Realism, science and emancipation

pp. 32-64

in: Kathryn Dean, Jonathan Joseph, John M. Roberts, Colin Wight, Realism, philosophy and social science, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Abstract

Is there any link between knowledge and emancipation? Despite the supposed victories of Enlightenment thought, since Hume, and under the weight of a positivist orthodoxy, the answer for we "moderns' has been "no"; facts and values are distinct realms and one cannot inform the other. For many of the theories falling under the label of "critical social science", however, the answer is a resounding "yes", even if the precise nature of the link is assumed rather than explicitly theorised.¹ In many respects these two competing answers to the question of the relationship between knowledge and emancipation represent two modes of thought that infect and fracture all intellectual traditions. The relationship between them is complex and the complete story of their development and interaction is beyond the scope of this chapter. At the risk of gross and indecent simplification, however, one could say that they stand in a symbiotic relationship. One feeds off the other in what might be described as a dialectical process; albeit an antagonistic one. Dialectical processes, however, at least as commonly understood, always involve a moment of aufhebung. Two dialectical protagonists, that is, necessarily lead to the production of a third position that incorporates the truth of both. As the process unfolds, neither of the protagonists remains the same, but equally, the truth of neither is destroyed.