THE "SOCIAL SIN" OF SOCIOLOGY: A CRITICAL REFLECTION FROM SYSTEMIC AXIOLOGY

Abstract

How can Social Science, and parti­cularly Sociology, disregard the very reasons why people live together in societies or associations? How can it forget that social organizations must not and cannot produce anything but the values people pursue? How not to account for or measure the levels achieved for these values and use the results to substantiate accurately any kind of criticism? Or how can the ethi­cal dimension of such an oversight be forgotten and show no consideration for what the system does for the people since, after all, it is the people who pay. Above all, how can one abandon the most genuinely sociological perspecti­ve, which consists precisely in seeing what the system does through the eyes of “the man in the street? Do we by chance not know that what every person wants in whatever society, be it large or small, primitive or advanced, is “a better life”? And, do we not know that the unit of analysis for achieving this purpose is “an integrated system of values” (compatible levels of health, wellbeing, security, equity freedom, an unpolluted environment, social prestige, etc.) and that it is for this and only this reason that people associate and cooperate? So why are the “value systems” produ­ced by any kind of society, the reasons which justify their existence, from the family to the Nation-State, not taken into account, recorded, measured and compared systematically and routinely? How is it that no social science- and less so Sociology- gauges the “values system” achieved by society for the general benefit of the individuals which comprise it? These are the question addressed in this paper.