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SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 57
scientific investigation which cannot be dealt with within
the actual science itself. It deals with the a priori elements,
not of knowledge in general, that being the task of general
epistemology, but of social or sociological knowledge. So-
ciology, like other social sciences, could not proceed to
actual investigation and could not state its findings in an
intelligible manner if certain concepts, axioms, and proce-
dures were not accepted without further discussion. As a
science it is uncritical about these presuppositions and
leaves their investigation to philosophy.
In the case of sociology, the main epistemological prob-
lem is the problem of the prerequisites of socialization.
This is not in a historical sense, but in a logical and a psy-
chological sense. The problem is not to describe the ac-
tual formation of a special society or to indicate the phys-
ical and anthropological conditions which would enable a
society to be formed; nor is it a question of indicating the
specific impulses which move individuals to reciprocal ac-
tion. The question is rather: If such individuals exist,
what are the conditioning qualities of their consciousness
which enable them to be social beings? In the elements in
and for themselves, society does not yet exist. In the forms
of the interrelations between them, society has already be-
come actual. What, then, are these subjective and basic
prerequisites which enable individuals to become socialized
and thereby to create society? What are the a priori fac-
tors which form and make possible the empirical structure
of the individual in so far as he is a social being? Apart
from the empirical forms of socialization which fall under
the general concept “society,” how is society as such pos-
sible, as an objective form of subjective minds?
The metaphysics of sociology and the social sciences
does not inquire into the prerequisites of society, but takes
i Soz., pp. 26-27. See Book I, chapter v.
