A Study Of The Philosophical Foundation Of Marxist Social Science Methodology

Marxist social science methodology, a reasonable methodology of socialscience, is an effective guidance to the practical social science research. Under theprinciple of Historical Materialism and use it in the concrete social practicesymbolized the peculiarity of Marxist social science methodology. The innerconfliction of social science methodologies between Methodology of HumanScience and Natural Science, Methodology of Individualism and Holism is a pivotaltopic in contemporary social science study. Marxist social science methodologyprovides a constructive theory to settle this issue.My paper contains3main parts.Part1. On study the methodologies of the founders of sociology, Max Weberand Emile Durkeim, I propose that the philosophical guiding thought is the primarycause of the inner confliction in social science methodologies. This conclusionprovides a reasonable theoretical support on solve the issue in philosophical way.Part2. Although the modified methodologies from socialists such as PeterWinch and Anthony Giddens have theoretical limitation, their methodologiesfurnished value source for Marxist social science methodology.Part3. State the points of Marxist Historical Materialism and its socialperspective. Illustrate Marxist social science methodology is a reasonable way tosettle the inner confliction of social science methodology.Marxist social science methodology is Marxist historical materialism’s practicalapplication on social science field. Base on the concrete human’s social practice,Marxist historical materialism criticized all previous materialisms’ intuitionalstandpoint on human’s relationship with the world, further it criticized idealism’sabstract viewpoint on human’s actual activities. Different from all the previous philosophical worldview, Marxist historical materialism was built on human’s actualactivities, which he called Social Practice. In this kind of worldview, human andsociety are in a dialectical relationship. Human’s activities is changing the society, incontrary, the changing society also influencing human’s activities. Human’s socialpractice is the pivotal element in this kind of society. Only this kind of social sciencemethodology could settle the inner confliction of the social science methodologies.