Hans Freyer

Hans Freyer, born July 31 1887 in Leipzig, died January 18 1969 in Ebersteinburg near Wiesbaden, was an important, controversial conservative German sociologist and philosopher.

Works

In Der Staat (1926), Freyer identified three stages of history which repeated themselves in a cycle: Glaube, Stil and Staat (belief, style, the state). These were partly, although not openly, based on Ferdinand Toennies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (community and society). The last stage, Staat, was the ideal state for society: "the essential quality of the state (...) was its ability to forge living humanity with all its forces into a unity".

Related Topics:
1926 - Ferdinand Toennies - Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft

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In 1929 Freyer wrote Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft (Sociology as a "Science of Reality") (using Max Weber's term). This looked into the origins of sociology, saying that it came from the philosophy of history; that it had emerged from people's attempts to understand the connections between the past and the present. In Freyer's view, sociology was needed as a science to understand why changes in society had happened and, based on these findings, to help transform society. He saw Karl Marx as linking the philosophy of history to sociology.

Related Topics:
1929 - Max Weber - Philosophy of history - Karl Marx

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Freyer's 1931 article Die Revolution von Rechts studied freedom, saying that people should only be free if they were part of a common will; that individual freedom should be limited for the sake of the community.

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