The article offers a summary of a number of approaches to contemporary humanities in which the main dynamics of research and methodology could be characterised as emancipation. The humanities is seen here not merely as an open discipline, but it is viewed as a method of research able of accepting its relational and indeterminate progress. The soft dimension of its analysis, which is also rooted in an individual biography of the researcher, results from a particular attention paid to other than (...) human subjects. In particular, the humanities related to digital culture and virtual reality needs to redefine its research methods but also communicate with other sources of perception and experience. This relational nature of contemporary humanities in which it reflects the complexity of multiple subjects and perspectives challenges more traditional positions of analysis but simultaneously offers a chance of development. (shrink)

Epistemology, confronted with a rapid development of individual branches of science, has been pressed to establish its own status and position as well as to define its relation with science. The multiple perspectives on this issue can be grouped into two major positions: integrism (postulates a close co-existence between epistemology and science) and separatism (argues in favour of a full independence of science and epistemology).In the paper I analyse the two views and try to prove that the debate between integrism (...) and separatism cannot be resolved, as the two approaches belong to different and incompatible philosophical traditions: analytical and transcendental. In the article these issues are examined, and arguments in favour of the separatist view are offered. It is argued for the clear separation of epistemology from science. (shrink)