The role of the phenomenologist in social science

Joseph J. Pilotta

pp. 345-356

in: Philip Blosser, Eiichi Shimomissé, Lester Embree, Hiroshi Kojima (eds), Japanese and Western phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

The role of the phenomenologist in social science is critical to the understanding of the reflexive production of knowledge. When one explores the phenomenologist's role in social science, one realizes that social science is thoroughly social and cannot be compared or analogued as another instance of the hermeneutics of texts. This position is totally inadequate and phenomenological social science needs a thorough understand of social texts in order to understand its critics as well as its interpretive foundations and methodological shortcomings.