Schutzian Social Science

L E S T E R E M B R E E (E D IT O R )

Schutzian Social Science

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENO M EN OLOG Y

SCHUTZIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE

edited by

LESTER EMBREE C enter for Advanced Research in Phenomenology. Florida A tlantic University, Boca R aton, FL, U.S.A.

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON

KATALOG

CO NTRIBUTION S TO PHENOM ENOLOGY IN COOPERATION W ITH THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY Volume 37

Editor:

John J. Drummond, M ount Saint M ary's C ollege

Editorial Board:

Elizabeth A . Behnke D avid Carr, Em ory University Stephen Crowell, R ice University L ester Embree, Florida A tlantic University J. Claude Evans, W ashington University J o \4 Huertas-Jourda. W ilfrid Laurier University Joseph J- Kackelmans, T he Pennsylvania Slate University William R. M cKenna, M iam i U niversity A lgis M ickunas, O hio University J. N. M ohanty, T em ple U niversity Tom Nenun, T h e U niversity o f M em phis T hom as M . Seebohm . Johannes G uienberg-Univcrsitiil. Main? G ull Suffer, N ew S ch o ol for Social R esearch, N ew York Elisabeth Slriiker. Philosophisches Sem inarium der UniversitSt Koln Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University

Scope T he purpose o f th is series is to foster the developm ent o f p h en om enological ph ilosophy through creative research. Contem porary issu es in philosophy, other d iscip lin es and in culture generally, offer opportunities for ih e application o f phcnom cnological m ethods that c a ll for creative responses. A lthough the work o f several generations o f thinkers has provided p h en om enology with many results w ith w hich lo approach th ese c h a llen g es, a truly su ccessfu l response to them w ill require building on th is work w ilh new analyses und m ethodological innovations.

A C .I.P . C a ta lo g u e re c o rd f o r th is b o o k is a v a ila b le fro m th e L ib ra ry o f C o n g re s s.

ISBN 0-7923-6003-6

Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publishers. 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 322. 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

P r in te d o n a c id - fr e e p a p e r

All Rights Reserved © 199V Kluwer Academic Publishers N o part o f the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form o r by any means, electronic o r mechanical, including photocopying, recording o r by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. Printed in the Netherlands.

For Evelyn the daughter and Claudia the grandaughter o f Alfred and Ilse Schutz

Table of Contents F ro n tisp ie c e ......................................................................................................................ix P r e f a c e .............................................................................................................................. xi

1. Benno Werlen: Regionalism and Political Society....................................1 2. Ilja Srubar: The Origin o f the Political....................................................23 3. George Psathas: On the Study o f Human Action: Schutz and Garfinkel on Social Science.......................................... 47 4. Hisashi Nasu: Alfred Schutz’s Conception o f Multiple Realities Sociologically Interpreted................................................................69 5. Hwa Yol Jung: Reading Natanson Reading Schutz.................................87 6. R ichard Ebeling: Human Action, Ideal Types, and the Market Process: Alfred Schutz and the Austrian Economists...............................................................115 7. Daniel Cefai: Making Sense o f Politics in Public Spaces: The Phenomenology ofPolitical Experiences and Activities. . .. 135 8. Chung-Chi Yu: Schutz on Lifeworld and Cultural Difference............159 9. Tom Nenon: The Phenomenological Foundation o f the Social Sciences..........................................................................173 10. Fred Kersten: The Purely Possible Political Philosophy o f Alfred Schutz................................................................................. 187 11. M ichael Barber: Values as Critique and the Critique o f Values: Voegelin and Schutz on Theory in the Social Sciences................. 213 12. Lester Embree: The Ethical-Political Side o f Schutz: His Contributions at the 1956 Institute on Ethics concerned with Barriers to Equality o f Opportunity..................... 235 Schutz Texts I. Some Considerations concerning Thinking in Terms o f Barriers........................................... 285 II. Memorandum: To Harold Lasswell............................291 III. Report on the Discussions o f Barriers to Equality o f Opportunity fo r the Development o f Powers o f Social and Civil Judgment, with Harold D. Lasswell..................................... 297 IV. Letter o f Alfred Schutz to Clarence H. Faust, The Fund For the Advancement o f Education.......................................................... 313 Notes on Contributors......................................................319 Index............................................................................................................. 323

