How is the History of the Church Possible? («Church History» as an Independent Discipline in the Light of Epistemology)

The article discusses the similarities and differences between the epistemes and paradigms of academic knowledge from the standpoint of the philosophy of science of Thomas Kuhn, Gaston Bachelard, Imre Lakatos, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben. According to the views of T. Kuhn and his followers, if the paradigm is characterized by normativism, methodological systematicity, regularity, and some other signs of positive knowledge, then the episteme is characterized by methodological amorphousness, the presence of “hidden structures”, a priori epistemological approaches, etc. The history of science can state the fact of changing scientific paradigms in the following sequence: classical – non-classical – post-non-classical – neoclassical – post-post-non-classical. This statement is true under three assumptions: (a) we are talking exclusively about the Humanities; (b) different paradigms can coexist simultaneously; (c) in the course of “turns” in the Humanities, a sharp transition of discourse (both scientific and philosophical) from one paradigm to another is possible, bypassing one or more intermediate links of the specified chain. Giorgio Agamben, relying on the ideas of Aristotle and Karl Schmitt, politicizes the concept of “a paradigm” in the discourse on theology and says that there are two “metaparadigms”: (a) political, i.e. official, and (b) economic, i.e. private. The author discusses the scientific validity of Church History as an independent academic discipline from the cognitive and systemic points of view in the context of the “meta-paradigmatic” approach of Giorgio Agamben and predicts possible combination of several paradigms and their alternatives – episteme in one scientific discourse

Context (archaeology) · Discipline · Episteme · Epistemology · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Globalization, Historical Perspectives, and International Relations · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity