Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Transition to an Objective Standard of Social Control: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, (Department of Sociology)
SO much has been written concerning the evils of individual ism and the mistakes of the hedonistic psychology and utilitarian ethics, without suggesting a satisfactory means of curing these evils or correcting these mistakes, that one is forced to believe that something is wrong with the method of attack. One reason for this failure may be that the significance of utilitarian ism as a stage in the development of social theory has not yet been rightly comprehended and that we do not adequately fore see what should be the next step in our social philosophy and policy. This study is an attempt, (i) to throw utilitarianism into perspective with the wider social forces and with the philo Sophical and psychological theory of its time and our time; (2) to Show that the main current of present-day social theory, and likewise of ethical theory so far as it is social rather than theological and absolutistic in character, is largely an outgrowth of utilitarianism, or at least may be grouped in close connec tion with it; (3) to argue that we cannot escape the limitations imposed by a utilitarian ethics and by a hedonistic psychology upon our social policy until we reconstruct our system of social values, until we abandon the individual as the measure of all things social, and fix upon the group, even the widest conceiv able group possessing solidarity, as the unity which lives, acts, and progresses or deteriorates. Such a change in emphasis obviously involves a reconstruction of our current psychology and ethics; for these two sciences as now written are essentially individualistic, and hence impotent so far as contribution to a constructive sociology and social policy is concerned.
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