The Anthem Companion to Ferdinand Tönnies

The Companion is a collection of articles covering noted German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies' full range of thinking. Topics include Tönnies and the development of sociology, Tönnies on community, on globalization, on gender and the family, and on crime and law. They also include Tönnies’ views on politics, on public opinion as well as on Tönnies as Hobbes scholar and his relation to Georg Simmel. Each of the essays is written in a clear manner and will be understandable to the non-specialist. Each essay is comprehensive and will be useful to the specialist. The Companion is a welcome and significant contribution to our understanding of this noted sociologist and political thinker.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Jun 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781783085422

Book preview

ANTHEM COMPANIONS TO SOCIOLOGY

Anthem Companions to Sociology offer authoritative and comprehensive assessments of major figures in the development of sociology from the past two centuries. Covering the major advancements in sociological thought, these companions offer critical evaluations of key figures in the American and European sociological traditions, and will provide students and scholars with an in-depth assessment of the makers of sociology and chart their relevance to modern society.

Series Editor

Bryan S. Turner—City University of New York, USA, and Australian Catholic University, Australia

Forthcoming titles in this series include:

The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt

The Anthem Companion to Pierre Bourdieu

The Anthem Companion to Auguste Comte

The Anthem Companion to Everett Hughes

The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim

The Anthem Companion to C. Wright Mills

The Anthem Companion to Robert Park

The Anthem Companion to Talcott Parsons

The Anthem Companion to Phillip Rieff

The Anthem Companion to Georg Simmel

The Anthem Companion to Gabriel Tarde

The Anthem Companion to Ernst Troeltsch

The Anthem Companion to Thorstein Veblen

The Anthem Companion to Max Weber

The Anthem Companion to Ferdinand Tönnies

Edited by

Christopher Adair-Toteff

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2016

by ANTHEM PRESS

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© 2016 Christopher Adair-Toteff editorial matter and selection; individual chapters © individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Adair-Toteff, Christopher, editor.

Title: The Anthem companion to Ferdinand Tönnies / edited by Christopher Adair-Toteff.

Description: London; New York, NY : Anthem Press, [2016] | Series: Anthem companions to sociology | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016002466 | ISBN 9780857281821 (hardback : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Tèonnies, Ferdinand, 1855–1936. | Sociologists – Germany. | Sociology – Germany – History.

Classification: LCC HM479.T59 A58 2016 | DDC 301.092—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002466

ISBN-13: 978 0 85728 182 1 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 0 85728 182 8 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an ebook.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Christopher Adair-Toteff

Contributors

Index

INTRODUCTION

Christopher Adair-Toteff

Any list of the most important sociologists is bound to include Ferdinand Tönnies. This is because he was so instrumental in developing sociology as a separate and important discipline in Germany and because his influence on sociology has been virtually worldwide. The fact that he did not hold a faculty position in sociology is irrelevant, not the least because sociology as an academic discipline had not yet been established in Germany. That it did happen around 1920 is due in large measure to Tönnies’s growing reputation and increasing influence.

Tönnies’s reputation rests primarily on his now famous distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. As will become clearer toward the end of this introduction, these two concepts are neither easy to comprehend nor to translate. Briefly, Gemeinschaft is the traditional, rural, organic community whereas Gesellschaft pertains more to the modern, urban, individualistic society. Tönnies’s conceptual opposition has become one of the enduring contributions to sociology; people have tended to pay less attention to Tönnies because they erroneously believe that this was his only contribution. Unfortunately, this mistaken impression is not held just by laypeople; even some important sociologists have held this belief. For one important example: in 1957 Charles Loomis published his translation of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. In his foreword to this edition Pitirim A. Sorokin insisted that Like many an eminent thinker Ferdinand Tönnies was a man of one central idea (Tönnies 1988 [1957], vii). In 2001 Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis published a new translation of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. This volume appeared in the illustrious series Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought and Harris and Hollis, like Charles Loomis before them, believed that it was an acknowledged classic and that it legitimately belonged in the sociological-political canon (Tönnies 2001, xxix; 1988, xii). Both Loomis’s and Harris and Hollis’s opinions about Tönnies continue to be borne out, but Sorokin’s claim has lost some currency. One goal of this volume is to demonstrate how important and relevant Tönnies’s distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft remains, but a second goal is to show that Tönnies’s importance is not just based on that one central idea, but that he had much of importance to say on a variety of topics, including many aspects of sociology and social theory.

