Title:
Author(s):
Abstract:
The main contention of this article is the following: sociology, like all the modern sciences, was born out of philosophy. But, ungratefully enough and perhaps because of a deepseated inferiority complex vis-à-vis the older well established sciences, sociology tends to forget or at least to blurr its philosophical foundation. Thus it turns out to be “social engineering”. The sociologist becomes a technical expert, rather indifferent to a synoptic or global view of society, and ready to offer his or her services to the best offer in the open market. Social theory is reduced to “model building” according to the changing needs of the economic agencies, from government bodies to private entrepreneurs. Contrary to social theory, a model is a purely intellectual arbitrary construct and, although conditioned by a basic congruity among its different parts, it is not historically rooted but essentially a “fictio mentis”. In this way sociology loses inevitably its problem awareness and it runs the risk of “quantifying the qualitative”, that is to say to accumulate bits of knowledge without knowing for what purpose.
Keywords:
Philosophical foundation; Problem awareness; A-historical Model; Social Engineering;
Full Text PDF:
Digital Object Identifier DOI:
Licensing: 
The article's content ©Academicus™ On the strained relationship between philosophy and sociology
by
Prof.Dr. Franco Ferrarotti
is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Presented:
May 2014
Published:
December 2014,
Volume
Academicus International Scientific Journal is an Open Access Journal. This means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. Users are obliged to cite the source (Academicus International Scientific Journal) and the author, according to the international citation standards.
To learn more about the OA Policy followed by Academicus ISJ, read Journal Regulations
Academicus
International Scientific Journal
pISSN 2079-3715
eISSN 2309-1088
Address:
Sheshi i Flamurit, Rruga Muze
Al-9401 Vlorë, Albania
Tel: +355 68 60 60 555
info@academicus.edu.al
https://academicus.edu.al