Author(s): Jovan Mirić / Language(s): Croatian
Issue: 04/1974
In his critical approach to some of the methodological aspects of Political Science, the author takes as his starting point the theory of the social determinism of scientific thought and from that standpoint shows the apologetic character of so called »scientific naturalism« and »value-free political science«. The false scientific indifference towards values and aims means in fact a certain type of value-judgement — an acceptance of the given as a basic value. »Political facts« are not given as something completely objective independent of the researcher. Of themselves, they say nothing — they gain true »illumination« and meaning »from the outside« — only when we place them against our criteria of value-judgements. Thus, these facts are most often our presentation of then. Or the presentation of other informants — enquirers, witnesses, participants, scientists. Those facts-presentations, are conditioned by the most varied factors: interests, passions, mistakes, prejudices, which all make up the »prismatic mirror« of the observer of »political facts«, who would not be able to observe them »objectively« as things even from a historical perspective, let alone within the living tissue of a social organism of which he himself is a component part. The bases of the theoretical-methodological orientation of certain scientists are a fairly reliable indication of their political leanings. It can therefore be said that everyone’s epistemological credo is first and foremost the expression of his convictions and those of society and only then scientific determinations. The plea for the »value-free« in Political Science, whether it is a case of a firm position or of political mimicry, is a conservative, non-scientific and nonintellectual determination. With the same passion as he approaches his research work with, the Scientist should turn his efforts to social progress in a wider social context, wherever his influence is able to penetrate. Not only will this not destroy the dignity of his scientific work but it will give it true meaning. The determination and engagement of the scientist is not and should not be an ideological manipulation of science, but is a result of scientific perception, the knowledge that society can be changed for the better only through an active relationship. That is a revolutionary, critical, approach in which the value and cognitive components are inseparably intertwined. Revolutionary, critical thought is the truth of revolutionary practice in its totality, and not its individual small »measurable« pieces. In this respect the author subjects to criticism some recent tendencies and methodological orientations in Political Science which can, in fact, be reduced to a positivism of varying sorts: that by means of new techniques instrumental truths are verified as essential. The Political Science of the revolutionary, Marxist type in order to avoid danger, as with those who lie in ambush in the ideo-sphere threatening to bring it down to the level of simple ideology, so with those who are forced upon us by the «obvious nature of political reality«, threatening to turn it into a register of »political facts«, must continually develop a critical relationship towards its own subject. The source and centre theme of such a science must be the revolution, for it asks radically all the questions which are important to Man, which means that it also gives results in »human form«. The truth of such a science, concludes the author, must be the remodeling of the totality of the bourgeois world, with all its »convincing« and »measurable« truths.
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