The Tönnies Chapters

The chapters in this volume were written with the intention of covering many of the major aspects of Tönnies’s sociology. The authors were invited to submit their chapters because of their important and recent contributions to the study of Tönnies’s thinking. They offer different analyses of older topics and provide explorations of newer subjects. Tönnies’s masterwork is of course covered, but most of the chapters in this book focus on many different themes, thus disproving Sorokin’s insistence that Tönnies was a man of only one central idea.

The volume opens with my chapter (Chapter 1), which is intended to explore the three ways Tönnies helped sociology to develop as a major discipline in Germany. I begin by discussing Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and by noting that while Tönnies made minimal changes to the various editions, he did include new introductions. These are highlighted to demonstrate the ways his perspectives on the books and on sociology in general underwent changes. The second major section is intended to show how Tönnies fostered the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (German Society for Sociology). While others were involved with him in first establishing it, Tönnies was the one who persevered and ensured that it overcame many obstacles. While books such as Die Sitte, Das Eigentum and Einführung in die Soziologie have never achieved the iconic status that Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft has, they are nonetheless important contributions to sociology. Reading these volumes will significantly add to one’s understanding of Tönnies and will help undermine the notion that he was a man of one central concept. The final section is devoted to exploring Tönnies’s relationships with his fellow German sociologists. These sociologists included Georg Simmel, Werner Sombart, Ernst Troeltsch and especially Max Weber. The general point of my chapter is to detail the various roles that Tönnies played in the development of sociology and to show that he was indispensable for its existence as a respectable scholarly discipline.

In his first contribution (Chapter 2) Niall Bond explores the relationship between Tönnies and Simmel. He explains how they both moved from philosophy to social theory to sociology. Tönnies based much of his thinking on Thomas Hobbes and his preoccupation with security while Simmel founded his thinking on Immanuel Kant and his concern with epistemological forms. Bond contrasts Tönnies’s rural conservatism with Simmel’s urbane progressivism and he delineates how the former largely regarded society as organic whereas the latter focused more on the individual. Furthermore, Tönnies was tempted to make moral statements while Simmel preferred to maintain a critical distance. But Tönnies and Simmel both were fundamentally concerned with the question of how society was made possible. Bond stresses that while they focused on the same thing, their approaches differed fundamentally; Tönnies’s sociology is characterized as solid while Simmel’s was agile; Tönnies sees society as a substantial whole, while Simmel regards society as a massive series of interconnected relations. Tönnies concentrated on the peaceful, organic whole whereas Simmel investigated continuous, everyday struggles between individuals. Simmel may have regarded Tönnies’s sociology as a relict of positivist assumptions, but he still learned quite a bit about social wills and social interactions. For his part, Tönnies thought that Simmel was too influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche and was too often removed from the situations; Tönnies believed himself to be an empirical scientist and thought that Simmel was too much of an ivory tower thinker. Yet these contrasts paled in relation to their shared interests: the impact of money, the increasing urbanization and the movement toward expanding rationality and artificiality. However, Bond does not merely focus on Tönnies and Simmel; rather he places both of them within the larger context of contemporary German social thought. Thus, Tönnies is contrasted with Wilhelm Dilthey while Simmel is occasionally connected to Max Weber. Bond is rather complete in his explorations and careful in his judgments: he concludes by noting that Tönnies and Simmel did not always agree and on occasion they seemed to regard each other as rivals. But, as Bond makes clear, Tönnies and Simmel learned much from each other and they valued each other’s contributions to the establishment of sociology as a reputable science. They may have sometimes thought of each other as adversaries, but they always regarded each other as worthy sociologists.

Kenneth C. Bessant (Chapter 3) provides a clear account of Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft distinction but he moves beyond the typical accounts, first, by stressing the willing aspects of it and, second, by arguing that most accounts oversimplify Tönnies’s distinction, whereas it is really very complex. Part of this complexity stems from the dialectical and dynamic quality of social life—Bessant suggests that too many commentators ignore this quality and believe that Tönnies provides a rather static overview of social forms. Bessant also takes issue with the accepted notion that these forms are rather rigidly demarcated; he suggests that they are rather fluid and subject to change over time. Part of this change is a result of increasing modernity with the replacement of organic states by a highly globalized system. Thus, one of the key factors in Bessant’s account is how fundamental the process of change is to Tönnies’s sociology. A second key factor is his emphasis on action; people are not isolated individuals but act with and against others; this is the case whether it is the closely knit community or the individualistic society. Tönnies is in agreement with Max Weber regarding this emphasis on action, but his long-standing concern with collective entities was dismissed by Weber. However, Bessant points out that in practice, Weber came quite close to Tönnies’s view of communal characteristics. More importantly, Bessant underscores Tönnies’s "three-fold conception of social entities: biological, psychological, and sociological. In all three aspects, there is a sense in which the entity wills." Bessant’s final point is to argue that Tönnies’s sociology is not outdated, but is often misunderstood. Rather than viewing Tönnies as one who affirms the static past, we must recognize that he embraces the changing future.

