Russian social thought and ontological horizons of modern sociological theory

The article contains a case of theoretical-methodological and historical-sociological reflection on socio-ontological issues. Present in sociology mainly in the form of background assumptions, this problematic has recently become a subject of active discussion. A number of researchers characterize this situation as an “ontological turn”, which is assessed in the article as an excessive metaphor. Manifested in the form of a “flat ontology”, the so-called “ontological turn” indicates not so much a methodological concern for the philosophical foundations of sociological research, as a desire to neutralize the extremes of social constructivism, while avoiding the final solution of the “damned” ontological issues. It is shown in the article that the “ontological turn” in Bruno Latour’s version of “flat ontology” is a demonstrative refusal to discuss ontological issues and its reduction to the methodology of research work. The lack of ontological clarity regarding the entities under study generates a research situation in which social ontology is reduced to the subject of research, “second-order constructs” are merged with the respondent’s direct judgments, and the ontology of the social whole is replaced by the ontology of the subject. Believing that social ontology is related to two fundamental questions – what does the social “consist of” and at what level does it exist, the author turns to the sociology of P. Sorokin and social philosophy of S. L. Frank. The works of the former help to substantiate the idea of the semiotic nature of social reality, while the works of the latter help to understand that the nature of social relations is fully comprehensible at the level of a social systemic whole. Frank’s holistic approach, productive as a methodological alternative to “flat” ontology, is explicated in the article from three perspectives – religious, phenomenological and systemic.