Frontispiece The M eaning S tructure of the Social W orld 1 The writer plans to continue his studies of the philosophical foundations of the social sciences. This topic has been in the center of his interests since the publication of his book, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1932). In this book he tried to connect Max Weber’s theoretical findings in the realm of the social sciences with the philosophical teaching of Edmund Husserl, the founder of Phenomenology. Thereupon Husserl invited the writer to become his personal assistant. Since his immigration to the U.S., the writer has published some thirty papers dealing with various approaches to the same central topic. He feels that his thinking has reached a point which requires systematic presentation and no longer permits monographic treatment. The main topic to be elaborated can be stated in rather simple terms: It is the purpose of the social sciences to explain social reality by the scientific method which they have in common with all the other empirical sciences. They have, therefore, to develop a system of concepts and theory capable of grasping human reality in terms of everyday life. In this respect, however, the problem of the social sciences differs on an essential point from that of the natural sciences. The latter intentionally and systematically eliminate the human factor from their observational field, whereas the human world is the subject matter of the former. But this human world is different from the field of nature as studied by the natural scientist; it is from the outset meaningful to the human beings living their everyday lives within it. This is so because our common-sense thinking has pre-interpreted and pre-structurized the world. To be sure, its meaning structure is just taken for granted. It is unquestioned, but merely unquestioned until future notice. At any time it might become questionable. This social reality corresponds to Husserl’s

'Editor’s Note: The follow ing text is the project description o f a proposal fo r a sabbatical on which to visit the Husserl Archives in Louvain, Belgium and was prepared in 1958. It is Alfred Schutz’s most mature concise statem ent o f the fo cu s o f his work and thus am ounts to an intellectual self-portrait that is suitable fo r use as a frontispiece to this volume. Ms. Evelyn Schutz L ang is thanked fo r the perm ission to edit and publish it here. Lester Embree © T h e S c h u tz F am ily . L e ste r E m b ree (e d .) Schutzian Social Science, ix -x . © 1999 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P u b lish e rs. P rin ted in th e N e th erla n d s.

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notion of the “Lebenswelt” the description and elucidation of which by phenomenological techniques is the main theme o f his later philosophy and dealt with mainly in still unpublished manuscripts preserved by the Husserl Archiv in Louvain. It is the writer’s conviction that any science of the human condition eager to grasp social reality has to be founded on the interpretation of the Lebenswelt by the human beings living within it. The scientific interpretation of this world is, as it were, an interpretation to the second degree, viz. a scientific interpretation of the common-sense interpretations in terms of which the social world is experienced by all of us who live and act within it. The detailed phenomenological analysis of the structurization of the Lebenswelt will form the first part of the writer’s project; based on this analysis, the problem of concept and theory formation in the social sciences will be investigated with the view to establish continuity between the meaning of the social world as experienced by man living within it and as the subject matter of the social sciences. Alfred Schutz Professor o f Philosophy and Sociology The Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science The New School for Social Research

Preface This volume has been developed through a research symposium held in October 1997 under the sponsorship of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. and Florida Atlantic University. Besides its chief purposes of advancing research on as well as in the spirit of the work of Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) and of laying foundations for the upcoming Schutz centennial year, it is also a “medical checkup,” one might say, concerning the state of research on the work of Schutz as well as research influenced by him a decade after some similar assessments, i.e., Alfred Schutz: Neue Beitrage zur Rezeption seines Werkes, ed. Elisabeth List and Ilja Srubar (Amsterdam: Rodolphi, 1988) and Worldly Phenomenology: The Continuing Influence o f Alfred Schutz on North American Human Science, ed. Lester Embree (Washington, D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1988). Much has changed during the past decade. First of all, a considerable quantity of new primary source material has become available, beginning with Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. IV, edd. Helmut Wagner, George Psathas, and Fred Kersten (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), but also including “Positivistic Philosophy and the Actual Approach of Interpretative Social Science: An Ineditum of Alfred Schutz from Spring 1953,” Husserl Studies, vol. 14, pp. 123-149, 1977, “The Sociology of Language” (1958), edited from his course notes by Fred Kersten, and “T.S. Eliot’s Theory of Culture” (1950), both forthcoming in Human Studies, and the seven inedita from an ethics institute of 1956 on “Barriers to Equality of Opportunity” in Chapter 12 o f the present volume. Furthermore, an outline Schutz made for a lecture in 1955 has been has been used to combine scattered remarks into Alfred Schutz’s “Sociological Aspect o f Literature: Construction and Complementary Essays, ” ed. Lester Embree (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998). Most importantly, the fifteen-volume Alfred Schutz Werkausgabe will appear at the rate of at least two volumes a year for the next six years. Volume V, Theorie der Lebenswelt appeared in 1998 and has two sub­ volumes: “Die pragmatische Schichtung der Lebenswelt,” edited by Martin Endress and Ilja Srubar, and “Kommunikative Ordnung der Lebenswelt,” edited by Hubert Knoblauch and Hans-Georg Soeffner. In addition, the Schutz nachlass is now accessible not only with the originals at the Beinecke Library at Yale University but also in microfilm and photocopy in the archival repository of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. at The University of Memphis and