David Inglis (Chapter 4) also addresses the question of Tönnies’s relevance for today’s sociology and he answers it with a definite affirmative. He argues that no other classical sociologist has been stereotyped and misunderstood to the degree that Tönnies has. Inglis takes as his task to show not only that the typical picture of Tönnies as a dry thinker is a caricature but that it prevents students from realizing how fecund he is for the future study of sociology. Inglis focuses primarily on the related notions of Gesellschaft and Kürwille and he demonstrates how much the merchant is the embodiment of the spirit of the latter. The merchant is the individual who embodies rational calculation for the attainment of wealth. In this regard Inglis notes Tönnies’s affinity with Karl Marx but he suggests that Tönnies rejects Marx’s historical materialism and instead offers a more sociological account of Gesellschaft. In so doing, Inglis emphasizes the importance of the metropolis because in Tönnies’s account it is the center of culture and science and is connected with commerce and industry. However, Tönnies is not solely preoccupied with the ruling elites; rather, he is also concerned about the impoverished members of the working class. Like the wealthy merchants, the workers are cosmopolitan, but lacking the benefits that capital provides, they are reduced to having a sense of alienation. Inglis concludes that Tönnies contributes to a better understanding of modernity in two ways; first, by understanding the linkages between Gesellschaft and globalization and, second, by appreciating the crucial role of public opinion in modern societies.

Stefan Bertschi (Chapter 5) continues with the theme of Tönnies’s concern about the future. He specifically concentrates on urban social architecture and he does so by comparing him to Georg Simmel. Bertschi finds the earlier lack of comparison between Tönnies and Simmel perplexing for several reasons. First, both were trained as philosophers; second, both were founding members of the German Society for Sociology; and, third, both were interested in social architecture. Because this contrast is almost a blank slate, Bertschi chooses the rather unconventional method of proceeding back in time. That is, he begins with twenty-first century gated communities and works backward to the end of the nineteenth century. The gated communities provide a type of Gemeinschaft; by excluding the other the communities reinforce shared values and foster a sense of physical safety. In the gated communities one is not likely to meet Simmel’s stranger and as societies they are more cerebral than the organic communities. Nonetheless, the rational activities of their members do not condemn the people to isolated and meaningless lives; instead, they work with a common purpose toward communal values and shared financial gain. One of Bertschi’s important goals is to persuade readers that Tönnies’s insights into more social architecture are just as relevant as those of Simmel and that a close analysis of how these two sociologists compare in a postmodern light helps contribute to a richer understanding of modern and contemporary social interaction.

Efraim Podoksik (Chapter 6) is one scholar who recognizes Tönnies’s interest and debt to some of his predecessors, but his topic is not the usual one. Instead of tracing Tönnies’s debt to Marx, Podoksik examines his long-term interest in Hobbes. In fact, Podoksik makes the case that Tönnies was a bona fide Hobbes scholar. Tönnies’s interest in Hobbes was life-long; it began the year of his graduation and continued throughout his life. In 1878 Tönnies spent considerable time in England with the purpose of examining Hobbes’s unpublished manuscripts. There, he uncovered what he believed to be the original manuscript for Hobbes’s Behemoth. Tönnies later published some of the fruits of his own labor in two volumes and in numerous essays. One of Tönnies’s major points was his insistence that Hobbes was the first truly modern philosopher. Most nineteenth-century historians of philosophy had maintained that Descartes was the first, but Tönnies maintained that Hobbes was more important because, first, Hobbes’s philosophy was not a derivative of the empiricism of Bacon but was a type of rationalism. Second, Hobbes’s emphasis on reason was extremely influential on the other two main rationalists, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz. Podoksik allows that by our current standards Tönnies’s editing was not optimal, but he makes a compelling case for regarding Tönnies’s scholarship on Hobbes as path-breaking and of continuing relevance.

