Abstract

This article offers a theoretical reflection on the structuring basis of qualitative methods. The text discusses the foundations of such qualitative approaches as symbolic interactionism, grounded theory, ethnomethodology, the theory of social action, life stories, and oral histories, among others. The text seeks to challenge the term "comprehensive sciences"  introduced by the 19th century philosopher Dilthey and later utilized by other philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer and Merleau-Ponty; by sociologists such as Weber, Schütz and Bourdieu; and by Habermas in his dialectic proposal, which argues that it is possible to understand and be critical because reality presents itself as a field of interests expressed through contradictory language.
The qualitative researcher is constantly challenged to understand himself as a being in a world in which all objects and experiences are significant, but are also marked by the incompletenessof his knowledge of them. It is in this condition that the researcher enters into the circular movement of the other as a "being in time" (a historic being) and as a "being in constant concealment and unconcealment."