Title: Bezugspunkt Gesellschaft. Über die Geselligkeit und Ungeselligkeit der Menschen
Description: As its titles says, this is a (philosophical) book on society as a point of relation and orientation for the individual. We might expect that the task of sociology consists in illustrating us on this question, but, as the book explains, sociology is not able to do that because the human being is left out of sociology for methodological reasons: The social facts have to be treated as things, as Emile Durkheim, one of the fathers of sociology, stated. It is only possible to make scientific statements about things - that is because things do not move (they are predictable), whereas people move. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu said that sociological objects (that is: we) are not as motionless as things are, but they do not move as quickly as Sartre's free subject either; they are sluggish. Human beings can become the objects of sociology because they are a little bit like things. Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems does not even bother with what people do. Luhmann said that people are the bricks of the "house of society", but as it is with bricks, they end up being covered by the paint of the walls and are no longer relevant for the things happening in the rooms - and this is what sociology is really about. But if sociology, the science of society, rules human beings out in the study of society, the task of finding our place in society falls back onto us invidiuals, and we are left alone with it. What could society be for us individuals? How can we define our place inside or outside of society? And how could we determine the value of society for us, the role it should play in our lifes?
Subjects: Sociology, Society, Individual, Science, Ethics
People: Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998), Norbert Elias (1897-1990), Peter L. Berger