William Stafford (Chapter 7) tackles the thorny problem of Tönnies’s views on gender and the rather common view that he was patriarchal and bound by tradition. Stafford begins by setting out passages that seem to confirm these views, beginning with the origins of Gemeinschaft in the family, and by making the claim that the increasingly modern society has led to the demise of the family and a rise in criminality. Stafford notes that this pessimistic view of modernity was widely shared in many sections of German culture and he compares it with a similar view found in G. W. F. Hegel. However, unlike Hegel’s abstract philosophy, Tönnies’s sociology was a combination of conceptual models based on empirical observation so his viewpoints were more complex and realistic than some scholars contend. Stafford extends this view of complexity and ambiguity to Tönnies’s views of gender and argues that Tönnies uses the notion of gender polarity to accent the conceptual differences, but notes that the gender lines are far more blurred in empirical reality. Stafford quotes from passages in which Tönnies bemoans the use of stale clichés and inveighs against the claims of universal validity. Seen in a certain light Tönnies does seem patriarchal, but unlike Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche he was not a misogynist. He was always a progressive who fought for equality. He encouraged women to participate more in local government and he welcomed more women into the discipline of the social sciences. Stafford’s concluding point is that we should not be misled into thinking that Tönnies’s views on gender were fixed and immutable; rather, they evolved as he matured. And we should not be misguided by those who see only black and white in Tönnies’s writings; rather they are far more complex and ambiguous than a superficial reading might suggest.

Slavko Splichal (Chapter 8) aims to rehabilitate Tönnies’s efforts to conceptualize public opinion as a form of social will. Splichal argues that Tönnies’s 1922 book Kritik der öffentlichen Meinung has suffered unwarranted neglect. Tönnies’s attempt was one of the first as well as one of the last to offer a close study of what public opinion really is and how scholars should investigate it. Splichal notes that there were no real theoretical approaches to public opinion until Habermas’s work in the early 1960s. Splichal not only sets out important distinctions between how will is expressed by the Gemeinschaft and how it is expressed by the Gesellschaft, he also details how Tönnies draws on the work of two of his famous philosophical predecessors: Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel. Tönnies emphasizes that his book is an epistemological critique by naming it after Kant’s famous Kritik der reinen Vernunft. And Tönnies borrows from Hegel’s philosophy of law by noting how Hegel demonstrated the contradictory sides of public opinion; it was esteemed in its essence but despised in its concrete manifestations. Finally, Splichal links Tönnies’s emphasis to the connection between public opinion and the press and he emphasizes his insistence on the necessity of a free press—that it not only appears to be a manifestation of the social will but it is also a critical means to educate people.

In his second contribution (Chapter 9) Niall Bond discusses Tönnies’s complex relationship to politics. His chapter has three major concerns: Tönnies’s theoretical understanding, his political sociology and his own political views. Bond demonstrates that many scholars have misunderstood Tönnies and his politics, beginning with failing to recognize that Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft is not just a major sociological work but also a political and ethical book. His larger point is that Tönnies’s political theory was a complex assimilation of various political theories. Bond warns against believing that Tönnies’s political theory and political beliefs were unchanging; instead, he shows how they underwent major changes as a result of Tönnies’s political understanding and his political interactions. For example, while quite young, he read Marx and during his time in England he adopted some of Marx’s positions on the causes of poverty and social misery, but he later admitted that he did not have a proper understanding of Marx’s philosophy nor did he have an adequate response to social problems. Bond also points out that Tönnies’s opinions were not always based on scientific positions; for instance, he cites Tönnies’s nationalistic fervor. In addition, while Tönnies tended to regard the state as important, he never believed that it could or should provide all remedies to all social problems; instead, it was the community that was more important and more trustworthy. That did not mean that Tönnies was fully in favor of mass democracy; he was concerned about the masses’ understanding of political issues. Nonetheless, he was in favor of mass suffrage. Finally, Bond takes issue with the belief that Tönnies was anti-liberal; while he was never fully comfortable with every aspect of liberal doctrine in Germany at the time, he clearly favored many aspects of it. Most telling was his adamant stance against and continual warnings about the rise of National Socialism in Germany. While Tönnies suffered greatly during the early years of the Nazi regime, he did not live to experience the full horrors of living in Nazi Germany.

