Ontologiczne spory o istnienie społeczeństwa w polskiej teorii socjologicznej .......... 239

ONTOLOGICAL DISPUTES ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF SOCIETY IN POLISH SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

The article regards ontological foundations of social reality. In the article I analyze the works of four Polish sociologists: Florian Znaniecki, Tadeusz Szczurkiewicz, Paweł Rybicki and Jan Szczepański. The work shows how they had characterized society and an individual. Putting together four significant sociologists of the Polish sociological thought allows me to discover ontological premises which dominated the Polish sociological thought. The picture of social reality emerging from the works of these four Polish sociologists, whose writings cover almost the whole 20th century, consists of many variations of ontological realism. The social feature of an individual is regarded as a primary fact rooted in human nature. The general trend present in the field of sociological theory was not different from the one present in contemporary social sciences where the sociological entities were attributed with qualities different than the entities understood as the total of their parts. The problem of relations between philosophy and sociology has been recently regaining its popularity. The work stresses the importance of ontological analysis for the social sciences because each and every belief about social reality (no matter if it is expressed directly or claimed in silence) has its representation in the way sociological research has been conducted as well as in methodological premises and in the techniques of gatherings data.