Abstract
The end-point of Sorokin’s articulated work is represented by the fact that the present juncture of societal transformation is in need of “humanity”. The Russian-American sociologist had an “intuition” synthesizable in the following statement: the future of humanity and its development is in the hands of humanity itself. Neither law nor education, much less religion, economics, or science, is up to this task. According to Sorokin, change must start from the rediscovery of the positive values of man, and science acts as a guide, also by overcoming strictly sensuous knowledge models. His is not just a sociology of the crisis. It is a “critical sociology” not limited to the analysis of the degenerative processes of society, but that seeks their deep roots by denouncing the negative factors causing them. Applying these assumptions implies understanding the mechanisms through which human beings make their own decisions. These dynamics highlight the problems of the choice and of the ethics of responsibility, as well as the role of science and researchers.
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Notes
- 1.
The centre was established in 1949 thanks to founding by Mr. Eli Lilly and the Lilly Endowment, with the aim of promoting interdisciplinary research and organizing symposia on altruism, analyzing its types, aspects, and dimensions, as well as its effects on the individual, social, and biological life (health and well-being).
- 2.
On these five dimensions, some scholars (Levin and Kaplan 2010) developed and validated a measure of love, the Sorokin Multi-dimensional Inventory of Love Experience (SMILE). In view of Sorokin’s opposition to quantophreny and tests, leading to an excessive simplification of social reality, I doubt that he would have been particularly enthusiastic about this application of his theoretical framework on love.
- 3.
The nature has been particularly vulnerable to (more or less irreparable) damage, which also affects the well-being of humanity and, above all, future generations (pollution, deforestation, greenhouse effect, etc.).
- 4.
The acronym CNRS indicates the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the largest public research organization in France.
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Mangone, E. (2018). From Creative Altruistic Love to the Ethics of Responsibility. In: Social and Cultural Dynamics . SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68309-6_7
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