Construcción social de las emociones, hermenéutica y antropocentrismo: hacia un naturalismo antipositivista

Abstract

The social constructionist view has established the significance of society and culture for the scientific study of emotions. But acknowledging the relevance of the social and cultural levels in the explanation of emotions does not commit us to the ontological and epistemological basis of social constructionism. In this article, I argue i) that the social constructionist view of emotions is a variety of hermeneutical human science; ii) that hermeneutical human sciences lie on anthropocentric ontological and epistemological assumptions that are ultimately incompatible with the sustainability challenges posed by the planet’s limits to economical and demographic growth; and iii) that an alternative to hermeneutics (a fortiori to social constructionism) and its anthropocentric assumptions is an antipositivist naturalism.