Paul von Lilienfeld

Paul von Lilienfeld (Russian: Павел Фёдорович Лилиенфельд-Тоаль Pavel Fedorovich Lilienfeld-Toal) (French: Paul de Lilienfeld) (1829–1903) was a statesman and social scientist of imperial Russia. He was governor of the Courland Governorate from 1868 till 1885. During that time, he developed his Thoughts on the Social Science of the Future, first in Russian as Мысли о социальной науке будущего (Mysli o sotsial'noi naukie budushchego; 1872), and then in German as Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft (1873–1881). Lilienfeld's thoughts, which he later articulated in compressed form in both French and Italian, laid out his organic theory of societies, also known as the social organism theory, organicist sociology, or simply organicism. He later became a senator in the Russian parliament, as well as vice-president (1896), then president (1897), of the Institut International de Sociologie (International Institute of Sociology) in Paris.

Capozzi (2004: 92) describes Lilienfeld as "a Russian functionary who occupied himself with sociology as a form of intellectual diversion," while Ward (1897: 260, 264) refers to him as "Senator Lilienfeld," and Worms (1897: 657) qualifies him as a sénateur de l’Empire russe. Gerschenkron (1974: 435, footnote 24) calls him "a Balto-Russian," while Barberis (2003: 69) says he "descended from Swedish nobility, held important Russian judicial posts, was governor of Kurland for 17 years and ultimately became a senator of the Russian Empire." Lilienfeld, in fact, was governor of the Courland Governorate from 1868 till 1885, and in the same year in which he put out Social Physiology (1879), his brother, Baron Otto Friedrich von Lilienfeld, on either the 16th or the 22nd of May, founded a seaside town along the banks of the Saka River on Courland’s far western Baltic coast, naming it Pāvilosta (Paulshafen) after his sociologist sibling. Lilienfeld, who had studied at the in Saint Petersburg, was awarded many honors in recognition for the services he performed for the empire; it would seem, however, that the aspect of his political career for which he felt most proud was his collaboration in the emancipation of Russia’s serfs (Worms 1903: 265).

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