Abstract
Empirical and theoretical sociology exist in constant tension because of the philosophical aspects of the latter. Philosophy's absolute truth claims assume a shared life experience of all free persons but functionalist modern society confines the production of meaningful world-views to a limited number of intellectuals. They can only discover the experience of others by reifying them through science. None of the empirical research strategies of the sociologist can provide a perfect solution to this dilemma, while theoretical sociology has to operate through generalised concepts of structure and action Marx too had to operate through the fetishistic category of class, and concepts such as state, market and economy are all fetishistic But rational action is by definition non-fetishistic, and its interpretation is the primordial task of philosophy. Sociology, to account for both rationalisation and rationality, has to operate with both fetishised and defetishised categories
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