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Waseda Daigaku Schutz Bunko, i.e., “The Alfred Schutz Archive in Memory of Alfred and Ilse Schutz” at Waseda University, as well as at the venerable Sozialwissenschaftliches Archiv Konstanz. Readers unfamiliar with developments in Japan might study the entry entitled “Sociology in Japan” by Hisashi Nasu in the Encyclopedia o f Phenomenology, ed. Lester Embree etal. (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997). The burgeoning secondary literature has exceeded 1,400 items and is documented open-endedly on the website of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology (http://www.flinet.com/~carp) and recently represented most substantially by Daniel Cefai, Phenomenologie et sciences social: Alfred Schutz: Naissance d ’une anthropologie philosophique (Geneve: Librarie Droz, 1998). And there is now also the annual Alfred Schutz Memorial Lecture conceived by George Psathas and sponsored by the American Philosophical Association and the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology with the Society for Phenomenology in the Human Sciences at which Maurice Natanson, Ilja Srubar, Richard Zaner, Thomas Luckmann, and Fred Kersten have thus far spoken. Major coming events include centennial conferences planned for 1999 in Germany, Japan, and the United States and a new biography under preparation by Michael Barber. What, briefly, of the contents of this volume? While Worldly Phenomenol­ ogy was focused on the influence of Schutz just in North America, Schutzian Social Science is like the Neue Beitrage in having a more international focus, which now prominently includes Asia as well as Europe. The conference at which drafts of most of the chapters below were presented for collegial criticism was originally entitled “Alfred Schutz’s Theory of Social Science.” This title was part of an attempt at evoking reflections on methodological specifications of his general approach in particular disciplines and, in support of that attempt, some effort was also made to encourage reflections on Political Science rather than, as usual, Sociology. The focus of Schutz’s science theory is social science in general, which contrasts with historical science as well as with the naturalistic and formal types of science and which is as particularized by Ethnology, Economics, Linguistics, or Political Science, etc. as by Sociology. It is interesting to ponder what would have been produced if circumstances lead Schutz, who was trained in Economics and Law, to begin teaching Political Science rather than than Sociology at the New School, when he began expanding his repertoire beyond philoso­

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phy; perhaps Hannah Arendt, Arnold Brecht, Leo Strauss, and others would have had to share some of the stage in that time and since! The research of other researchers is of course not easy to influence. As things worked out, there is considerable emphasis on politics in half of the chapters, but most of the social-scientific essays are concerned not so much with reflection on Schutzian research in their author’s various particular disciplines as with continuing Schutzian research on substantive problems arising in such particular perspectives, i.e., to practicing Schutzian social science, which is fa r more important, bread being essential to life, while knife sharpening is only extremely helpful. The title for this volume has accordingly evolved. Further concerning the continuing Schutzian research in the social sciences, it must also be remarked that a most welcome new and “macro” perspective has emerged. While Schutz has often been taken—especially in the United States—to have reflected chiefly in a “micro” perspective on typical individuals in relation to others and only secondarily and in late essays to have been concerned with existential and voluntary in-groups and out-groups, now, for example, political groupings are investigated in Social Geography as relating to space differently in Late Modernity than in Pre-Modem times. The present writer first noticed this emergence in Ilja Srubar, “Phenomenological Analysis and its Contemporary Significance” (Human Studies, vol. 21 [1998], 121-139), where the transition from Socialist to Post-Socialist societies in central Europe is the focal case. Otherwise and in a more traditional and critical-historical way, Schutzian thought is used in other chapters to account for the emergence of politics as a theme; it is related to the positions of his friends Eric Voegelin and Tomoo Otaka (the attempt to get a study of Schutz in relation to Max Scheler, his major source after Husserl, Bergson, and Weber, did not succeed, but his relation to Austrian Economics—missing from Worldly Phenomenology—is well covered); and his influences upon Maurice Natanson and, in a contrastive if not reactive way, upon Ethnomethodology are shown; as is also his ethical-political side, which has tended thus far to go under­ recognized; there is the use of his multiple-realities analysis, which is a piece of phenomenological psychology, in sociology; and, finally, two essays do actually focus on the foundations of social science. In sum, Schutzian Social Science contains critical historical and philo­ sophical as well as substantive research in manifold social sciences and is

