Philosophy or Sociological Theory?

Abstract

A work which clearly illustrates the shift from sociological theory to philosophical analysis in recent years is Terry Johnson, Christopher Dendeker and Clive Ashworth’s The Structure of Social Theory,¹ (henceforth referred to as TSST). According to the authors, every social theory explicitly or implicitly deals with two fundamental questions. The first is ontological and raises the issue of the nature of social reality, of whether it is material or ideal; the second concerns the epistemological problem of the nature of knowledge about social reality, of whether or not such knowledge is derived from realist or nominalist assumptions. Basing themselves on these two dichotomies (material/ideal, real/nominal), the authors of TSST construct a four-fold typology that enables them to discuss systematically and in a theoretically rigorous fashion four major strategies of sociological theorising: those of empiricism, subjectivism, substantialism and rationalism.