Reframing of “Social intercourse” (“obschenie”) through the lens of existentialphenomenological paradigm

Abstract

The paper deals with the idea of studying social phenomenon that in Russian philosophy
and socio-humanitarian literature has been named as “obschenie”. The author believes that the
closest comparable term in English is “social intercourse” as it was used back in the XIX century.
In contemporary literature, however, “obschenie” is more often translated as “communication”,
“interaction”, or “social relations”. The paper summaries approaches developed in social
philosophy toward an inquiry into this phenomenon and underlines three main paradigms that help
to explore the enigmas of “obschenie” (social intercourse): a) instrumentalist, b) existentialist,
c) social institutionalist. The paper goes further to examine how instrumentalist paradigm opposes
the existentialist paradigm. In conclusion the author makes some presuppositions concerning
possibilities of further research in the fi eld.