The history of modern societies and of the analysis of these societies within the framework of the social sciences has led some people to broach the question of legitimacy in ambiguous terms. It has led them to take away from this question its authentic meaning and to deprive it of the possibility of establishing the conditions for a genuine evaluation of the relationships between governors and governed. This is symptomatic both of the philosophy of the social sciences and of the way modernity has developed and has reflected upon itself historically.

In order to demonstrate this point, it will be necessary first to examine the influence scientism has exerted upon the analysis of social facts. A detour by way of Enlightenment thought will then serve as the occasion for explicating how scientific ideals were reconciled there with values, both in works on history and in the ways people organised themselves and lived in a collectivity. Finally, we shall see that, turning against itself, the project connected with modernity's rationality has contributed to a divorce between the scientific analysis of reality and the normative dimension, a divorce that has mortgaged the future of an approach to legitimacy in terms of the faculty of judgement.

SCIENTISM AND THE ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHENOMENA

The natural sciences’ analysis of reality has profoundly marked the modern study of societies. That analysis has served as a reference point, even a paradigm, for such study.