Religious Schemes in Social Theories

Abstract

The article discusses the problem of synthesis of opposing sociological theories. The principles of such synthesis are most clearly presented in Hegel’s concept of the God-human idea of Christianity, interpreted by the philosopher as a dialec­tical-reflexive synthesis of the principles of mono-, poly- and pantheism. The po­sition on society as a genuine object of religious worship, substantiated in so­ciology, allowed the authors to put forward a hypothesis about the existence of a structural similarity between mono-, poly- and pantheistic religious teach­ings and sociological theories. The conducted research confirmed that the onto­logical and normative features of monotheistic and polytheistic worldviews iden­tified by Hegel were respectively found in Durkheim’s object sociology and in constructivism. Their common feature turned out to be the ontological opposi­tion: God and Man in religious doctrines, Society and Man in social theories. Such incomplete reflexivity in Hegelian theory was resolved through the doc­trine of the unity of divine and human nature, connecting all elements into
a reflexive trinity. In the final part of the work, the authors raise the question of the methodological conditions under which “pansociologism” could become the basis for a “triune synthesis” of antinomic social theories.