Is It Possible That Sociologists are always Critics, and Critics are always sociologists? Conceptualisation of Research Critique in Wittgensteinian Theory

Abstract

The article examines the vagueness of the conception of critical sociology in contemporary thought. It is shown that different attempts to overcome the critical theory end up reducing critical sociology to mundane criticism. The author offers a conceptualization of critique in social theory based on particular ideas of Wittgensteinian sociology. This approach allows emphasizing special features of critical sociology, as compared to noncritical thought and everyday criticism, and showing its limits and contradictions.