Ethical Challenges for the Social Sciences on the Threshold of the 21st Century

Abstract

The position of the social sciences vis-a-vis society and scientificity is revisited. Throughout the 20th century the idea that all peoples in the world are part of a single humankind made a painful progress. Its legacy includes a record of great illusions and of a tragic balance, marked by the unprecedented growth of the capacity of social intervention as a consequence of scientific-technical advancement. The capacity of critique, of imagining new worlds, the construction of utopias, all activities to which a good portion of the social sciences contributed significantly, have been largely abandoned, while a blind faith has been increasingly granted to the instrumental rationality of technoscience. An inconsistent ethical background affects modern societies, with negative effects also upon the social sciences and their interpretive and heuristic functions. To the classical interrogations about who investigates and how (tools, methodologies, behaviours), recently a third one has grown more important: what for, for whom (relevance). In connection with modalities of social control, the notion of expertise is being rediscussed, in some cases in a radical manner by lay activism and the incorporation of lay experts in the process of decision-making.