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healthy and will continue to flourish. The patient should return in 2008 for her next check-up. Besides the participants/contributors, let me take this opportunity to thank Professor John Drabinski and Edward Rackley, who were the William F. Dietrich Research Fellows in 1997-1999 and assisted me in organizing the research symposium and with the technical editing of this volume. Lester Embree Delray Beach, December 1998

Chapter 1

Regionalism and Political Society Benno Werlen Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena Abstract: Regionalism and Nationalism are transformative forces o f the political landscape at the end o f the 20th century. As we all know, they have a high potential o f destruction. Why has traditional human geogra­ phy—as the science o f the regional—so little explanatory potential fo r these social processes? Here I offer some answers and suggest— drawing on the social philosophy o f Alfred Schutz—a perspective giving social geography a greater problem-solving capacity in late-modernity. Introduction In a social-geographical perspective, today’s most dramatic changes are happening on levels from the changing political maps to technological inventions in production, transport, and communication. The latter are responsible for the extraordinary new situation in which we live today: The globalization of nearly all domains of the everyday lives of most people. Both aspects, the constant changes of the political maps and the process of globalization, involve in various forms new aspects in the interrelations of “societies,” “cultures” and “space.” The clarification of the society-space nexus was long discussed within human geography, especially in social and political geography merely as a problem of theoretical conceptualization. Today, in the last decade of the 20th century, it has become both a crucial sociological and a political problem. It is obvious that under these conditions social geography assumes a new specific political relevance for contemporary societies as well as a heightened theoretical significance for the social sciences. On the everyday level more and more people are becoming aware that a significant number of social problems involve a spatial component in one or another form. Nationalism and regionalism are two forms with extraordinary importance. Both are expressions of a specific combination of “society” and

L ester E m b re e (e d .) Schutzian Social Science , 1-22. © 1 9 9 9 K lu w er A c ad e m ic P ub lish ers. P rin ted in th e N e th erla n d s.

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“space.” At the same time, both are part of the most problematic phenomena of the present. Regionalist and nationalist discourses refer normally to the right of selfdetermination, which is a typical product of modernity. But who or what is the “self’ in this case? Is it the same as what the French revolution established as having fundamental citizenship rights or is it perhaps something totally opposed to it? These discourses argue, that social entities like nations or ethnic groups can claim the same rights as subjects can. The rights of the modem subject, then, are being claimed for holistic con­ structions. These are based on a social constitution of reality in which spatial categories dominate the social categories. Consequently, nationalist and regionalist discourses postulate that social problems can be solved by chan­ ging the spatial bases of a society. But what are the social consequences of such spatial descriptions and discourses? One important implication lies in the Janus-faced character of regionalist discourses: They are both forward and backward looking. Neither journalis­ tic accounts of everyday politics from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Quebec, nor the human geographical worldview pay attention to this. With a more differentiated penetration of the society-space relation, it becomes obvious that the domination of spatial categories over social categories in the description and typification of social facts produces quite contradictory features: Regionalist accounts refer to pre-modem holistic units and yet claim rights of self-determination in the modem sense. Without any empirical justification a pre-modem non-subject takes the place of a (modem) subject. Modem rights are claimed for a spatially constructed social unit, and yet spatially defined social units do not make much sense anymore in a late-modem world characterized by the increasing globaliza­ tion of social life. The Janus-faced character lies therefore in the fact that a modem subjectcentered right and authority is claimed for a pre-modem spatially con­ structed social unit. I. Geography and Modernity To a certain degree this problematic is also characteristic of traditional regional geography and all space-centered social and cultural research. They are on the one hand in the center of a modem worldview, but as soon they claim a scientific status with explanatory potential, they refer to a pre-mo­

