Reflexive criteria of sociological research

The article is devoted to the sociological criteria of explaining the way of thinking and actions of subjects, their spiritual and moral positions and intellectual forces that form the laws of social life. The author seeks to adapt such categories as ‘meaning of life’, ‘human dignity’, ‘rationality’ etc. for the purposes of sociological analysis by methodological construction of some real life dichotomies such as ‘subjective meaning and social function’, ‘the real and the ideal’, ‘the demanded and the excluded’. Thus, the author studies economic, political and technical processes in terms of both positivity and negativity of social interaction and states that given the increasing differentiation of the society and the contradictory trends of social development the reflexive criteria that take into account the socio-cultural nature of the man help to find one’s own model of development.

reflexive criteria, spiritual system of coordinates, the criteria of correspondence, optimality, harmony and interaction level, the criterion of understanding level, type of rationality, identification