Pluralismo delle forme della vita sociale e reciprocità normativa. Una ipotesi di dialogo tra sociologia relazionale e teoria critica

The main aim of these pages is to explore the possibility of crossing two sociological and theoretical approaches: Relational Sociology and some recent addresses of the Critical Theory. Firstly, although the formula “relational sociology” may seem extremely familiar, it is useful to clarify what particular idea of social relation should be involved and assumed in this analytic frame. This clarification is due to the very complex, fragmented and pluralistic scenario of the last thirty years within the Relational sociology debate. Social relations may express different meanings and this characterizes the different approaches as well as different methodologies. According to Simmelian sociology, we assume relations as “forms of social life”. Secondly, a critique of the forms of social life that we intend to resume here is intertwined with some topics of relational sociology and concerns from social philosophy, particularly those emerging from the recent debate on Critical Theory. Rahel Jaeggi, Axel Honneth and Hartmut Rosa have relaunched some interesting investigations on the concept of “good life” in a social sense. From this point of view, I advance that the convergence of these themes with the main themes of relational sociology could be fostered and examined. Finally, the idea of normative reciprocity, which links social and moral issues, is the most challenging and difficult to explore: even if reciprocity is widely used among relational sociologists, it seems to be indeed an elusive and a “slippery” concept. Exploring and investigating on the normative reciprocity could be a central issue which demonstrates the fundamental convergence mentioned above. It concerns an intrinsically ontological character of social relations which, in order to generate a “good life” between the involved social actors, must always be able to intersect (social) being and (social) ought, in other words interaction and norm.