SPEECH GIVEN ON THE 15TH OF JANUARY 1991 ON THE OCCASION OF BEING AWARDED THE DOCTOR HONORIS CAUSA TITLE OF THE BABEȘ-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY CLUJ-NAPOCA
SPEECH GIVEN ON THE 15TH OF JANUARY 1991 ON THE OCCASION OF BEING AWARDED THE DOCTOR HONORIS CAUSA TITLE OF THE BABEȘ-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY CLUJ-NAPOCA

Summary/Abstract: The methodological conviction which I adopted ever since my studies of social mobility can be synthetically formulated as follows: it is not by denying, but, on the contrary, by affirming the autonomy of the agent that we can turn sociology into a fully-fledged science. The right way of conceiving the social subject’s behaviour may not be, as economists want, to see him as ultra-rational and to confuse rationality with utilitarian motives. It is neither, as sociologists often want, to view him as irrational. In between the two, there is the possibility to analyse his behaviour and beliefs as “intelligible”, as obeying reasons which, if not always objectively founded, nevertheless have the status of “reasons”. There is no point in adding that these reasons are always partially dependent on the social context, so much this goes without saying.

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