What Scholem Failed to See: Moses Dobruska as a Founder of Sociological Thought

Abstract

After a brief outline of the biography of Moses Dobruska (1753–1794), this article wants to emphasize what most scholars, in particular Gershom Scholem, did not want to recognize about this Moravian Jew, coming from a sectarian Sabbatian environment, who later converted to Catholicism. He was not only a brilliant businessman, literate, a poet, and Freemason, but also a social philosopher, and, even more, a forgotten founding father of sociology. His work Philosophie sociale (Paris 1793) is a milestone in the development of a social discipline still in progress, which later took the name sociology. This study highlights the strong influence exerted by Dobruska on subsequent authors. In particular, it shows how Dobruska’s concept of ‘disorganization’ (the breaking of a political, cultural and social order) had a strong influence on the thought of Henry Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and his pupil Auguste Comte (1798–1857).