Bio: (1894-1965) Russian-French sociologist. George Gurvitch was born in Russia, where he received his doctorate from the University of St. Petersburg in 1920. In the same year, he emigrated from Russia to Czechoslovakia, before settling permanently in France in 1925. Gurvitch taught at several universities in France, the longest at the Sorbonne. The only period of his academic work outside France was during the German occupation of that country. He then lived in the United States and taught at Harvard University. Gurvitch is best known for his sociological approach, which he called "dialectical hyper-empiricism", and which is often called "deep sociology". In addition, he is one of the most important sociologists of law, and he also dealt with the sociology of religion, the sociology of time, and the sociology of knowledge.

Gurvitch's dialectical hyper-empiricism is a combination of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, on the one hand, and the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx, on the other. Although Gurvitch was critical of phenomenology, he nevertheless took the concepts of "intentionality" and "open consciousness" from that approach, to develop a theory that could explain the connection between society and individual consciousness. According to Gurvitch, Marx's dialectical materialism is the basis for understanding the macro levels of society. Gurvitch developed his dialectical approach to social structure, denying the existence of rigid structures and emphasizing the fluidity of the "structuration" process. He took the position of Marcel Mauss that the subject of sociology should be "total social phenomena". This view sees society as a whole while avoiding various reductionisms, such as "abstract culturalism", sociologism, and psychologism. Gurvitch considered that society has an ontological priority in relation to the individual.

Dialectics seeks to discover the primary dialectic aspects of social change. There are three basic features of dialectics: 1) constant movement towards the construction of unity and totality versus uncertainty; 2) method for understanding real changing totality; 3) search for the engaged aspect of human behavior. The dialectic should reject all preconceived concepts and adopt concepts that enable human society to be seen as a totality, but also as the sum of its parts. Dialectics should deal with dichotomies and polarities. It should reject attempts to simplify and crystallize knowledge because that makes it impossible to understand the totality. Dialectics should deal with the complexities, tensions, and uncertainties that constantly exist and operate in society.

Hyper-empiricism refers precisely to the constant observation and study of social reality in order to determine and build true knowledge, based on empirical evidence. Dialectical hyper-empiricism should serve as a barrier to any dogmatism and reductionism that the totality of society tends to reduce to some preconceived concepts and axioms. The fundamental character of society and each group is dialectical, and therefore the study of these phenomena requires the use of dialectical processes. There are five dialectical processes: 1) complementarity - no social whole can be reduced to just one factor (e.g. economic, political, etc.); 2) mutual implication - psychological and sociological phenomena overlap and combine; 3) ambiguity - social wholes either go towards an unstable equilibrium or move towards destruction and dedifferentiation; 4) polarization - conflicts and tensions that break up structures; 5) reciprocity of perspectives - love and togetherness that unites the group as a whole, opposite to the process of polarization. In his book The Social Frameworks of Knowledge (1971, in French 1966), Gurvitch applied this typology to the sociology of knowledge.

Gurvitch believed that the best approach to the study of society, following the example of Max Weber, was to develop complex typologies, which would serve to analyze all levels of social reality. He divided the whole social reality into two main dimensions, one horizontal, which includes "social types" (cadres sociaux), and one vertical, which studies the "depth levels" of society. On the horizontal dimension, he singles out three basic social types: forms of sociability, groups, and global societies. Each of these types contains multiple sub-types. Forms of sociability are divided into: communion, community, and mass. Gurvitch believes that structured groups should be distinguished from organized groups. Structured groups do not have a formal organization, but rather represent a grouping of people according to a statistical category, while organized groups have specific organizations that fight for the interests of the group. In this sense, for example, social classes can be structured without being organized.

The vertical axis, which refers to the depth levels of total social phenomena, divides social reality based on the levels of spontaneity or rigidity of social phenomena. The highest levels are the most stable and easiest to observe and study, while the deepest levels are the least stable and the most difficult to study. In essence, Gurvitch developed a similar division to Durkheim, which had five levels, so he introduced a division into ten different depth levels (arranged from the surface to the deepest): 1) morphological and ecological surface; 2) social organizations; 3) social patterns; 4) regular collective behavior (outside organizations); 5) web of social rules (social roles); 6) collective attitudes; 7) social symbols; 8) spontaneous, innovative and creative behavior; 9) collective ideas and values; 10) collective consciousness. Using these two dimensions, Gurvitch wanted to connect the macro and micro-sociological perspective.

In the book, Determinism and Human Freedom (in French 1955) Gurvitch studied the applicability of deterministic causal laws to the study of society. He believes that the subject of sociology is too complex to establish deterministic relations and laws of causality that would have a general application. In his opinion, all deterministic relations are always partial and applicable only to specific cases. He believed that the issue of freedom, as an opportunity to question the existing situation and to act in order to implement change, is crucial for sociology. He singled out six levels of freedom: 1) arbitrary liberty - the choice of subjective unconscious preferences; 2) innovative freedom - a careful choice between alternatives; 3) liberty choice – choosing between multiple options when faced with negative influences; 4) innovative liberty devises new alternative courses of action; 5) decisive liberty - action aimed at overcoming or annulling the existing situation by removing all obstacles; 6) creative liberty - the constant creation of new forms of art or knowledge, this freedom represents the deepest level of freedom.

Every level of freedom is met with opposition from others to make a change to the existing situation, but freedom is, precisely, the social force that reduces deterministic relations in society. Freedom means that total social phenomena are in a constant state of structuration and destructuration. Both individual and collective social actors can have freedom. The goal of hyper-empiricism is to explore all possible manifestations of collective and individual freedom.

Gurvitch believed that sociologists could not completely separate themselves from the subject of their study, because they, themselves are an integral part of it. The dialectical method helps sociologists to accept the implicit relationships that exist between the values ​​that sociologists have and their methods, as well as to understand their role in society. He advocated building a society characterized by participatory democracy, where political decisions would be made at the level of individuals and local communities, and where such communities would be the group owners of economic capital.

With the books Elements of Sociology of Law (in French 1940) and Sociology of Law (1942), Gurvitch greatly influenced the sociology of law. The dialectic exists in the relationship between law, democracy, and morality. Law serves to generalize the irrational qualities of morality, transforming the individual and the qualitative into the general and the quantitative. The law acts as a link and synthesis between moral ideal and empirical reality. In that sense, the law is immanently dialectical, because it represents a link and a field of the intertwining of empiricism and moral ideal, and a synthesis of personalism and interpesonalism. In the book Elements of the Sociology of Law, Gurvitch presents the "legal typology of global societies" and in that typology, he singles out seven types: 1) magical-religious polysegmental societies; 2) theocratic-charismatic societies; 3) societies with a predominance of family-political groups; 4) feudal society; 5) city-empire society; 6) society of the territorial state and autonomy of the individual will; and 7) a modern transitional society with a rivalry of economic and territorial-state structure.

In his book The Spectrum of Social Time (1964), Gurvitch deals with the sociology of time by studying the hierarchical arrangement of social time. Each social time can be described by several dimensions: the specific form of manifestation of sociability and the level of the community; types of groups that use some time; the level of continuity and discontinuity in time itself; and the level of contingency and certainty of time. He singles out eight different types of social time; 1) “Enduring time” – time of everyday life in family or community; 2) “Deceptive time” – time of daily routine; 3);  “Erratic time” – irregular life of history and events 4) “Cyclical time” – time of recurring events; 5) “Retarded time” – time of symbols and institutions that are anchored in history; 6) “alternating time” – time of rules; 7) “Pushing forward time” – time that is used to create change; and 8) “explosive time” – time of collective creation and revolutions.  

Main works

Les tendances de la philosophie allemande (1930);

L'expérience juridique et la philosophie pluraliste du droit (1935);

Essai de sociologie (1938);

Éléments de sociologie juridique (1940);

Sociology of Law (1942);

The Bill of Social Rights (1945);

Morale théorique et science des mœurs (1948);

Industrialisation et technocratie (1949);

La vocation actuelle de la sociologie, 2 vols. (1950);

Le concept de classes sociales de Marx à nos jours (1954);

Déterminismes sociaux et liberté humaine (1955);

Traité de sociologie, 2 vols. (1957);

The Spectrum of Social Time (1958);

Dialectique et sociologie (1962);

Les cadres sociaus de la connaissance (1966);

Études sur les classes sociales (1966).

Works translated into English:

The Social Frameworks of Knowledge (1971, in French 1966);

Twentieth Century Sociology (2017).