Phenomenologists were concerned with showing that essential structures of being, knowable by rational insight, are found more abundantly than commonly thought. Reinach shows that in the civil law there are essential structures, such as the structure of promising or of owning. These pre-positive structures provide the civil law with a foundation that can be known by philosophical insight. Though the enactments of the civil law are changeable, essential foundations are not. Of particular significance is Reinach's concept of a social act, (...) that is, of an act that addresses another and has to be heard by the other in order to be complete. Reinach shows that the essence of legally relevant acts, such as promising, comes to evidence when they are understood as social acts. (shrink)