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dem ontology of the socio-cultural world. I will illustrate this thesis by drawing on Immanuel Kant’s idea of geography based on his philosophy of enlightenment1 and Alfred Hettners interpretation of this account for the foundation of a scientific regional geography.2 At the turn of the 19th century Kant emphasized that regional-geographic knowledge is fundamental for an enlightened world view. Geographers can therefore claim that their work has strong implications for the emergence and the maintenance of modernity. But it is important to see that in Kant’s view this judgement is only true for regional geography as a propaedeutic discipline for science, but not as a science claiming to offer spatial explan­ ations of socio-cultural facts. I will argue that in the turn from propaedeutic discipline to scientific disci­ pline regional geography becomes entangled in similar contradictions to those which characterize nationalism and regionalism. While the propaedeu­ tic version of geography promoted modernity in significant ways, the scientific version—the so-called new regional geography of the contempo­ rary anglo-saxon debate included3—is deeply linked to a pre-modem ontology of the socio-cultural world. Therefore they together embody a similar contradictory relationship between the modem and the pre-modem as do regionalist and nationalistic discourses. If we look at Kant’s concept of geography, the first striking point is, that for him geography is important for enlightenment without having any potential for offering spatial explanations. This is primarily a result of his concept of space. For him “space is not an empirical concept which has been abstracted from outer experience. . . Space is necessarily representation, and

'Immanuel Kant, Physische Geographic, ed. D.F. Th. Rink. KOnigsberg: Gobels und Unzer, 1802. 2Cf., Alfred Hettner, “Das W esen und die Methoden der Geographie,” Geographische Zeitschrift 11 (1905): 545-564, 615-629, 671-686; Die Geographie. Ihre Geschichte, ihr Wesen und ihre Methoden. Breslau: Ferdinand Hirt, 1927; “Das landerkundliche Schem a,” Geographischer Anzeiger 33 (1932): 40-43. 3Cf. Anne Gilbert, “The new regional geography in English and French-speaking countries,” Progress in Human Geography 12 (1988): 208-228; Anne Bultimer, “Grasping the dynamism o f Lifeworld,” Annals o f the Association o f American Geographers 66 (1976): 277-297; Alan Pred, Place, Practice and Structure. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986; Neil Smith, “Home­ less/global: scaling places,” in John Bird et al., eds., M apping the Futures: Local Cultures, global change. London: Routledge, 1993, 87-119.

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consequently is a priori.”4 Therefore, for him an a posteriori empirical science of space is not possible, because there is no such object as “space.” Only an a priori science of space is possible and that is geometry and cannot be geography. If “space” were an object, that is to say, an appropriate research object of an empirical science such as geography, then we should be able to indicate the place of space in the physical world. But this is impossible. Space does not exist as a material object or as a consistent theoretical object. It is—that is my thesis—rather a formal and classificatory concept, a frame of reference for the physical components of actions and a grammar for problems and possibilities related to the performance of action in the physical world. As already mentioned, “space” is not an empirical concept because there is no such thing as space. It is a formal frame of reference because it does not refer to any specific concept of material object. It is “classificatory” because it enables us to describe a certain order of material objects with respect to their specific dimensions. If one accepts this stipulation, then the question has to be raised, how did geography come to be defined as “spatial science”? We can trace this cate­ gorical mistake back to Alfred Hettner’s misunderstanding of Kant. For Kant geography was a descriptive or taxonomic discipline. Kant used the word “chorographic,” meaning descriptive, to qualify geography. Hettner transformed this into “chorologic,” which refers to explanation rather than description.5 Since explanatory force was the cornerstone of Kant’s definition of science, Hettner’s “mistake” made it possible to describe geography as a science: the science of space. Berry,6 Bunge,7 Bartels,8 and others walked to the end of this dark street. Bartels, the most famous German geographer of recent decades, finally attempted to formulate the aim of geography as the discovery of spatial laws.

4Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1956; Critique o f Pure Reason, trs. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin, 1969, 68. sCf., Alfred Hettner, Die Geographie, op. cit., 115f, 127ff. 6Brian J.L. Berry and D.F. Marble, Spatial Analysis. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1968. 7W illiam Bunge, “Theoretical G eography,” Lund Studies in Geography Volume I (1973). 8Dietrich Bartels, Zur wissenschaftstheoretischen Grundlegung einer G eographie des Menschen. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1968; Dietrich Bartels, ed., Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeographie. Koln/Berlin: Kiepeneuer & Witsch, 1970.

