Socio-historical knowledge: the experience of philosophical-epistemological reflection

Abstract

The fact that the principle of pluralism of opinions prevails in today's socio-historical knowledge shows that the “postmodern condition” (J-F. Lyotard), which began in the late 70s and early 80s of the twentieth century, expresses the characteristic and most significant features of its epistemological situation. This situation is characterized by a fundamental change of emphasis in the approach itself, not even to the solution, but to the very formulation of the problem of the truth values and the conditions for the reliability of the statements put forward. In the recent past, it was almost generally accepted to consider the issues of reliability of socio-historical knowledge as essentially methodological and to associate the possibility of understanding the truth with the improvement of the system of instruments of the scientific method, then in recent decades, the situation has radically changed. Under the influence of strengthening the position of the “postmodern condition", we are no longer talking about criterion (methodological, logical, epistemological, etc.), but about the meaning of truth in general, and socio-historical truth in particular.