Mathieu Deflem (Chapter 10) clearly announces the thesis of his chapter by the title "Crime and Law in Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft." Deflem persuasively argues that Tönnies’s research in the area of crime is one of the most neglected areas of his work. Deflem believes that the concentration on Tönnies’s notions of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft meant that scholars did not pay sufficient attention to other issues, especially criminal conduct. Deflem maintains that this is unfortunate for at least two reasons: first, Tönnies successfully integrated sociological theory with empirical theory, and, second, on the basis of this he was able to construct a unique conception of social order. Tönnies’s interest in crime was not insignificant; rather, over a 40-year period he published no fewer than 34 works on crime and another 17 on criminal statistics. Rather than lumping all criminals into one classification, Tönnies differentiated them into those who commit minor transgressions and those who commit major crimes. Furthermore, he analyzed how a criminal’s place of origin impacted his predilection to crime and he considered the frequency of crime in urban areas relative to rural regions. Finally, while Tönnies concentrated primarily on social causes of crime, he also investigated biological and individual causes. In Deflem’s considered view, because Tönnies was able to combine a diverse range of factors, his work on crime is particularly instructive and well worth studying.

The full range of the topics covered in this volume should be more than sufficient to convince almost everyone that Tönnies was more than a man of one central idea. He made significant contributions to the history of philosophy, economics and politics, not to mention important contributions to the notions of global expansion, increasing urbanization and even gender relations. Of course, Tönnies’s most famous and most enduring contribution is to sociology—through his terminology, methodology and focus. It is hard to think about Tönnies without thinking about sociology; it is almost as difficult to think about sociology without Ferdinand Tönnies.

A Note on Translating Tönnies

Anyone who has translated any German’s writing into English is well aware of the dangers and pitfalls that they are going to encounter. While there are degrees of correctness the translator can never hope to achieve the perfect translation. Instead, the translator is painfully aware that one’s best efforts are never enough. Whether it is Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust or Hermann Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel, the translator faces numerous problems in choosing the right word, in deciding how to change the sentence structure, and even in considering where to break lengthy paragraphs. The translator of the classical German sociologist is confronted with similar problems, and more. Anyone who has tried to translate Simmel’s writings finds themselves at their wit’s end in trying to put his particular German into acceptable English. Weber’s German is not as problematic as Simmel’s, but his preoccupation with the substance of concepts, coupled with his lack of interest in the form, contributes to the difficulty of rendering his German into acceptable English. In contrast to Simmel and Weber, Tönnies appears much easier to translate. Granted, he writes in lengthy sentences and in long paragraphs, but his style seems relatively congenial and his grammar not very peculiar. The trouble with Tönnies is his concepts. Not with all of them or even many, but a select few are particularly troublesome. This difficulty is partially because he uses terms in new and different ways and partly as a result of these terms having been brought into common use.

An indication of the difficulties of translating Tönnies is evident in the various translations of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. The title of the translation by Charles Loomis was Community and Society (Tönnies 1988). However, Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis believe that Loomis’s title did not accurately reflect Tönnies’s meaning of Gesellschaft, so the title of their translation is Community and Civil Society (Tönnies 2001). Harris and Hollis note the long history of problems with Tönnies’s German—that he uses the traditional lengthy sentence with its numerous subordinate clauses. They also point out that Tönnies’s style vacillates between rigorous scientific analyses and almost romantic rhetoric. Finally, they suggest that he tends to use archaic words or adapt more modern terminology to suit his own needs (Tönnies 2001, xxxviii–xxxix). Unfortunately, their remedy for the deficiencies in Tönnies’s writing is misguided; they try to render his German into the idiom of the present day, including everyday and even occasional slang expressions. In my review of their book I admitted that translating is notoriously difficult, but I pointed out that their effort is often awkward and poor while also being rather perplexing and occasionally inconsistent (Adair-Toteff 2003, 167–8).

The most popular of Tönnies’s terms and the most difficult to translate are the two pairs: Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft and Wesenwille/Kürwille. Tönnies is responsible for giving them their current meanings, but he did not invent either pairing. Thus, in order to understand Tönnies’s particular use, it is helpful to consider the origins of these terms. As the Grimms’ Deutsches Wörterbuch notes, Gemeinschaft is related to a number of terms: Gemein, Gemeinde and Gemeinheit. Gemein has a history of describing what is shared or held in common. What is shared is shared by members of the same tribe (Stamm) (Grimm 1984: 5, 3169–74). Gemein is also related to Gemeinde as in das Gemeine Haus (Grimm 1984: 5, 3180; see also the connections on 3182 and 3186). But Gemein also has larger connections, such as with the gemeine Leute (common people). This may mean the lower class as in the little people (kleine Leute), but it also means the common members of a group, and it is this that also links Gemein with Gemeinde (Grimm 1984: 5, 3202, 3205, 3218).

