This research reviews the concepts of societal development. For the greater part, this review considers societal development in the context of such development in the American nation. While a number of sources are cited in this review, the works of Robert Bellah, E. Chaissen, Amitai Etzioni, M. Schmid and F. Wuketits, and Max Weber are significant. Further, The Good Society by Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton provides a focus for this review.
Societal Development As Political Development
There are two ways of viewing the nature of political philosophy. First, identify the principal recurrent problems and the methods of dealing with them which are present in the classic literature. The second way is to proceed from an assumption as to what is involved in philosophical inquiry to the development of applications for the field of political inquiry (Schmid and Wuketits, 1987, p. 5).
The first approach treats political philosophy as something separate and distinct from other philosophies, while recognizing that political philosophy itself has its own traditions (Bellah, et al, 1991, pp. 163 165). While this approach is widely used by contemporary political philosophers, the classic philosophers from which political philosophy draws its traditions drew readily from other philosophies. The result is that much of the classic literature of political philosophy deals with
conceptual analysis, while much of the contemporary literature of political philosophy deals with conjectures as to how political organizations work, and as to causal links between institutional forms and policies (Bellah, et al, 1991, pp. 294 303).
Only a few modern political philosophers, such as Hegel, have made attempts to place politics and its institutions in an encompassing metaphysical framework. Marxism's explanation of class conflict is another such example. Political philosophies of this type ar...