The Frankfurt School: "the praise of shade"

These considerations are essentially, but not exclusively, epistemological. Starting off with the question "what characterizes and finally constructs the research object in the Human and Social Sciences", we argue initially what a first approach to the object should be, in view of the teachings of the Frankfurt School, which nestles and incorporates Sartres thinking on the theme. Granting we have both to cope with our circumstances and to understand what we call society, the School sustains that approach shall never have a "decisively satisfactory" fashion. Before the moving and changing social whole, we are left with the micrological watch, which might shed some light onto it. And that watch must be attentive to what is left "in the shade" and to what goes unnoticed right upfront, for social reality does not make itself visible as a well-lit whole, but as a picture permeated by chiaroscuro disputes. Finally, we highlight the struggle between invention, creative freedom, and tradition requires the preservation of the tension it generates, so that the not-yet-thought might prosper.