The Grimm brothers explored the connection between Gemein and Gemeinde more specifically in the entry on Gemeinde. The Gemeinde is composed of people who share the common land, who share the common resources, and who pay for the common costs (Grimm 1984: 5, 3221–2, 3225–6). Occasionally, the Gemeinde will take on the responsibility for the welfare of the poorest members and there are occasions in which the closeness of the community is emphasized, as in Volksgemeinde (Grimm 1984: 5, 3234, 3238). Martin Luther may have been one of the earliest to stress the close connection between Gemein, Gemeinde and Gemeinschaft (Grimm 1984: 5, 3231; see also 3239).

The term Gemeinschaft can be traced back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Mittelhochdeutsch, where it is used as either a religious or a civil term. Its connection to Gemeinde is especially underscored by the form Gemeinschaft. Furthermore, it has two characteristics that point toward Tönnies’s use: that members possess and use the goods in common and that such a Gemeinschaft can exist only where there is fundamental trust (Grimm 1984: 5, 3265, 3267–8). And it was Tönnies who helped modify the notion of Gesellschaft because its original definition was quite close to Gemeinschaft. Gesellschaft was often employed to refer to any closely knit group; this included noble knights as well as middle class tradesmen, and even handworkers and artisans (Grimm 1984: 5, 4051–3). What seems to differentiate Gemeinschaft from Gesellschaft is that members of the former are either formally related or somehow closely connected whereas members of the latter have chosen to associate (Grimm 1984: 5, 4059–60).

Tönnies offers definitions of Gemeinschaft: it is the natural condition that represents the unified will of human beings who are related by blood (see Tönnies 1920, 7). In contrast, Gesellschaft is a circle of humans who are not naturally bound together but rather have chosen to live peacefully in close connection (see Tönnies 1920, 33). The Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft relation is replicated in the second pairing: Wesenwille/Kürwille. As with the first pairing, a glance at the historical context of each of these terms will help clarify and set the stage for understanding Tönnies’s particular use of them.

Wesenwille and Kürwille are compound words and as such do not have their own entries in the Grimms’ Deutsches Wörterbuch. They are combinations of two words with Wille—in English will—and each of the two represents Tönnies’s specific emphasis on the differing types of wills. Wesen is existence, or essence or even being (Grimm 1984: 29, 507, 510–11, 522–6). Tönnies uses Wesenwille to mean the will’s equivalent of the human body, that is, it is the natural component. It is essential to the human will in the same way that the cell is essential to the human body; both are natural and organic (Tönnies 1920, 71–3). Kürwille is Tönnies’s version of Willkür, which does have its own entry in the Deutsches Wörterbuch. There its history is traced back to Luther’s time. Its fundamental meaning is having the freedom to choose; it is not necessitated, but is arbitrary. It has certain connotations of a child’s capriciousness, but it has a larger sense of being free to choose. It is not an irrational choice, but is based on good reasons; hence, it is rational. It has this sense of free that is continued by Kant, Johann Fichte, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Schopenhauer (Grimm 1984: 30, 205–7).

Tönnies continues this traditional use of Willkür, but inverts the words to form Kürwille. Unlike the organic Wesenwille, which naturally leads to moral decisions, Kürwille is deliberate and thoughtful in choosing its goals (Tönnies 1920, 87–9). It might not be too much of a stretch to suggest that Wesenwille is the heart and Kürwille is the head. Whereas the first is a natural and immediate inclination, the second is a hesitant and reflective choosing. Of course, like the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft distinction, the Wesenwille/Kürwille distinction is not firm and fixed, but is fluid. Tönnies notes as much but for heuristic purposes he, like Max Weber, tended to draw the clearest oppositions in theory while admitting that they are rarely as clear in reality.

This note on translation was not intended to be exhaustive; it was intended to provide some historical context for a better understanding of four terms that are central to Tönnies’s sociology. Further points regarding the specific challenges in translating Tönnies can be found in each of the following chapters.

