This essay ist based on Heinrich Rombach's conception of structural phenomenology, a conception not yet widely known in philosophy and not at all known in sociology. The implications for the social sciences of this conception are explicated, related to the well-known positions of Max Weber, Alfred Schütz, Thomas S. Kuhn, and then linked to the current methodological discussion in the field of sociology in West Germany. The resulting promising new possibilities for basic questions of theory construction in the social sciences, (...) but especially in sociology, are detailed and clarified with respect to the possibility and necessity of the various movements and conceptions of plurality, perspectivity and consciousness of cognition levels. (shrink)