الفضاء الاجتماعي من منظور الفينومينولوجيا الوجودية لموريس ميرلوبونتي : دراسة نقدية لمنهجية إميل دوركايم

Abstract EN

This paper provides a detailed exposition to the defective aspects in Emile Durkheim’s method in studying social phenomena, which he tackles in his book “The Rules of Social Method”.

This has been achieved through drawing on Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s philosophy of embodiment, through which, it has been possible to show the false and limited ontological and epistemological results of Durkheim’s method in studying social phenomenon.

The failure and limitedness of Durkheim’s research project is related to being influenced by both Cartesian dualism and positivism.

This paper highlights the influence of these two perspectives on constituting Durkheim’s method and opinions, especially those related to their ontological aspect which explains social phenomena as things, followed by their epistemological aspect, which relates to the external properties of these things.

This paper adopts Merleau- Ponty’s existential phenomenology method, which can reveal the level of embodied consciousness which, in turn, can pave the way for the self to be opened to a social world as an embodied self.

This method also suggests solutions which paves the way towards revealing the reality of social phenomena as well as highlighting the roots, values, and limits of the knowledge of sociologists.

Accordingly, this paper explores the crises of human sciences presented by Merleau- Ponty, with a view to showing the importance of the existential and phenomenological studies in explaining the origins of social phenomena and how they are shaped in the world.

The importance of such a method, in our view, emanates from its influential contribution to social studies, which is achieved on the basis of intersubjectivity, structural relationships, primacy of perception, and embodied knowledge, the basis of which constitutes the ontological and epistemological understanding of social phenomena.