社会本体论探析——基于个人主义与整体主义之争

On Social Ontology——The Individualism-holism Debates

在社会科学领域,个人主义与整体主义之争都是一个古老而又常新的话题。它们之间的争论主要集中于方法论上意见的不同,而有关本体论问题的探讨,较为少见且存在不少问题。基于本体论认识对于社会科学研究中其他核心问题的重要影响力,文章从社会事实、社会的本质构成以及整体与个体的关系等社会本体论研究的核心主题出发,基于近年来相关研究的新成果,对之进行了较为详尽的考察,以期为这一问题的深层次探讨提供一些新的思考。

There have long been debates over individualism and holism in the research of social sciences. The argu- ments over them are due mainly to different views of methodology. Discussions about ontology are relatively rare and are problematic. In view of the great influence of ontological attitudes on other core problems in the research of so- cial sciences, this paper takes such core themes of social ontology research as social facts, the essential structure of the society and the relationship between the whole and the individual as its starting points, and makes a detailed in- vestigation on this problem based on the new achievements of related researches in recent years, in order to throw new light on the problem of ontology.