Olga Ruptash

I would like to examine three approaches to methodological status of the social sciences and humanities. The specificative approach continues a tradition inherent in philosophy of W. Dilthey, W. Windelband, and H. Rickert, who focused attention on the studying of the specific features of the humanities. The unificative, or unificatory, approach was developed under the influence of positivism. It aims at justifying of the humanities methodology due to working out general scientific standards based on the priority of empirical methods. In this respect, unification of the methodology of science consequently should re-sult in the social sciences and humanities assimilation to the natural sciences. The works of L. Wittgenstein, C. G. Hempel, P. Oppenheim, R. Carnap, E. Nagel contributed to the strengthening of this approach. Nowadays several factors and drivers promote the integrative approach. It seems essential to emphasize the possibility and necessity to combine the methods of various disciplines in trans- and cross-disciplinary research. It is argued that the integrative approach reveals intrinsic potential of the social sciences and humanities for complementing the natural sciences and enriching the scientific methodology.

This article explores the potential resources of the Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and its core concepts for the development of the philosophy and methodology of the human sciences. Focusing on Bakhtin’s late essays: “The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences;” “From Notes Made in 1970-71;” and “Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences,” the author deals with such concepts as sense, semantic whole, superaddressee, the third, and outsideness. Metalinguistics is interpreted as a philosophical approach to the problems of humanities methodology. The specifics of the human sciences, which Bakhtin put to the question, are described in comparison and correlation with the natural sciences. The author elaborates the idea of the communicative three-part relationship or trilogue. The role of the superaddressee as the third participant of the trilogue between the researcher and the text is discussed. The notion semantic whole and its implementation in the process of the sense’s becoming are analyzed.