Zur Metaphysikbedürftigkeit der empirischen Alter(n)ssozialforschung

Empirical social research in general and research into ageing especially need metaphysics, that is, ontology and philosophical anthropology. This essay explains the problem of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary empirical research into ageing. On the one hand, empirical research findings have no meaning until they are understood from the perspective of the fundamental values of human beings. On the other hand, the aforementioned issue raises the existential question of the difference between the epistemic and the ontological truth of human existence. Empirical facts about social reality can only speak to us from the context of ontological truth. The difference between empirical results and ontological truth is called human alienation. This book confronts the epistemology of social acts of alienation with the referential point of view of the ontology of truth, the cultural grammar of social relations and the personhood of the individual in society.