In this presentation, we propose to put forward and briefly comment a number of theses which, taken together, articulate an epistemological paradigm we call structural phenomenology. These theses or “principles” do not constitute a manifesto nor do they apodictically enunciate a full-blown theory. Rather, they serve to outline a research programme that will be dedicated to the clarification and development of structural phenomenology.

In a first part, we will explain how and why we construe structural phenomenology as a model of scientific knowledge. Crucially, we wish then to describe how it does not imply a break with the past but is historically anchored in the traditions of phenomenology, structuralism and late 19th Century German science. We will also consider its position with regard to contemporary paradigms such as the cognitive sciences, pragmatism, constructivism, etc.

In a second part we will put forward the principles themselves, which involve a) the foundational role of aesthetics, the concepts of b) expression and c) value, d) the specification of a “mereological framework” and e) “combinatorial axiomatics” and f) the differentiation of “degrees of determination”.