Cinta de Moebio: Revista de Epistemología de Ciencias Sociales

Alvear, R. (2017) La sociología clásica y el destierro del ser humano. Cinta moebio 59: 235-253. doi: 10.4067/S0717-554X2017000200235

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Classical sociology and the displacement of the human being

Rafael Alvear (rafael.alvear.m@gmail.com) Institut für Soziologie, Universität Flensburg (Flensburg, Deutschland). ORCID: 0000-0002-3959-9781

Abstract

In a context where the question about the human being seems to move between its disappearance under anti- and posthumanist critiques, and its reactivation as an answer to an environment of high uncertainty and complexity, the question about the origins of the relations between sociology and the human being becomes especially relevant. Based on a revision of the fundamental core of some of the more important classics of sociology, this article tries to reconstruct sociology’s original position regarding the human being, as well as elucidating the reasons that explain it. Within this framework, it is argued that classical sociology developed an attempt to displace the human being; a displacement that despite relying on its theoretical-conceptual development (epistemic), it is complemented by its socio-institutional roots (disciplinary). This interpretation was already clear at that time: immersed in an incipient struggle for its scientific recognition, the philosophical tenor of the question about the human erects as an obstacle against the scientificity that can only be reached through its exclusion.

Key words: classical sociology, objectives of knowledge, forms of knowledge, human being, philosophy.