Social Philosophers

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS:

AUGUSTE COMTE(1798-1857) French Philosopher

• Comte was the first social philosopher to coin and use the term sociology

• He was also the first to regard himself as a sociologists
• He defined sociology as the scientific study of social dynamics and social static
• New science of society could and should make a critical contribution towards a new and improved human society.
• Comte defined sociology as the study of social dynamic and social static, the former signifying, the changing, progressing and developmental dimensions of society, while the latter refers to the social order and those elements of society and social phenomena which tend to persist and relatively permanent, defying change.

KARL MARX(1818-1883) German

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• Marx was a world-renowed social philosopher, sociologist and economic historian.
• He introduced concepts in sociology like social class, social class conflict, social oppression, alienation and etc.
• Introduced one of the major perspective in sociology, call social conflict theory.
• Accdg. to Marx, economic forces are the keys to underestimating society and social change. He believed that the history of the human society has been that of class conflict. 

HARRIET MARTINEAU(1802-1876) British

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

• At a time when women were greatly stereotyped and denied access to influential socio-political and academic arenaa.
• She was an active advocated of the abolition of slavery and she wrote on many crosscutting issues such as racial and gender relations.            

HERBERT SPENCER(1820-1903) British

• Spencer was a prominent social philosopher of the 19th century.
• He viewed society as an organic system having its own structure and functioning in ways analogous to the biological system. Spencer's ideas of the evolution of human society from the lowest("barbarism") to the highest form("civilized") according to fixed laws were famous. It was called "Social Darwinism", which is analogous to the biological evelolutionary model. Social Darwinism is the attempt to apply by analogy the evolutionary theories of plant and animal development to the explanation of human society and so

EMILE DURKHEIM(1858-1917) French

• Durkheim was the most influential scholar in the academic and theoretical development of sociology. He laid down some of the fundamental principles, methods, concepts and theories of sociology.
• He defined sociology as the study of social facts.