Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Tehran
Abstract
In a previously published short article, I had simply remarked that in the extremely complex and fluctuating political arena, political scientists, political philosophers, political activists and politicians have never been able to reach a tentative trans-historical and trans-social consensus about criteria of “correctness” and “rationality”, nor can they. In this paper, I want to go further to explain why they, along with sociologists and economists, have never been able, and will never be able, to reach such a trans-historical and trans-social consensus.
To do so, I have raised and tried to critically analyze the following questions:
- What factors or causes have prevented social scientists and political philosophers from reaching, even tentatively, a trans-historical and trans-social consensus about criteria of “correctness” and “rationality”?
- Do social scientists and those active in the socio-political realm typically encounter the question of what the epistemological criteria of “correctness” and “rationality” are?
- Why do social scientists have typically no clear and articulated conceptualized understanding of the criteria of “correctness” and “rationality”?
Keywords
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