ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an impression of the author's affiliation with sociology as a passion and profession, from his student years up to my present-day work and his plans for future. Alongside the author's studies of sociology, philosophy, and psychology, he also learned quite a lot by attending lectures and seminars in political science, modern history and economic and social history. Among his academic teachers, Ernst Topitsch in sociology, Ernst Tugendhat and Carl F. Graumann in psychology were most significant to him. Hans Albert, Rainer Lepsius, and Martin Irle at Mannheim University were important teachers in philosophy of the social sciences, sociology and social psychology. The social sciences are characterized by an almost complete separation of mainly three internally closed paradigmatic and methodological approaches to the subject matter: the rational choice perspective and quantitative approach in econometrics and quantitative empirical social research; institutionalism and qualitative documentary analysis in political science and law; and discourse theory and discourse analysis in interpretative sociology.
