Practice question · Multiple choice
Conservative critics of the French Revolution such as Bonald and Maistre wanted to restore the authority the Revolution had destroyed. Why do historians of the discipline nevertheless credit them with handing sociology its founding question?
Hints
- Separate the answer they wanted from the question they asked.
- The problem of order is a conservative question that radicals and liberals then had to answer too.
Show the answer
D. They asked what holds society together once tradition and religion lose authority
Why
They wanted the answer "put it back", and nobody in the new discipline accepted that. But the question, what binds a society whose inherited authorities have been demolished, was taken up whole, and Durkheim’s solidarity, Tönnies’s community and Parsons’s integration are all attempts at it. The politics and the problem separate cleanly.
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