Many in sociology believe the discipline to be ill served by its classic authors, and that there are now good strategic and cognitive reasons to dispense with the canon. To some, in this more heterogeneous, postmodern world, Marx, Weber and Durkheim have outlived their usefulness and inhibit rather than encourage the growth of sociology. Using Gadamer's hermeneutics as a resource this paper challenges such claims, arguing instead that classic texts are an important and valid product of the human sciences. Classic texts illuminate the real nature of the present by showing how much it still shares with the past. To jettison classic texts would not democratise, but impoverish the discipline.
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