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Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 4. Jg 1935, Heft 1 |
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Whatever may be the merits of the controversy, it is certainly true that every student of the social sciences brings to his choice of areas for research, his detailed investigations, his selection of data, and his organization of materials some more or less clearly developed assumptions and scheme of valuation. If anything is known about the human animal this is known. As Croce says, if some large, generous, and reasoned philosophy does not control the thinker, then some petty, narrow, class, and provincial philosophy will.
And what schemes of organization and valuation have generally prevailed among American scholars in the social sciences? In the main the system of British Manchesterism has prevailed, with modifications in detail and with acquiescence in certain stubborn contradictions in American practice. For confirmation of this large generalization, the reader is referred to that excellent contribution to the history of social thought in the United States, Joseph Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America. The systems of Hegel, Marx, and the German socialists of the chair have had little or no observable influence on American studies in history, politics, economics, or sociology. Veblen may be cited as an exception that illustrates the rule. Even so-called institutional economists bent on "seeing things as they are" have not escaped the constricting influence of British Manchesterism. Nor have American Catholic writers in this field kept pure and undefiled the scheme of Thomas Aquinas.
For the moment American scholarship runs in its historic course. Its statistical and factual studies have produced materials and works of immense value to future thought and use. Its concentration on research continues unabated, enormously enriching knowledge of human conduct in every area of social life. It would be difficult to pay a tribute too high to achievements of this type. Whether the materials assembled are used in checking assumptions and predilections or in shaping practice, their utility can scarcely be overestimated. This alone is sufficient to give distinction to American work among the scholars of the world.
But efforts of American scholars to bring to pass a social synthesis by the application of the empirical method have come to a dead end. This fact is not generally admitted. Indeed it is stubbornly contested. Yet the guess may be hazarded that on this point the history of American social thought is destined to turn in the not distant future.
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 4. Jg 1935, Heft 1. Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1935, Seite 64. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Sozialforschung_-_Jahrgang_4_-_Heft_1.pdf/66&oldid=- (Version vom 29.8.2022)
