Introduction

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the first part of this book. The part deals with the field of inquiry which flanks on one side the field of the exact sciences of the socio-historical actuality. It is the field in which the thought movement has changed from the exact scientific to the philosophical, in which the method of empirical science, with its main emphasis on a correspondence theory of truth, searches for a support and a justification in the method of philosophy. The inquiries of this field deal with the basic concepts, the fundamental presuppositions, and the a priori categories of the social sciences. They are inquiries into problems which cannot be settled within the field of inductive empirical investigation, since they form the basis on which that investigation rests. They deal with the problems of the philosophy and the methodology of these sciences.