during the Stuart period. His family fought for the Roundheads against the Cavaliers. During his life he was strongly suspected of plotting against the monarchy and finally had to flee England and stay in Holland. Here he advised William of Orange whose ambition for the English throne finally succeeded with the forced abdication of James IILocke’s State of Nature is necessarily different from that of Hobbes. It is peaceful and people own land and possessions. People have perfect freedom and independence and are equal. Their freedom is restricted only by the Laws of Nature. These can be known by man by REASON, The Law of Nature is....No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. (Note here that man owns possessions in the State of Nature. According to Locke’s ‘Labour Theory of Value’, this is because man’s possessions are the fruits of his labour and hence are his by natural right.)

JOHN STUART MILL – LIBERALISM

LIBERALISM: Individual Liberty an end in itself

1. He thought people would become MORE civilized with education and the vote.2. Thought basic need for man is individual freedom and responsibility.3. Wanted strict limits on the State’s right to control the individual.4. Mill, unlike his father, saw democracy in America and realised the problems of reconciling democracy and

individual liberty, because the governing were not in fact the governed. These were: -(a) With majority government, the government could legislate against the minority and the individual, and

tyrannize over the minority.(b) Society at large could be hostile to individuals and standardize attitudes, tastes and feelings. That is, mass

democracy resulted in mass conformity.

CONFUCIUS

Confucius, the Latinized form of the name of Kung Fu-tzu, was bom in 551 B.C. and died in 479 B.C. The philosophy that is known as Confucianism comes mainly from the speeches and writings of Confucius. Disciples (followers) of Confucius, such as Mencius, made important contributions to Confucianism as well. The ideas of Confucianism are found in nine works: the "Four Books" and the "Five Classics."

Confucianism is an ethical system rather than a religion. (Ethics deals with human behavior and conduct.) Confucius was mainly concerned with how human beings behaved toward each other and paid little attention to such matters as sin, salvation, and the soul. He developed a system of government, society, and justice which we call Confucianism.

Confucius believed that people, because of their nature, desire to live in the company of other people, that is, in society. It is only in society that people reach their fullest development. Therefore, it is important for people to know how to behave in society, that is, in their relations with other people.

THOMAS MORE

Although More argues that Utopian society will never be wealthy since common ownership deprives people of the incentive to work, Hythloday maintains that strategic punishment ensures that all citizens will pull their own weight and that this system of punishment must exist for Utopia’s communal society to succeed. Though an individual in a market-based economy who works incredibly long hours to beat out his competition is certainly more productive than the average Utopian worker, Hythloday explains that for every one of the productive people, there are numerous people who make no productive contribution. While no one in Utopia is phenomenally productive, everyone is fairly productive, and laziness on the job is punished. This punishment system admits to the flawed nature of man—Utopia may be perfect, but Utopians are not. The narrator More points out the potential pitfalls of a communal society, but Hythloday maintains that these problems can be overcome by properly structuring society. Utopia is not ideal because its people are perfect but rather because its laws compel citizens to act perfectly despite their inherent human failings.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

Hobbes believed that all phenomena in the universe, without exception, can be explained in terms of the motions and interactions of material bodies. He did not believe in the soul, or in the mind as separate from the body, or in any of the other incorporeal and metaphysical entities in which other writers have believed. Instead, he saw human beings as essentially machines, with even their thoughts and emotions operating according to physical laws and chains of cause and effect, action and reaction. As machines, human beings pursue their own self-interest relentlessly, mechanically avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. Hobbes saw the commonwealth, or society, as a similar machine, larger than the human body and artificial but nevertheless operating according to the laws governing motion and collision.

In putting together this materialist view of the world, Hobbes was influenced by his contemporaries Galileo and Kepler, who had discovered laws governing planetary motion, thereby discrediting much of the Aristotelian worldview. Hobbes hoped to establish similar laws of motion to explain the behavior of human beings, but he was more impressed by Galileo and Kepler’s mathematical precision than by their use of empirical data and observation. Hobbes hoped to arrive at his laws of motion deductively, in the manner of geometrical proofs. It is important to note that Hobbes was not in any position to prove that all of human experience can be explained in terms of physical and mechanical processes. That task would have required scientific knowledge far beyond that possessed by the seventeenth century. Even today, science is nowhere near being able to fully explain human experience in physical terms, even though most people tend to believe that science will one day be able to do just that. In the absence of such a detailed explanation, the image of the human being as a machine in Hobbes’s writing remains more of a metaphor than a philosophical proof.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

In his work, Rousseau addresses freedom more than any other problem of political philosophy and aims to explain how man in the state of nature is blessed with an enviable total freedom. This freedom is total for two reasons. First, natural man is physically free because he is not constrained by a repressive state apparatus or dominated by his fellow men. Second, he is psychologically and spiritually free because he is not enslaved to any of the artificial needs that characterize modern society. This second sense of freedom, the freedom from need, makes up a particularly insightful and revolutionary component of Rousseau’s philosophy. Rousseau believed modern man’s enslavement to his own needs was responsible for all sorts of societal ills, from exploitation and domination of others to poor self-esteem and depression.

Rousseau believed that good government must have the freedom of all its citizens as its most fundamental objective. The Social Contract in particular is Rousseau’s attempt to imagine the form of government that best affirms the individual freedom of all its citizens, with certain constraints inherent to a complex, modern, civil society. Rousseau acknowledged that as long as property and laws exist, people can never be as entirely free in

modern society as they are in the state of nature, a point later echoed by Marx and many other Communist and anarchist social philosophers. Nonetheless, Rousseau strongly believed in the existence of certain principles of government that, if enacted, can afford the members of society a level of freedom that at least approximates the freedom enjoyed in the state of nature. In The Social Contract and his other works of political philosophy, Rousseau is devoted to outlining these principles and how they may be given expression in a functional modern state.

Defining the Natural and the State of Nature

For Rousseau to succeed in determining which societal institutions and structures contradict man’s natural goodness and freedom, he must first define the ”natural”. Rousseau strips away all the ideas that centuries of development have imposed on the true nature of man and concludes that many of the ideas we take for granted, such as property, law, and moral inequality, actually have no basis in nature. For Rousseau, modern society generally compares unfavorably to the ”state of nature.”

As Rousseau discusses in the Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract, the state of nature is the hypothetical, prehistoric place and time where human beings live uncorrupted by society. The most important characteristic of the state of nature is that people have complete physical freedom and are at liberty to do essentially as they wish. That said, the state of nature also carries the drawback that human beings have not yet discovered rationality or morality. In different works, Rousseau alternately emphasizes the benefits and shortfalls of the state of nature, but by and large he reveres it for the physical freedom it grants people, allowing them to be unencumbered by the coercive influence of the state and society. In this regard, Rousseau’s conception of the state of nature is entirely more positive than Hobbes’s conception of the same idea, as Hobbes, who originated the term, viewed the state of nature as essentially a state of war and savagery. This difference in definition indicates the two philosophers’ differing views of human nature, which Rousseau viewed as essentially good and Hobbes as essentially base and brutal. Finally, Rousseau acknowledged that although we can never return to the state of nature, understanding it is essential for society’s members to more fully realize their natural goodness.

References:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sociology www. sociology .org.uk/as4def.doc http://www.sociologyguide.com/introduction-to-sociology/importance-of-sociology.php http://www.life123.com/parenting/education/social-studies/branches-of-sociology.shtml http://www.scholardarity.com/?page_id=2410 http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/rousseau/themes.html