HUMAN REASON AND SOCIAL RATIONALITY IN ION UNGUREANU’S THINKING

Abstract

Ion Ungureanu is one of the most important sociologists Romania has had in the last half a century. Leader of his generation, he contributed to the development of the paradigms of sociological thinking and he analyzed fundamental concepts of sociological theory. This study aims to expose comparatively and critically one of the most significant contributions of Ion Ungureanu – the concept of social rationality. Unlike Max Weber and Vilfredo Pareto, Ion Ungureanu makes the important distinction between human rationality and social rationality. Struck by this shortcoming, more or less, the two conceptions end up supporting the thesis of human and social action of landed irrationality, like V. Pareto or by opening the path to this irrationality, like Max Weber, taking into consideration the fact that comprehension and knowledge of the meaning of the action, condition of the possibility of initiation of a rational action, can seldom be known by the social actors. With Ion Ungureanu, the rationality of social action is understood through multiple criteria, depending on six ontological dimensions of social existence – social development, economic growth, social participation, social responsibility, social education and social rationality, each containing two aspects. All of these form what the Romanian sociologist calls “the generalized model of social rationality”, a theoretical referential that allows the optimization of social life