Work · Sociology & Social Theory
Treatise on General Sociology (The Mind and Society)
A large study of non-logical action: lasting sentiments (“residues”) and the justifications built on them (“derivations”) explain much of social life and the rise and fall of elites.
Introduction
The “Treatise on General Sociology” appeared in two volumes in Florence in 1916; a French edition followed in 1917–19 and an English one, “The Mind and Society”, in 1935. Pareto wanted to apply a “logico-experimental” method to society. Most human action, he argues, is non-logical: it springs from relatively constant sentiments, which he sorts into six classes of “residues”, such as the instinct for combinations and the persistence of aggregates, and is justified by changing theories, the “derivations”. Political history appears as the rise and decline of governing elites, alternating between cunning “foxes” and forceful “lions”. The book shaped the reading of Pareto at Harvard around Lawrence J. Henderson and Talcott Parsons; critics objected to the vagueness of the residues and to its sweeping dismissal of humanitarian ideals.
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