Where most sociology asks "how is it possible to prove this fact?", a critical analysis asks "what is a fact?" Facticity resides in the whole for critical theory while it is a mere fragment for others. The criterion of verification can never be applied to critical sociological analysis (Zetterberg, 1964). Only the criteria of transcendence and praxis apply. Does the sociological analysis go beyond our taken-for-granted assumptions about the established reality? Does the analysis extend our knowledge of the established reality, totality (Lukacs, 1971), or totalization (Sartre, 1963) by transcending it, that is by making it an understood part of a larger whole? Even conventional positivist sociology would usually agree to the criterion of transcendence. For what is sociology if it does not go beyond the taken-for-granted assumptions of the status quo...just another form of journalism with more statistical data? Transcendence of the status quo should be a criterion of all sociology worthy of that name.
From:CRITICAL THEORY AND THE LIMITS OF SOCIOLOGICAL POSITIVISM
From:CRITICAL THEORY AND THE LIMITS OF SOCIOLOGICAL POSITIVISM
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