Existential phenomenology and the sociological tradition

Abstract

Although the history of sociology includes no accepted ‘existential sociology,’ various writers of texts on theory have shown an awareness of the phenomenological approach. The original phenomenological school of sociology flourished in German-speaking areas of Europe in the inter-war period; moreover, phenomenological sociology was directly under the philosophical influence of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Spiegelberg in his excellent historical study of phenomenology4 discusses the relation between Scheler and Husserl but omits Mannheim, while Timasheff in his survey of sociological theories talks of the ‘isolated’ Mannheim in the philosophical school but leaves out Scheler in discussing phenomenological sociology. The affinity of Simmel’s approach to phenomenological analysis is evident in the interrelated elements of his sociology.