Phenomenology and sociology: An essay on the essence of their relationship

Abstract

The conjunction of two famous anecdotes (Claude Bernard and Hegel) in the history of the social sciences coincides in discovering the capacity of reason to trace the transcendence of human dignity by its own effort. This discredits the materialist thought that dominated the Enlightenment era and the birth of science, affecting the central interest of social theory in unraveling the complexity of social action, and especially the primacy of knowledge of the meaning of human actions, which constitute the very life of the human being in his group or community existence. This essay adheres to Weber’s thought on the priority place that seeks the meaning of social action. On this basis, after exposing the importance of the anecdotal present on the capacity of the human being to glimpse his transcendental dignity, he proposes to illuminate the singularity of this event that, until today, we know belongs exclusively to beings endowed with intelligence and intellectual perception of the phenomena of the world of morality and spirit.