Les postures épistémologiques de la sociologie, son autonomie disciplinaire et ses enjeux éthiques

Abstract

This article proposes to revisit the question of disciplinary autonomy that has accompanied the history of sociology. By focusing our attention on the question of autonomy in relation to values, morals and ethics, we will reflect on this autonomy both as a regulating ideal constitutive of the discipline, and as a requirement to which the experience of the practice of sociological enquiry never fully complies. The ambivalence of this status allows us to understand what we will call the "epistemological problematicity" of this demand for autonomy. This can be seen in the recurrence of controversies about research ethics, for example between defenders of axiological neutralisation and followers of critical sociology. To grasp this inherence of ethics in sociological work, we will draw on the resources of linguistic pragmatics. They will enable us to understand various quarrels that have affected the social sciences in recent years, to grasp the "ethical violence" involved in the investigative situation and, finally, to lay the foundations for rethinking the explain-comprehend quarrel by integrating criticism into it.

Keywords

• ethics
• epistemology
• axiological neutrality