Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 7, 2025

Social Epistemology in the Context of the Critique of Political Economy

(Abstract)

Yuan Liguo

In the history of philosophy, Marx and Engels transformed the subject-object structure of modern Western epistemology, establishing a form of social epistemology centered on the relationship between social consciousness and social existence within the framework of historical materialism. Within this epistemological discourse, their dual critique of political economy and Hegel established the “totality of bourgeois society” as the primary “object of cognition.” This totality, however, cannot be grasped solely through the circulation of commodities; it must be approached via the deeper structures of commodity production in order to uncover the essential nature of bourgeois social relations. From the perspective of epistemological outcome, scientific knowledge involves a necessary suspension of the object in its immediacy, revealing it in abstract form. This process enables a systematic interpretation of the capitalist model of development. The theoretical framework of this social epistemology not only allows us to survey the developmental laws and tendencies of actual capitalism, but also points toward the emergent elements of a new society gestating within capitalism itself.