Sociology: postmodernism and ontology

There is a noticeable interest for ontology in sociological science. At the same time, ontology itself is being interpreted ambiguously. On the one hand, there is the tradition of classical ontology represented by the names and works of Aristotle, Parmenides, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, the Frankfurt School in sociology, G. Lukács, M. Lifshitz. On the other hand, the theme of “social ontology” has emerged basing on the attitudes and stylistics of postmodernism. If in classical ontology there is an orientation towards “authentic” and “true” phenomena of social existence, distinguishing them from “things” that are deviant and do not correspond to their nature, in the postmodern version such an “essential” distinction is not made, for “all states are equivalent”, “everything is idiocratic (purely individual) facts.” In this case, the world of social things is not permeated by “categorical,” “essential,” and “typical” unity. Each “thing” is not determined by its essence, but, on the contrary, is represented by a “plurality” of its arbitrary variations, each of them might be treated as a kind of “authenticity” sui generis, “true” already by virtue of the fact of its existence. Such a positivist-postmodernist relativism nullifies the entire “culture of notions” that constitutes the cornerstone of any ontology, since the «notion» is what is used to grasp the essence of human affairs, where the authenticity of social artifacts is present and what preserves the authenticity of life situations.