Genesis and Validation of Social Knowledge: Lessons from Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

The social sciences today are again in a period of self-scrutiny. The trust in the self-sustaining virtues of scientific methodology — so prevalent in the postwar era — is a matter of the past; evicted from the position of undisputed sovereign, positive science finds itself in the more modest role of a partisan perspective competing for attention and credibility in the professional community. Among alternative views, phenomenology in recent years had gained particular prominence in debates on the premises and functions of social inquiry. As Maurice Natanson has observed: phenomenology — broadly “in the ascendancy” in English-speaking countries — represents today “a distinctive voice in the conversation of social scientists.”¹ The argument advanced by phenomenologists in this conversation is by no means one-dimensional or univocal; yet (as it seems to me), it is not impossible to discern a major thrust or common inflection. Broadly speaking, this thrust involves a stress on, and special attentiveness to, the peculiar features or distinctive traits of social phenomena as compared to purely natural phenomena; as a corollary of such attentiveness, the social scientist is commonly assumed to be less rigidly detached from his subject matter than the natural scientist and to be able to grasp not only the external sequence but also the intrinsic significance of social events.