On the strained relationship between philosophy and sociology

The main contention of this article is the following: sociology, like all the modern sciences, was born out of philosophy. But, ungratefully enough and perhaps because of a deepseated inferiority complex vis-�-vis the older well established sciences, sociology tends to forget or at least to blurr its philosophical foundation. Thus it turns out to be �social engineering�. The sociologist becomes a technical expert, rather indifferent to a synoptic or global view of society, and ready to offer his or her services to the best offer in the open market. Social theory is reduced to �model building� according to the changing needs of the economic agencies, from government bodies to private entrepreneurs. Contrary to social theory, a model is a purely intellectual arbitrary construct and, although conditioned by a basic congruity among its different parts, it is not historically rooted but essentially a �fictio mentis�. In this way sociology loses inevitably its problem awareness and it runs the risk of �quantifying the qualitative�, that is to say to accumulate bits of knowledge without knowing for what purpose.