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The crisis of social science

Jonathan Tuckett

pp. 205-242

Having delineated genuine science from pseudo-science in the previous chapters, this concluding chapter turns to a delineation between genuine social science and pseudo-social science. Co-opting Sartre, I have suggested social science is the study of "man in situation". The issue to be addressed now is that multiple cognitive styles do this which begs the question of why they struggle to cohere with one another? I propose this stems from a failure to consider the philosophical anthropological question "What is man?" Each has a different understanding of man which do not cohere. This brings us to the problem of intersubjectivity and how I recognise my fellow man as "man". In further exposing the human prejudice, I will show how social science has been guided by a nonuniversal European supposition and fails to be genuine. In order to escape this outcome I will look at Jean-Paul Sartre's understanding of intersubjectivity as it responds to Scheler. Out of Sartre's theory of intersubjectivity we will get a radical reconception of "subject" and "object". This constitutes an entirely new approach to the definition of man, one which has radical consequences for our understanding of social science. By pursuing this Sartrean approach we will be in a position to escape the crisis of social science.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-92120-4_7

Full citation:

Tuckett, J. (2018). The crisis of social science, in The idea of social science and proper phenomenology, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 205-242.

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