Ontological turns in contemporary political science: in search for compliance with politics

Abstract

The article reveals the content of the main trends in the development of contemporary political science in connection with crisis phenomena affecting its thematic, methodological and theoretical problems, as well as its connection with real political practice. The logic of the search for new political thinking consists in a sequential transition from solving the problems of the crisis in the field of interdisciplinary methodological synthesis to considering the unity of political methodology and ontology, and then to ontologizing political studies expressed in two ontological turns. Interdisciplinary synthesis involves overcoming the boundaries between qualitative and quantitative research, as well as the natural and social sciences. The unity of political methodology and ontology was based on the recognition of the primacy of substantive political research. The first ontological turn concerned criticism of the post-political review of politics and attempts to substantiate political theory and philosophy as a fact of politics. In the thematic plan, attention was paid to disclosing the content of the political and substantiating the relationship between philosophy and politics. The second ontological turn led to the politicization of ontology and the ontologization of politics by criticizing metaphysics, rationalism, and human subjectivity. This turn is expressed in the new political realism, which includes actor-network theory and object-oriented ontology.