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II. From “Space” to Action Yet if we reject Hettner’s misinterpretation and all that followed from it, this does not mean we have to accept Kant’s definition of geography. I believe it is more than just a propaedeutic discipline and that it can have explanatory potential. But I am also convinced that to define and maintain the idea of geography as a social science, the central role accorded to space has to be replaced. I would argue that “action” should replace “space” as the key concept of geographical research. Before I can discuss this, I will first analyze in some detail the interrelationship of “body,” “space,” and “action” in a social geography based on the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz. Today, in the so called new regional geography, “space” and “place” were and are still the unquestioned key “objects” for most geographers and many “geographical imaginations”o f the world.9Pickles criticizes the objectivation of “space” and understands phenomenology as a method which seeks to clarify those concepts.10On the basis of Heidegger’s existential phenomenol­ ogy he elaborates a perspective in which not “space” but “spatiality” can be the object of theoretization and empirical research. For Pickles an “ontology of spatiality” is needed to determine what must be the case if there can be anything like spatial and environmental behavior. For him, the aim of social geography shall be the appropriate interpretation of “human spatiality.” Starting out from Heidegger’s premises that the spatial ordering of entities occurs through man’s activities, we can understand that the spatiality of entities “ready-to-hand” always belongs to a place within the “equipmental” context of a particular activity.11 It is important to point out, that, also according to Heidegger,12 space and time do not serve only as parameters. Both are constitutive rather for Dasein. “space” (Raum) is the result of “raumen” (clearing away) and therefore has an existence of its own. However, neither is “space” part of the subject, nor does the subject observe the world “as i f ’ the world were in a Newtonian (container) space. The

9Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994. John Pickels, Phenomenology, Science, and Geography: Spatiality and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trs. Macquarrie and Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Martin Heidegger, “The Nature o f Language,” in On the Way to Language, trs. Peter D. Hertz. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

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subject for Heidegger is rather spatial and “spatializes” the world through his mode of being. Consequently, the assertion was made in geography that human spatiality has to be part of a spatial theory. The future of social and human geography will depend—that was and is still largely the argument—on the nature of the research program that develops from this incorporation. Therefore human geography should be understood as a human science of human spatiality. But is empirical investigation of “spatiality” possible in spatial categories and can “spatiality” be the “object” of a spatial theory? Would it not be more accurate to link “spatiality” methodologically to man’s activities/actions instead of “space”? Nevertheless, spatial theory would not be the core of the geographers’ interest anymore. This is the position that follows the prin­ ciples of constitutive phenomenology.13 Husserl’s and Schutz’s constitutive phenomenology make it possible to start from the hypothesis that what geographers describe as spatial problems are in fact problems of certain types of actions,14 actions with somatic involvement and where material things are constituted. The fact that the self experiences the body primarily in movement also means that it experiences the body only in, and not as, a functional context. The experience of movement is necessarily reinterpreted as an experience of space and opens up access to the world of extension. With the experience of all the spatial character of one’s own body the spatiality of things is also discovered. The constitution of the material world and of “space” is thus bound up with the experiencing, moving, and acting “I.” Apart from the experience of the spatiality of the physical-material world, the subject also experiences the qualities of the various objects in relation to his/her own body, verifying them with correspondent meanings for her/his actions. For social-geographical analysis, the “body” can in Schutz’s terms be seen consequently as a functional link between inner processes and movements directed toward the outer world. On the one hand, the body in the physical world becomes a medium of expression for intentional consciousness. On the other hand, the spatial dimension is mediated and incorporated via the

13See Benno Werlen, “ Social Geography,” in Lester Embree, et al., eds., Encyclopedia o f Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishers, 1997, 646-650. l4See Edmund Husserl, D ing und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907. Den Haag: M artinus Nijhoff, 1973 and Alfred Schutz, Life Forms and M eaning Structures, trs. Helmut R. Wagner. London: Routledge, 1982.

