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The Social Phenomenology of Alfred Schutz

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Kazuhiko Okuda*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Abstract

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Type
Communications
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1976

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References

1 Schutz, Alfred, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. Walsh, F. and Lehnert, F. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), pp. 51, 4553 Google Scholar; Collected Papers, Vol. 1, The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Natanson, M. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), p. 210 Google Scholar; with Luckmann, Thomas, The Structures of the Life- World, trans. Zaner, R. and Engelhardt, T. Jr. (Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 5256 Google Scholar.

2 For the most elaborate description of the phenomeno-logical notion of subjectivity and its cardinal importance and implication for the social science methodology, see Jung, Hwa Yol, “The Crisis of Political Understanding: An Insight into Subjectivity in Political Inquiry,” a paper delivered during the APSA Annual Meeting in Chicago, 09 24–30, 1974 Google Scholar.

3 Schutz, , The Phenomenology pp. 8696 Google Scholar. It is important to note that Schutz has elaborated in his Phenomenology Weber's inadequate distinction between action and behavior according to which only the former is sufficiently considered meaningful whose main characteristic is the presence of a project. See pp. 57-63, esp., p. 61. Peritore criticizes Schutz's procedure (a constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude) as divesting “himself of the discipline of the epoche” through which, Peritore contends, an “ideation of the essence of ‘the social’ must be found (133). While Schutz never rejected the possibility of ‘Objectivity’ or making the social world thematic, Peritore simply “prefers with Husserl” (p. 137) insisting an edietic science of the social which is in fact based on an idealization of “pure intersubjectivity” (133). The preference without critical inquiries into the nature and the problem of intersubjectivity (which Schutz has done) hardly gains any epistemological status for science! In fact, a citation from Zaner (in Peritore's article, p. 133) contradicts Peritore's position with Husserl and renders Schutz's efforts more comprehensible.

4 Collected Papers, I, 149.

5 For the fundamental agreement of Schutz with Husserl, see The Phenomenology, pp. 44, 97 note 2, 171; Collected Papers, 1, 132, 139, 149; Collected Papers, 111, Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy, ed. Schutz, I. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), p. 83 Google Scholar. In Schutz's phenomenological investigations of the methodology of the social sciences, one can find, for instance, the most elaborate asymmetry thesis of social and natural sciences, and an important distinction between common-sense (the first-order) and scientific (the second-order) constructs of social phenomena. Cf. “Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences,” and Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action,” in Collected Papers, I, 4866, and pp. 3–47Google Scholar; The Structures of the Life-World, Chapters 3 and 4 and p. 156 for his explicit statement on the nature of knowledge. For an interesting discussion on a different methodological perspective between Schutz's phenomenology and Garfinkle's ethnomethodology, see Natanson, Maurice, “Phenomenology and Social Role,” in his Phenomenology, Role, and Reason (Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher, 1974), pp. 190204 Google Scholar.

6 The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. Carr, D. (Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 173 Google Scholar. More on this point, see pp. 124, 132-5, 140-1, and more importantly, chapter 51. It is true as stated by Peritore that Schutz discredited the possibility of accounting for the constitution of transcendental intersubjectivity in the transcendental sphere (i.e., the reduced ego). But, Schutz was careful to add that “It is to be surmised that intersubjectivity is not a problem of constitution which can be solved within the transcendental sphere, but is rather a datum (Gegebenheit) of the life-world and therefore of all philosophical anthropology. As long as man is born of woman, intersubjectivity and the we-relationship will be the foundation for all other categories of human existence.” Cf. The Problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity in Husserl,” Collected Papers, III, 5191, at p. 82Google Scholar. Concerning a theory of embodiment, Schutz did not delve into developing ‘an eidetics of expression’ although he was aware of its importance for the phenomenological problem of the constitution of intersubjectivity, i.e., intercorporeality which is extensively analyzed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For Schutz's further reflection, see his Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, edited, annotated, and with an Introduction by Zaner, R. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 171–4, 179 Google Scholar; The Structures of the Life- World, pp. 5, 62, 66, 70, 73, 101-3, 106. Nevertheless, Peritore must be reminded (see his article, p. 138) here that if one evokes a theory of embodiment for the constitution of intersubjectivity, one may have to give up Husserl's egologism.

7 Schutz, , The Phenomenology, pp. 207–14, 54, 244 Google Scholar, and Husserl, p. 51.

8 Collected Papers, I, 144, 145 Google Scholar.

9 Natanson, M., Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of the Infinite Tasks (Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 108, emphasis in the originalGoogle Scholar.

10 For further discussion and elaboration on the relationship between phenomenology and the social sciences and particularly political science, see Jung, Hwa Yol, “An Introductory Essay: The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology,” in Existential Phenomenology and Political Theory: A Reader ed. Jung, Hwa Yol (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1972), pp. xviilv Google Scholar.; and (see) my The Present State of American Social Science,” Gendai-Shiso: Revue de la pensée d'aujourd'hui, 3 (02, 1975), 190203 Google Scholar.

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