Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2009
The opposition between community and society set out by Collingwood in his New Leviathan (1942) should be compared with the distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft that Tönnies had introduced in 1887. The debate on ideal types of social organizations apparently pertains to «pure sociology» and was continued by Durkheim and Weber. However, Collingwood's use of this distinction may be construed as an attack on the very idea of sociology in the name of the primacy of rational will.