THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE (Excerpted from Contemporary Social Philosophy DOC

Title	THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE (Excerpted from Contemporary Social Philosophy
Author	R. Santos
Pages	7
File Size	44.5 KB
File Type	DOC
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THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE (Excerpted from Contemporary Social Philosophy) by: Dr. Manuel Dy, Jr., Ph.D. Social Philosophy and Social Sciences Although both philosophy and science spring from experience, from the inherent desire of a human person to know reality, they differ in their approach and intent. Philosophy seeks to understand reality in its totality and ultimate value, while science attempts to control and manipulate it. The philosophical approach is integrative of experience, whereas the scientific approach cannot but be partial in the sense that it isolates a certain aspect of reality. Science makes reality into an object, something apart from the inquirer or the scientist, because the objectivity of science demands that the person of the scientist must not intrude into his inquiry. The objectivity of Philosophy on the other hand, requires that it is subjective, not in the pejorative sense of subjectivistic, but in the sense that the philosopher is part of the reality that he is investigating. In this light, social philosophy and the social sciences, though inquiring into the same social reality, are distinct from each other. Social philosophy penetrates into the social dimension of human existence with the immediacy of intuition, searching its meaning and value(s), conceptualizing them for the sake of integrative meaningful living. The structure that social philosophy seeks to understand are not taken in isolation from one another but placed in a figure-horizon sort of way. The economic structure of society, for instance, cannot be understood independently of the political and vice versa. The overriding and central value, of course, is the human being, his community, his culture. Social philosophy attempts to understand, though he may not always succeed, his well- being-with-others-in-society in a total integrative way. On the other hand, the social sciences try to examine a segment of social reality (a group of people, their culture, their economics or politics) as a fact and to explain it. A social scientist tries to find inter-objective connections between facts and formulates theories and laws, sometimes using measurements and statistics. He uses induction and deduction: induction to arrive at the theories and laws from social facts, deduction to explain social facts by social theories and laws. The methods used of course are limited to observable phenomena to social reality as an object. Nevertheless, social philosophy and the social sciences, though distinct, help each other. The philosopher's insights are many times substantiated by the facts provided by the scientist, and the scientist impelled to probe into a social fact by the insight of a philosopher. The scientist's methodology contains certain philosophical presuppositions that would be the business of the philosopher to unearth and criticize. Likewise, the philosopher's understanding of social reality would remain abstract and unfounded without the findings of the social sciences....