Philosophical Affinities of Postmodern Sociology

Abstract

Both the nature of philosophical and sociological discourses are undergoing a profound change, attuned to the gradual substitution of the postmodern sensibility for the cultural climate dominant during the modern age. In particular, philosophy sustained by legislative reason recedes, replaced by a philosophical style informed by interpretative reason; a movement in many respects reminiscent of the Pyrrhonian Crisis of the 16th–17th centuries. The passage from the orthodox consensus of modern sociology to a postmodern sociological strategy parallels this transformation. The present change, however, affects the very relationship between philosophy and sociology. From the search for the foundations of cognitive certainty, the outspoken domain of philosophy guided by the legislative reason, epistemological concerns move to the communicative problems of communally founded cognitive systems – the acknowledged realm of sociological investigation.