Social Ontology as Embedded in the Tradition of Phenomenological Realism

Following Edmund Husserl’s distinction between formal and material ontology, social ontology can be defined as that material ontology focusing upon the species of social objects and its essential properties. Husserl himself never developed a scheme for social ontology in extenso, the main promoters of this discipline being the philosophers of the Munich/Göttingen phenomenological circles. Their theories converge on an antireductionist and essentialist approach: there are social objects, and these objects instantiate essential properties. Interestingly, not all social objects can be described by recurring to this model of explanation, and indeed, only some specific types of social objects were considered within phenomenological researches. Some of the most important are social acts, social relations, and social groups. In fact, it is exactly the essentialist approach that makes the phenomenologist blind with respect to a huge class of (social) objects (such as restaurants, driving licenses, screwdrivers, and the Holy Roman Empire) that do not instantiate essential properties. The properties these objects exemplify serve to fulfill a social function, and this function contingently exists in connection to social groups. In the last part of the chapter, I hence suggest to improve the phenomenological approach by considering the species of social objects as divided into two distinct subspecies: social objects with an essence and social objects without essence, i.e., social artifacts.