On the history of the formation of social philosophy of the XX century: around the discussion about the Asian mode of production

Smetankina Lyudmila Vasilievna, Ogarkov Alexander Nikolaevich

One of the most difficult problems that arose in the process of the formation of the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations as a typology of history was the problem of correlating the theoretical and empirical levels of historical knowledge, as a specification of the traditional philosophical dispute about the relationship between the categories "general", "special" and "individual". Explication of the content of these categories in social cognition is extremely difficult due to the specificity of the objects of socio-philosophical knowledge, the multiplicity of interpretation options for the concept of "historical fact", the difficulty of separating explanation, description and evaluation in historical research, which is the basis of sociological generalization. In addition, it is often extremely difficult to separate in a conceptual model that "grasps" the totality of social phenomena in their connection, the philosophical aspect of analysis proper from the sociological one, and the sociological aspect from the historical one. The researcher constantly runs the risk of creating such a theoretical construction, which, having delimited the richness of social phenomena with several features, will cease to be a means of cognition, "numb" the fabric of social life. Such difficulties in the "post-Hegelian" period of the development of philosophy received a radical solution at a new problem level in the concept of G. Rickert: generalizing laws are aimed at finding integrity and the most general signs of its division, to which the historical sciences do not lend themselves at all. The object of history is the individual developmental series.

Keywords:social philosophy, Asian mode of production, discussion, cognition, social life.