Dialogism as overcoming the relativistic “temptation” of social epistemology

The paper analyzes the logic of the transformation of classical gnoseology into social epistemology. At the same time, the classical task of purifying knowledge from subjectivity is recognized as ongoing relevance despite the obvious inclination of social epistemology towards relativism. Relativization of knowledge is regarded as a disadvantage resulting from the unresolved contradiction between the requirement of objectivity of knowledge (defined as the purity from subjective impurity) and the moment of subjectivity that is necessary for the phenomenon of knowledge. The research presents the analysis of the key components of the subject-object opposition in the context of the main historical and philosophical milestones in the social epistemology development. The author concludes that to determine the specific nature of the social epistemological understanding of knowledge, it is necessary to shift the emphasis from the communicative nature of acquiring and processing knowledge to the possibility of substantiating the communicative nature of the deep foundation of knowledge, and, therefore, the possibility of achieving objective knowledge. It is proposed to consider Husserl's phenomenology along with the dialogue philosophy of M.M. Bakhtin as a theoretical cognitive paradigm for clarifying the communicative basis of the objectivity of knowledge.