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CHAPTER IV

SOCIOLOGY AS DISTINCT FROM
SOCIAL PHILOSOPYY

I iy HE term “sociology” has often been used for in-I
 quiries regarding the socio-historical actuality which
are in the last analysis of a philosophical nature. It
becomes necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the
science of sociology on the one hand and social philosophy
on the other. The word “sociology” does not stand for a
special science but simply for a branch of philosophy as
long as it is merely used for this latter discipline, and its
legitimation as a science demands, therefore, a clear differentiation.

Social philosophy is in essence the same as and belongs
to philosophy. It is the product of the application of the
specific philosophic thought form to the subject-matter of
society. It results from a specific functional relationship
between the subject and the socio-historical actuality
which differs from that functional relationship which produces
 scientific knowledge. It is the outcome of a way of
dealing with the phenomenological world which is different
from the way in which science deals with that same world.
It results from the application of the philosophic method,
and for that reason it should be classed with philosophy
rather than with the social sciences or sociology. The latter
 forms of inquiry, although dealing with the same subject-matter,
 employ a wholly different method. The distinction
 between science and philosophy is therefore also
the criterion for distinguishing between the social sciences