Consciousness and Society, by H. Stuart Hughes, published by MacGibbon and Kee, 1959 pp 433, 30/-.
nineteenth century social thought in Great Britain rested upon two complementary sets of philosophic assumptions: those of positivism and utilitarianism, and, though the twentieth century has seen both sets of assumptions challenged in nearly every field of investigation, the need for a radical reorientation of sociological enquiry has hardly been recognised in this country. Thus Professor Hughes new book Consciousness and Society, which surveys the work of Europe’s leading sociologists and social philosophers in the period 1890–1930, and introduces their ideas to a non-specialist British public for the first time, could have quite revolutionary significance.
The assumptions of positivist-utilitarian sociology may be summarised as follows: (1) All empirical facts, including social facts can and should be observed without preconceptions. In Durkheim’s early crude terminology, they should be studied “as things”; (2) Insofar as human behaviour is recognised as being purposive rather than causally determined, the observed actor is to be thought of as a rational scientifically-minded individual, formulating his ends and choosing the scientifically appropriate means of achieving them; (3) A sociology (i.e. an account of how individual actions can be knit together to form a stable social system) can be built on this foundation only by assuming that what ends men seek are irrelevant to the problem of social order. Here lurks the hypothesis of the unseen hand.