ABSTRACT
The first principle establishes the pertinence of studying social interaction as given and the second principle states the need and warrant to study face-to-face interaction as a substantive domain in its own right. While Durkheim's concept was the result of a monistic epistemology which granted primacy to the so-called "objective" dimension of social life, Goffman's pluralism prevented him from reproducing both the determinist Durkheimian viewpoint and the traditional attempt at a grand synthesis and favor instead a reciprocal analysis of immediate interaction. Continuing with Goffman's description and to complete this idea, a clarification of the recurrent confusion becomes evident when he adds that this conservative epistemology merely implies considering that one can be wrong in one's findings. Goffman's principle asserting the necessity and validity of studying face-to-face interaction in its own right has not only been neglected, it has also been wrongly conceived as a particular and unwarranted excision of Goffman.
