Abstract

Collective learning is neither an automatic outcome of social development nor the addition of innate capacities of individuals. This article continues the efforts of authors like Max Miller and Klaus Eder in order to sociologize the concept of collective learning, in the way as it was originally developed by Jürgen Habermas. The aim of this text is to transform the philosophical considerations about collective learning processes in a category with empirical sensibility, as a middle range theory. For this purpose, it is necessary to advance fundamental key steps by the systematization of the concept: analyze the conditions of its constitution – close related to a civilization process; and distinguish its three key dimensions (the dimension of values, the normative one and the technical-operative one) building a sequence of its formation which allows the analysis of concrete cases.