Our first aim in Continental Philosophy of Social Science has been to provide a much-needed specialist study of European traditions of analysis of society, which have often been marginalized in favour of the more mainstream Anglo-American approaches. We have focussed upon arguably the principal strands within the continental rubric, namely hermeneutics, genealogy and critical theory. Demonstrating the distinctness of these traditions from the Anglo-American science-dominated agenda has been our ambition throughout. To this end we have concentrated on discussing the continental tradition's own canon of thinkers, questions, style of analysis and, moreover, its humanist origins.

The second purpose of our study has been to argue for and explore in detail the specifically humanist nature of the continental tradition. To this end we have defined humanism and showed how each tradition embodies the principal features of humanism. Our definition entailed three essential features. First, we claimed that humanism builds upon a knowledge of the Ancients: that it is an approach to learning based upon thorough scholarly engagement with the Greek and Roman authors of antiquity. Second, we argue that humanism entails a conception of knowledge as transmitted through the ages. Thirdly, we claimed that humanists believed the world to be meaningful and further that that meaning is created to the greatest extent by human beings. We then demonstrated the humanist character of each of our three principal traditions of hermeneutics, genealogy and critical theory.