Siberian Federal University 
- Issue
- Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2013 6 (8)
- Authors
- Trufanov, Dmitrij O.
- Contact information
- Trufanov, Dmitrij O.:Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia;E-mail:
- Keywords
- rationality; the principle of freedom from evaluation; postnonclassical (universum) approach; reflectivity; cognitive self-reference of the society
- Abstract
This paper discusses rationality as a sociological category in the light of Weber’s principle of freedom from evaluation. This principle is understood as the need to free scientific categories from subjective evaluation due to personal biases of researchers. The author shows the problematic character of the existing approaches to understanding rationality, reveals their judgmental nature. Then, on the basis of postnonclassical (universum) sociological approach, the author formulates the general definition of rationality as cognitive self-reference of social systems. This understanding of rationality is to a great extent free from subjective interpretations due to the fact that not some specific content of reality is stated to be a characteristic of rationality, as it was done in most popular approaches to defining rationality, rather, it is claimed to be the way of expressing this content–a verbal-reflective form. This characteristic has a uniquely identifiable qualitative certainty, which makes it possible to fixate its presence in the studied object.
- Pages
- 1195-1204
- Paper at repository of SibFU
- https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/9915
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).