Sociology and epistemology: The need for interaction

Abstract

The necessity of interaction between sociology and social epistemology Is considered. It is shown that the cognitive and research potential of modern sociology may be significantly expanded and deepened by addressing epistemological problems - values, prerequisite forms of knowledge, various types of communications, as well as the study of non-Marxist theories of society, including phenomenology. The necessity and legitimacy of reducing the level of abstraction of the subject and the object of cognition in sociology are substantiated. It is shown that among methodological and epistemological problems of Marxism there is still a number of topics important for sociology and other social sciences and humanities. These include methods of hypostatizations that Bourdieu found in Marx; "historicism," according to K. Popper and D.M. Petrushevsky; methodology of individualism and collectivism - concept of S.G. Kirdina-Chandler. The necessary presence in sociology of values and methods of their introduction: interpretation, representation, categorization, and convention, - is investigated. Epistemological approach to various types of communications, communicative rationality in general is presented. The role of A. Schutz's phenomenologlcal teaching, insufficiently studied in Russia, Is discussed.