. Does the sociological analysis go beyond our taken-for-granted assumptions about the established reality? Does the analysis extend our knowledge of the established reality, totality (Lukacs, 1971), or totalization (Sartre, 1963) by transcending it, that is by making it an understood part of a larger whole? Even conventional positivist sociology would usually agree to the criterion of transcendence. For what is sociology if it does not go beyond the taken-for-granted assumptions of the status quo...just another form of journalism with more statistical data? Transcendence of the status quo should be a criterion of all sociology worthy of that name.
The criterion of transcendence may be thought of as the degree to which the analysis uncovers the potential for social change and human liberation inherent in any social institution. The "unactualized potential" of a social system implicitly acknowledges that social change is continuous.
A second criterion for judging the truth of a theory is praxis, or the degree to which sociological analysis is responsible to human values (Habermas, 1971). Praxis is the key concept that differentiates the critical sociologist from the ahistorical gatherer of "common sense facts" and cataloguer of mathematical abstractions whose activities characterize contemporary sociological positivism. Praxis refers to the ideal of conscious practical action--of making the critique of alienation speak for popular needs and lead to concrete actions against the capitalist commodity relationships--within historical possibilities. Knowledge serves "real world" interests whether it is encyclopedic (Foucault, 1970) knowledge aimed at cataloguing the status quo so that someone else may act to maintain it as in the case of sociological positivism, or contemplative (Kirkpatrick, 1973) knowledge which assumes a special status from which to view social reality, status that claims to be apart from that reality. Sociology is part of society, and does not objectively stand above it. No matter what pains are taken for "objective value-free analysis," (Weber, 1949) knowledge cannot be divorced from social reality and values.
Source: CRITICAL THEORY AND THE LIMITS OF SOCIOLOGICAL POSITIVISM (excerpt from)
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