Od víry ve společnost bez trestů ke společnosti altruistické a nezištné lásky

In the course of his long life, Pitirim Sorokin (who spent a short period in Czechoslovakia after his deportation from Bolshevik Russia), developed several concepts as a basis for diagnosis of the moral and cultural state of the world. Although he came out of the Russian behaviourist school (Bekhterev, Sechenov), he remained faithful to the Russian type of thinking about society and man as a "moral mystery". Like Durkheim he asked himself how far "progress" measured by the development of science and technology corresponds to any "progress" in human happiness, and found no direct correlation. While still in Russia he created a Utopian vision of a society without punishments in which a Superman (who has nothing in common with Nietzsche's idea) would be freed from the need to be rewarded or punished because he would spontaneously act in accordance with the principle of love for his neighbour. In America, as part of his cultural and social dynamics he developed a more subtle conception in which he offered a critique of contemporary society as a society in an epoch of crisis (succumbing excessively to material and sensual stimuli), with negative effects in all areas of life but especially culture. Although the overall tone of Sorokin's conception places him within the constellation of European-American "culture critics" towards the end of his life he created another Utopia in the form of a society of altruistic love, The durability of Sorokin's thought consists, however, in his relatively precise account of the stage of the "culmination of modernity" and the rise of post-modernism (although he did not use these terms).