In the social sciences the difficulty created by the plurality of approaches to the question of human universality is compounded by three fundamental problems. The first is the evidence that the core of research in modern social theory has been systematically disconnected from the problem of normativity. The second is the increasingly a-historical nature of the methodology of social analysis; and the third is the fact that the sphere of social reflection has expanded into a field of fundamentally empirical analysis that is disconnected from other adjacent, non-social disciplines. This consolidation of sociology as an independent discipline has led to a de facto separation of the description of complex social realities from the reflection upon what would be normatively desirable for the common good.