The achievement of sociology

Authors

  • Salvador Giner

Abstract

This essay begins saying that the contemporary conscience wouldn’t be the same without the presence of sociology – a human science and not only social – which is, in the group of the social sciences, the cognitive science that studies the human condition. Sociology is a multidimensional science, being its history that one of a discipline that cumulates objective knowledge. However, only the ethics of objectivity is not enough to cultivate the human sciences. They will encompass amplitude, as well as theoretical dignity, only if grounded on our moral competence. Finally it states that the continuity of the sociological mode in the modern culture and its current hegemony are justified only if sociology keeps faithful to the principles of rational intention on one hand, and to the humanism on the other, without losing, between them, the space of the social structure of liberty and the human dreams.

Author Biography

Salvador Giner

Catedrático de Sociología en la Universidad de Barcelona. Fundador y presidente de la Federación Española de Sociología y Director del Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados del CSIC. Editor de la Revista Internacional de Sociología y Director Asociado del European Journal of Social Theory. Autor de Historia del Pensamiento Social, el manual más conocido en las universidades españolas, del Diccionario de Sociología y de otras obras como Sociedad Masa, Ensayos Civiles, Carta sobre la Democracia, La Cultura de la Democracia, Carisma y Razón, etc. Algunas de estas y otras obras han sido traducidas a varios idiomas.

Published

2004-01-01

Issue

Section

Articles