Le devoir des sciences sociales. Cyril Lemieux et le durkheimisme pragmatique

Abstract

In a context marked by an unprecedented crisis of the social sciences, the work of the sociologist Cyril Lemieux clearly stands out for his ambition to relaunch their project through a systematic reading of their history guided by a pragmatic redefinition, nourished by the philosophy of the second Wittgenstein, of the holistic perspective previously advanced by Emile Durkheim. The paper presents and discusses the theoretical core of this pragmatic Durkheimism, by clarifying the general notion of “grammar” and by elucidating the specific regime of “public grammar”. The latter turns out to occupy a strategic position, insofar as it enables defining the duty of the social sciences, which encapsulates the political task that sociology assigns to them: increasing the degree of reflexivity of practices, in order to work to their lucid transformation with a view to collective emancipation.