Cinta de Moebio: Revista de Epistemología de Ciencias Sociales

Torres, F. (2016) Aproximaciones al conocimiento de lo social: entre teoría social y sociología. Cinta moebio 55: 106-120. doi: 10.4067/S0717-554X2016000100008

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Approaches to the knowledge of the social: between social theory and sociology

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Abstract

Is there a distinction between social theory and sociology? Perhaps one of the most general features in sociological thinking is that it is an inquiry to develop holistic explanations for social reality. In this sense, there is a kind of universality of social knowledge in its scientific and philosophical dimensions, and is one of its main purposes for the operation of sociology as a “science of modernity”. Next, I will develop a brief reconstruction of meaning which is attributed to science in the modern world, followed by the emergence of an specialized explanation of social reality under the name of social theory, as a result of philosophical conclusions that finish it with Hegel on the one side, and it focuses on a differentiated scientific knowledge as a product of modernity itself, on the other hand. Finally, and following this, I will establish the specific role played by sociology and social theory in this context, by considering that the first describes itself as a science of society-modernity and the second has a critical direction to sociability answers and is specifically linked with political-normative approaches.

Keywords: social theory, sociology, modernity, universalism, reason, enlightenment.