1.

Social Science: Beyond Constructivism and Realism

I think the alienation has a dichotomy or it can be understood in two ways, an activity of
finding oneself or a loss of the truth. According to Hegel, alienation is part of the process of the
separation of subject and object. For Marx, it is the outcome of the capitalist mode of production
or the real condition of society. Although Hegel clarifies the existence of the human being
through referring to its ontological dimension, Marx assesses the term alienation in terms of the
economic dimension. We can see signs of alienation itself in multiple complaints such as anxiety
states, lack of social norms, lack of self-awareness, lack of firmness, and so forth. The reason
why these disorders appear is because of alienation and why we feel as an alien with regard to
everything because we lose our relationships with nature, past, society, its institutions and
especially relation to ourselves. Thus, we are alienated from nature, our past, God, society and its
institutions, work, friends and neighbors, values, our emotions, and the environment. Marx
evaluates alienation within a specific institutional context: the economy.
If a theory is critical, this means that it is based on an opposing and questioning way of
analysis. Critical theory aims to reveal the ideological illusions passed into social relations and to
analyze the theories that expose false explanations of social reality. Critical theory is not only a
criticism of social facts but also a criticism of the theories that make false representations of
these facts. However, we cannot say that critical theory is not a scientific theory. When social
world is considered, critical theory asserts that through criticism scientific knowledge can be
produced. Therefore, it also calls itself critical social science.
Apel proposes that scientific community is communication community. In my opinion,
their language and ethic should be universal. The globalization of the global issues requires the

development of a global or macro ethics. This macro ethic has to be based on the more general
norms not only small groups of ethics regulating the relationships between the family and
neighborly relations based on traditional religious and ethical norms. We are faced with a lack of
ethical perspective in the social and political relations. Nowadays, the main determinant in
discussions on political and social issues as well as international relations is interests not the
ethical sensitivity. Scientific community or communication community should establish a global
ethics that all nations accept in the world.
2. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis
In the first connotation of the concept of communicative action refers to the interaction of
people with the ability of language. Therefore, this interaction assumes at least two people who is
capable of speech and action. Interaction appears under the rules previously adopted by
individuals and is the main characteristic of individuals. Individuals regulate individual and
social life by interacting with each other through symbolic expressions. In this sense,
communicative action reveals the unity of language and practice. Therefore, individual and
social life is reproduced through a system of symbols that make sense in the horizon of
individuals.
The main purpose of individuals that interact with each other with the framework of
linguistic communication is reconciliation. According to Habermas, individuals who interact
with for this purpose try to reach a consensus on something in the world through explanations
and interpretations, which they propose, based on tradition. The success of the action based upon
mutual expectations is achieved when participants communicating each other come to an

agreement. Therefore, the concept of agreement can be explained adequately if the formal
conditions of the emergence of the speech, not the content, are presented.
According to Arendt, public space is to emerge as an area consisting of citizens, and
therefore all the activities and people outside the public space are located in the private space.
Public space is an area that indicates an activity in which only the equal citizens can participate.
It is the area that means freedom and equality. They are all free in there because neither govern
nor the ruled, because they all are equal citizens. The first half of the 1980s in Turkey
corresponds to a period which policy-making was oppressed very intensively, the basic rights
and freedoms fully restricted and, in this state, cannot be mentioned in the public space. The
public space is a very important concept of the social-political life of Turkey, because it has
earned a key position in the issues of "turban" and "fundamentalism" as an ongoing debate since
the 1990s. Turban and fundamentalism are long-standing problem areas but they have started to
be discussed with the concept of the public space since 1990s. Where is the public space? Is it a
place? Is there such a place? Where is this place if it is really existing? All these questions
became the questions discussed by almost everyone from The President to ordinary citizens.