The impact of cognition of social reality on the development of social and philosophical knowledge

The research discusses the phenomenon of social reality, the aspects of its knowledge and reveals the specific nature of the social and philosophical approach to analyzing this cognitive object. Social reality is considered both as a kind of reality and as a philosophical category reflecting the essential features of this kind of reality. Social reality can be primarily characterized by its integrative role, a combining component for all its constituent elements of society. The diversity of these elements determines a wide range of explanatory models of social reality. The paper describes four explanatory models: naturalistic, realistic, activity-based, and phenomenological ones. Besides, the research focuses on the scope and limits of the knowledge of social reality as well as the problems to be addressed while studying this phenomenon.