Abstract

The author here presents a series of significant, thoughtful, and well-written essays which are united by their common concern with man and his social world. The book is subtitled "Essays on the Coherence and Deformation of Social Reality." The essays, particularly in Part One, offer an introduction to and a defense of the phenomenological approach to philosophy, though Natanson does tend to slant his reading in an existentialist direction. He strongly objects to recent attempts to bridge the gap between the "empirical-positivistic" and the "conceptual-phenomenological" modes of analysis by the oversimplification of the latter’s methodological postulates. Though this position may solidify differences between the two schools, Natanson’s concern for the integrity of the phenomenological method is noteworthy.