The Crisis of Our Age

Extract

Almost exactly a century after August Comte inaugurated modern sociology under the flag of positivism, of progress and of mankind marching toward an era of glorious self-revelation, another sociologist directs the heavy artillery of a sweeping criticism just at that positivism and faith in progress, and at those achievements of mankind which Comte anticipated as the results of man's being himself and nothing but himself. P. A. Sorokin, an outstanding scholar, a studious analyst of social dynamics, the watchful observer of the Russian revolution and all that followed from it, presents us with an analysis of that phase of western civilization in which we have both the privilege and the anguish to exist—to live would be too pretentious a word. This analysis goes to the very heart of the crisis. And Sorokin does not mince words nor spare susceptibilities and prejudices.