References

Adair-Toteff, Christopher 1995, Ferdinand Tönnies: Utopian Visionary? Sociological Theory. Vol. 13, Issue 1. 58–65.

Adair-Toteff, Christopher 2003, "Review of Ferdinand Tönnies’ Community and Civil Society. Edited by Jose Harris. Translated by Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press." The British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Vol. 11, Issue 1. 164–8.

Adair-Toteff, Christopher 2005, Sociological Beginnings: The First Conference of the German Society for Sociology. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Bond, Niall 2013, Understanding Ferdinand Tönnies’ Community and Society: Social Theory and Political Philosophy between Enlightened Liberal Individualism and Transfigured Community. Berlin, Münster, Wien, Zürich, London: LIT Verlag.

Grimm, Jacob und Wilhelm 1984 [1897], Deutsches Wörterbuch. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel). 33 Bände.

Inglis, David 2009, "Cosmopolitan Sociology and the Classical Canon: Ferdinand Tönnies and the Emergence of Global Gesellschaft." The British Journal of Sociology. Vol. 60, Issue 4. 813–32.

Tönnies, Ferdinand 1909, Die Sitte. Frankfurt am Main: Literarische Anstalt Rütten and Loening.

Tönnies, Ferdinand 1920, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie. Dritte durchgesehene Auflage. Berlin: Karl Curtius.

Tönnies, Ferdinand 1922, Ferdinand Tönnies. In Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. Herausgegeben von Dr. Raymund Schmidt. Leipzig: Verlag von Felix Meiner. 199–234.

Tönnies, Ferdinand 1988 [1957], Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Translated by Charles P. Loomis. With a New Introduction by John Samples. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Tönnies, Ferdinand 2001, Community and Civil Society. Edited by Jose Harris. Translated by Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter One

FERDINAND TÖNNIES AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

Christopher Adair-Toteff

For three days in late October 1910, some 30 people participated in the first conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS). None of these people were professional sociologists; instead, they came from many different disciplines. Ferdinand Tönnies and Georg Simmel were trained as philosophers; Max Weber and Werner Sombart were political economists; and the rest tended to be lawyers and political and social thinkers and, in the case of Ernst Troeltsch, a theologian. The second conference of the DGS occurred two years later but, because of the war, the third was not held until 1922. By then Weber and Simmel were dead; Sombart and Troeltsch were no longer active in the DGS; and only Tönnies was left to establish sociology as a respectable German scholarly discipline. In fact, as I intend to show in this chapter, while Max Weber and Georg Simmel rightfully hold significant places in the history of sociology, it was Ferdinand Tönnies who probably did more than anyone else in Germany to develop sociology as a science.

The Early Years: From Philosophy to Sociology

Like Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies was trained primarily in philosophy, and many of Tönnies’s early writings, like Simmel’s, were on philosophers. These philosophers included Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza and Friedrich Nietzsche; but Tönnies soon rejected Nietzsche and moved beyond Spinoza. In marked contrast, Hobbes continued to interest Tönnies and clearly influenced Tönnies’s sociological thinking (Merz-Benz 1995, 26, 247, 350). Unlike Simmel’s writing, Tönnies’s first major sociological work drew a considerable amount of interest, and, more importantly, established Tönnies’s concern with the nature and the function of social life as well as his recognition of the importance of social justice. This concern reflects Tönnies’s interest in and indebtedness to Karl Marx (Bond 2013, 138–40). For Tönnies, the first question is how to resolve the differences between tradition and the modern (Adair-Toteff 1995, 58–65; Lichtblau 2012a, 9). The second and more important question is how various classes and groups can coexist peacefully. This second question is, for Tönnies, one of the most important and most pressing questions of the time, and throughout his life he attempted to answer it. Thus sociology was not simply an abstract scholarly pursuit; it was also a means to help determine a better world for human beings. This was Ferdinand Tönnies’s almost lifelong objective. While philosophy undoubtedly helped him to formulate his views and certainly aided him in clarifying his concepts, it was his development of sociology as a science that helped him to confront the many critical issues in social life. Tönnies’s importance in establishing sociology is found even in his first major philosophical work—Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft.

The intention here is to trace Tönnies’s approach to his most famous work, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, through his original sketch (Entwurf), his various introductions and his later responses to its meaning and its importance (see Liebersohn 1988, 27–35; Tönnies 2001, xv–xxii). The first few of these are important because they help trace Tönnies’s evolution from philosophy to