Social Values as the Object-Matter of Florian Znaniecki's Culturalistic Sociology

Abstract

The attractiveness of Znaniecki’s concept of the subject-matter of sociology springs from his philosophy of culturalism. Culture has the fullness of a specific realness and the cultural person is more than a biopsychical individual or a participant of social relations. Such assumptions protect Znaniecki’s sociology from sociologism. Concrete collectivities and concrete persons with their whole richness of cultural life do not constitute the subject-matter of sociology that deals with individuals and groups as social values. Znaniecki is also critical about Simmel’s program of a study of social forms. He rather approaches Durkheims’s standpoint in as much as society stays for him „la foyer d’une vie morale”. Znaniecki, however, transform significantly the thesis of Durkheim by arguing that only one of cultural systems of values is social in the exact sense of the term. Systems of social values constitutes the proper subject-matter of sociology. The most interesting and challenging contribution of Znaniecki is the detailed conceptualization of social systems in axiological terms.