Farewell to reality. A Sociological View of Time on the Rule of Wrote

Abstract

Man is destined to take hold of reality by means of concepts. Every society needs collective self-assessments, which in turn are based on the cultural validity of concepts. Our time, however, is determined by the growing conviction that we are characterised by the mutability of concepts. The excess of possibilities to understand ourselves and our reality increases the difference between the possible and the real, and leads to an 'eloquent lack of language', which is not diminished but increased by the social sciences of our time. This gives rise to the paradox that disputes over those concepts that are supposed to indicate our social situation increasingly give up describing that reality. Conceptual clarification is replaced by 'the domain of words'; judgement gives way to emotional ethical evaluation.