The Historical Moment of Theoretical Work

Abstract

In the historical evolution of human societies each phase, each period, each stage is one of transition. There is little purpose, then, in referring to the inevitable exigencies (the contradictions, ambiguities, incoherence or precoherence, the preformulated renewal) of the formidable period of transition in which we live; this alone cannot account for or justify the forms or directions, the obstacles to and perspectives for theoretical work in the different fields of human and social science. To assume anything else would lead us to opt for an idealist vision of historical evolution on which neofideism and all other dogmatisms rest.