Understanding Social Love Experiencing Others’ Life

The sociology of love presents some epistemological and methodological challenges to overcome. The initial essay pertains the rationality-irrationality dichotomy. it is supported by an anti-psychological tendency, which opposes the use of categories of feeling and will, and rejects the method of empathy, because it is considered incapable of achieving cognitive objectivity. As is well known, Max Weber was one of the harshest and most tenacious opponents of this method.

The second topic inquiry is concerned with the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. In the methodology of the social sciences, the category of detachment has a invasive role. This is situated within the canon of rational-instrumental action, operating in accordance with conventional, standard and non-standard methods and procedures, designed to ensure the validity and objectivity of research results.

While social love cannot be disconnected from the domains in which individuals experience themselves, social love teaches us that action is not always driven by belief, by characteristic of one's culture, or by recursive nature of everyday life. In fact, social love can be ante-predictive, whereby feelings precede and anticipate the formation of a project.

To understand social love is to engage with the lived experience of others' directly without mediation. This enables us to access the whole of feeling, will and thought that operate continuously in all circumstances of life. Thus, one may become aware of the sentiments experienced when thinking of others in such situations.

The objectives of this proposal is twofold:

1) To extend the sociological canon to the interpretive categories of 'life' and 'thought' theorized by Wilhelm Dilthey.

2) To demonstrate the valid application of his method which is founded on re-creating, transposing, and re-experiencing procedures.