On the Nature of an Integral Sociology: An Exploration in Theory and Practice

This article is the first in a series of three installments representing a doctoral project carried out at the University of the Free State in South Africa. The aim of this article is to establish an apodictic ontic and epistemic foundation for the construction of an integral framework for sociological practice. To this end, manifest reality is meditated upon in a realist phenomenological manner, thus yielding an etiological framework aimed at reflecting reality in itself, and not as the object of a specific scientific paradigm. Situated against the backdrop of the ontological turn in the social sciences, the argument is developed that contemporary science represents an ill-founded attempt at empirically describing a reality that is fundamentally trans-empirical. It is posited that any scientific enterprise which is founded exclusively on an empirical analysis of “objective” reality can ultimately yield only partial truths. To remedy this situation, the role of intersubjectively constructed meaning-frameworks and subjectively constituted qualia of manifestation during the generation of reality are acknowledged, facilitating an account thereof that enlivens the positivistic “world-as-described” by integrating it with the hermeneutically navigable “world-as-agreed-upon” and the individually encountered/embodied “world-as-witnessed.” The resulting etiological framework facilitates a grasp of the higher order unity of these “worlds” by facilitating the emergence of an aperspectival mode of being that transcends the empirico-perspectival mental consciousness structure characteristic of modern and postmodern epistemologies. In so doing, a universally valid layer of knowledge is laid bare which can serve as a contextualizing point of reference for the continued perspectival exploration of particular conditioned aspects of reality.