«Truth» and «authority» as categories of social philosophy

Abstract

The paper highlights the mutual isolation between politics (collective imperatives, normative expectations that force to take action) and science (area of cognitive expectations dependent on similarly imperative internal, though universally shared, intersubjective convictions. Particular attention is paid to the specifics of the interdependence between political development and science in Russia. The authors investigate prerequisites for the affirmation of the only- truth instance from the perspective of communication theory and discuss two independent types of communication: the one oriented towards the views of public authorities and the one oriented towards personal beliefs. Applying Luhmann’s universally acceptable concepts describing science and social systems, the authors provide an analysis of the current state of the Russian science.