The Grammar of Social Relations

Book excerpt: This collection of the writings of Louis Schneider, an exceptionally gifted sociologist of religion the history of ideas, provides a sensitive but rigorous view of the place of ideas in social life. Di­vided according to the principal areas in which Schneider con­ducted research—history of social thought, principles of social the­ory, sociology of religion—are es­says on evolution, styles of re­search, and moral choice in human relations. His knowledge of systems of thought—dialec­tical, functional, and phenomenological—was peerless. The unifying theme in his work is the place of cultural formations in so­cial structures; as a result, his writings are alive with persons no less than systems.