It Has Gone and No One Knows if It Will return: The Progressive Disappearance of the Original Theory

José Henrique de Faria

RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), 2023, vol. 27, issue Vol. 27 No. 1 (2023): Jan/Feb - 2023, e220065

Abstract: Objective: the objective of this text is to question the academic production that focuses on either the descriptions about the researched subject, with reflections in which the immediate form of the object predominates, or the use of pre-existing theoretical models and conceptions, which end up directing the investigation to the presupposition contents. Provocation: ‘productivist logic’ has thrown theory away from the academic spotlight, giving more value to pragmatic objectivism and the undeniable evidence provided by empiricism. The so-called ‘scientific productivism’ is based either on the immediate determination of the object in the constitution of knowledge or on a direct result of the thought assumption about reality: in both cases, knowledge would emerge from the absence of the permanent interaction between the object and the consciousness, dialectically mediated by thought. Elaborating original theory requires from the ‘Epistemological Act’ a permanent and critical investment in the reality and in the theories available. In the absence of this investment, descriptive analyses and those that reproduce early theoretical assumptions, as if the existing theory were immediately a condition of representation of the reality, fulfill a formalistic ritual and do not reveal the multideterminations of the objects in its concrete constitution. Conclusion: it is urgent to reaffirm the place of theory as the objectively elaborated form of the representation of reality, as a requirement of the scientific condition beyond description, phenomenal mentions, notes, narratives, forms, assumptions, and ideological mysticism. The theory is not the dogmatic guarantee of definitive true knowledge, but of the in-depth, methodologically oriented elaboration of the onto-practical and epistemic condition.

Date: 2023
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