SOC231H5 Study Guide - Dialectic, French Revolution, Institute For Operations Research And The Management Sciences
Document Summary
Explain marx"s dialectical perspective and how it informs his analysis of society and social change. The non-dialectic perspective looks at everything as either positive or negative and never looks at what can be in-between. This was the perspective of the positivists and romantic conservatisms during the period of enlightenment. Positivism saw social change as something that is very positive and that society should move forward from what it is to what it ought to be, it truly embraced social change. Romantic conservatisms, however, were shocked at the changes that took place and seeing tradition being cast aside. They thought that everything had been ruined because of the french revolution and wanted to turn the clock back and go to the past. Hence, the two perspectives are non-dialectical as they only portray the situation as being either positive or negative. Positivists see social change as only positive while the romantic conservatisms see it as only negative.
