The Crisis of Our Age by Pitirim A. Sorokin (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Crisis of Our Age. By PITIRIM A. SoROKIN. New York: Dutton & Co., 1941. Pp. 338, with index. $3.50. Dr. Sorokin, Professor of Sociology and Chairman of the Division of Sociology at Harvard University, gives us in this book a summary of his views on the world crisis and the remedies, good and bad, that have been advanced for the restoration of social order. Famed as the author of the invaluable Contemporary Sociological Theories and the monumental study of society in four volumes, Social and Cultural Dynamics, Dr. Sorokin seeks to ward off the current pessimism initiated by Spengler in The Decline of the West by an impassioned yet scholarly appeal to intelligent observers of society on behalf of his cyclical theory of social change. Because of the condensed nature of The Crisis of Our Age and because of the importance of its cardinal thesis, it has been thought opportune, in this review, to give a rather detailed outline of the thesis, that the reader of the review might himself make such criticisms as the brevity of space will not permit the reviewer to include. In the first chapter, entitled "The Diagnosis of the Crisis," the author considers tlrree diagnoses of the contemporary social scene. The first is represented by those who think that it is an ordinary crisis, similar to many through which Western society has passed several times in every century. The second diagnosis represents the crisis as the death agony of Western society and culture. The former verdict is to be rejected because it does not sufficiently comprehend the range of the maladjustment that faces society. It is not a mere question of economic or political adjustment: "it consists in a disintegration of a fundamental form of Western culture and society dominant for the last four centuries " (p. 17) . The author's proof of this contention consists in the exemplification of his culture theory. To his mind there is in every civilization some value which is the major premise and foundation for all the institutions, :.nores, and thought of the age. In the medieval culture, this value was represented by a supersensory and superrational God as the only true reality; and this value may be called ideational. Opposed to this is the sensate value, which emerged with the decline of the medieval culture at ,the end of the twelfth century, a principle which proclaimed that the true reality and value is sensory. From the blending of this sensate principle with the declining ideational principle came an essentially new form of culture in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; its major premise was that the true reality is partly supersensory and partly sensory. This cultural system is called idealistic: "it embraces the superserisory and superrational aspect, plus the rational aspect, and finally the sensory aspect, all blended into one unity, that of the infinite 523 524 BOOK BEVIEWS manifold, God " (p. ~0) . With the dissolution of medieval society, the sensate principle became more firmly entrenched, :nd in the sixteenth century became dominant. It is this sensate culture which has held sway over Western civilization for the past four centuries, and the crisis that we witness today consists in the di~integration of the dominant sensate system of modern Euro-American culture. Since the sensate form has impressed itself on all the main compartments of Western culture, the disintegration will not be limited merely to the economic or political sectors, but will pervade the whole social structure. This means that the main issue of our times is not democracy versus totalitarianism , not liberty versus despotism; neither is it capitalism versus communism, nor pacificism versus militarism, nor internationalism versus nationalism, nor any of the current popular issues. . . All these popular issues are but small side issues-mere by-products of the main issue, namely, the sensate form of culture and way of life versus another, different form (p. 22). Having duly disposed of the first diagnosis, the author proceeds to disavow the theory of the death agony of Western society. He denies the application of the biological process to cultural change, and labels the theories of Spengler and others as mere analogies, consisting of undefined terms, of nonexisting uniformities...