Social Epistemology in ‘Allamah Mutahhari’s Thought

This article is aimed to present a structured and analytic description of “social epistemology” in the thoughts of ‘Allamah Mutahhari who is, as a matter of fact, the constructor of philosophical foundation and principles of “Islamic sociology”. To attain this goal, the author has taken as a basis and a reference, Mutahhari’s sociological explanation of the “Islamic Revolution” as a social reality. From among issues concerning social epistemology, three fundamental issues have been studied: “that the social knowledge represents the factual world”, “methodologies of social knowledge”, and “generalization of social knowledge”. In the first part which says the social knowledge represents the factual world, acquiring a social knowledge which corresponds to the factual world is, according to ‘Allamah Mutahhari, possible; since some parts of sociology contain empirical knowledge and empirical knowledge is uncertain and, at best, conjectural, findings of a social researcher are of a probable and uncertain aspect. Concerning methodologies of social knowledge and to recognize social phenomena, he rejects and falsifies “empiricism” and advocates “methodological pluralism” and makes uses of various “empirical”, “mental-rational”, and “transmittal” methodologies. In the third part which concerns the extent to which social knowledge in the sociological thought may be generalized, he holds that not all social propositions may be deemed as “universal”; rather, most of such propositions are of a middle-range.