Abstract

This article advances a disciplined reconciliation between phenomenology and critical theory through a weak ontology of agency. Rather than ultimate foundations, it offers an operational framework of four strata – the pre-reflective (body and schema), the social (forms and fields), the pulsional-symbolic (logics of return and the signifier), and the projective (the temporal organization of action) – coordinated by two operators: epoché (descriptive opening) and negativity (the non-identical’s veto). A triadic method (description → negative test → re-description) governs inter-strata shifts via escalation criteria (explanatory residue, strong circularity, semantic immunization, opaque overdetermination, temporal decoupling, indexing failure) and a downward rule whenever higher-level hypotheses prove merely nominal. Three rights of veto – primacy of the object, historicity of forms, and the ban on totalization – prevent local sovereignties. Canonical lexicons (Adorno, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Habermas) are translated as operators, not essences, under public conditions of critique (justifiability, contestability, reversibility). The upshot is a non-foundational realism: decisions are defeasible and auditable by a second reader with a transparent record of reasons. The paper closes with anticipated objections and methodological safeguards, and outlines application paths (aesthetics, social theory, law, conceptual history) without displacing the ontological focus.