Tönnies, Ferdinand (1855–1936)

Ferdinand Tönnies is the founder of German sociology as an academic discipline and author of the most famous conceptual dichotomy in sociology,Gemeinschaft–Gesellschaft. In his approach to the study of society, reconciling the organic and social‐contract conceptions of society, he distinguished between three branches of general sociology: social biology, social psychology, and special sociology – “special sociology” corresponding to what is now usually called “general sociology,” rather than sociological disciplines or (special) sociologies, and consisting of three parts that mutually inform each other: pure sociology, applied sociology, and empirical sociology or sociography. His major works includeGemeinschaft und Gesellschaft(1887),Thomas Hobbes: Leben und Lehre(1896),Marx: Leben und Lehre(1921),Kritik der öffentlichen Meinung(1922),Einführung in die Soziologie(1931), andGeist der Neuzeit(1935). His complex, sometimes overinclusive analyses integrating competing theories into a single theory and somewhat archaic style of writing did not receive the scholarly attention that some of his contemporaries enjoyed. Some recently published English analyses and translations of his works together with publication of his collected works in German seem to indicate a resurgence of interest in Tönnies' sociology.