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“body,” especially in face-to-face situations. Thus, the physical or geogra­ phical location of the body affects the nature of pure duration and thereby this location affects, as Schutz puts it in referring to Bergson, memoryendowed duration. Therefore, the function of the body is to mediate between duration and the homogenous space-time world of extension. Furthermore, the body is crucial for the constituting processes and inter­ subjectivity. If a subject is learning intersubjectively valid rules of interpreta­ tion that exist within a certain socio-cultural world, then it is necessary for him/her to verify his or her interpretations and evaluations. This means that the constitution and application of intersubjective meaning-contexts depend on the possibilities of testing the validity of allocations of meaning. The attainment of certainty about intersubjectively valid constitutions of meaning is possible above all in the immediate face-to-face situation. Here the bodies of the actors face each other directly as fields of expression of the consciousness of ego and alter ego. This makes it possible to support communication through subtle bodily gestures, thus limiting the number o f misinterpretations. Accordingly, co-presence is the prerequisite condition of the ontological and interpretative security on which both the more abstract and the more anonymous allocations of meaning are based. To demonstrate the key role of the body for ontological security, it is helpful to reconstruct the interrelation of subjective, socio-cultural, and physical realms in the epistemology of the subjective perspective.15 Fig. 1: Three-world-model in an action-centered perspective

social world •objective’ m c a n in g -c o n te n is o f ac tio n s a n d ih e c o n s c q u c n c c s o f a c tio n s, as (h e p r o d u c ts o f in te rsu b je c iiv e a c ts o fco iistiiu tio u

subjective world o f th e ag e in 's sto c k o f k n o w le d g e , fo rm e d fro m sp ecific bio g rap h ical e le m e n ts

physical world m ate ria l facts o f the e x te rn a l w o rld , including (h e a g e n t's b o d y

15See Benno Werlen, Gesellschaft, Handlung, und Raum. Grundlagen handlungstheoretischer Sozialgeographie. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1988; Society, Action, and Space. An Alternative Human Geography, trs. Gayna Walls. London: Routledge, 1993, 52-91.

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If we begin to look at the world from an “action-centered perspective,” and discard space as a starting point in itself, we focus on the embodied subject, the corporeality of the actor, in the context of specific subjective, socio-cultural, and material conditions. We begin from a perspective that emphasizes subjective agency as the only source of action and hence of change, at the same as it stresses that the social and material world shapes the social actions that produce it. But the fact that the social world is produced and reproduced by social actions means that it is these actions, rather than “space,” that are consti­ tutive of that world. A concept of “space” can only provide a pattern of reference by means of which problematic and/or relevant material entities that bear on action can be reconstituted and localized. Given that the subject is embodied, these material patterns are of course significant in most actions. But since they are not the only significant factor in action, actions cannot be explained by them. The socially constructed frame of actions is not a “spatial” cause; it is the product of actions. This means that it is insufficient to proceed from the assertion that “space” or even materiality already have a meaning “in themselves,” a meaning that is constitutive of social facts. Materiality be­ comes meaningful in the performance of actions with certain intentions and under certain social (and subjective) conditions. III. Action and Modernity The subject- and action-centered view of the world reflects modernity, the modem or enlightened understanding of reality. Kant’s philosophy is one of its key elements forming a central part of modem science and consequent life-forms. In this view, any form and version of a “spacecentered” description, understanding, and explanation runs counter to the basic principles of modem and late-modem life forms. This is not only scientifically problematic, but—as regionalist and natio­ nalist discourses and movements illustrate—also has disturbing political consequences. Our contemporary life forms are deeply penetrated by modem standards of thinking and acting. Any social science wishing to produce empirically valid knowledge about this world has to take this into account in respect both of its object of study and its methodology. The center o f its interest has therefore to concentrate on the knowing and acting subject.

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In contrast to this, traditional space-centered human geography tries to localize immaterial social and mental entities in the physical world. But this localization is in fact impossible, because these entities have a different ontological status. In the physical world, only extended material entities can be localized. Immaterial entities cannot. The formal and classificatory concepts of space (longitude, latitude, etc.) are not adapted to social and mental, subjective phenomena. If we accept that actions always have at least a subjective, socio­ cultural, and physical component, it should now be clear that spatial categories can only grasp the last of these components. Every attempt to grasp the immaterial subjective and socio-cultural worlds of intentions, norms, values, etc. in spatial categories is accordingly reductionist and denies the centrality of the subject in the late-modern world. Because of the globalization tendencies in late-modern societies regional knowledge is probably more important than ever. But scientific claims in proper terms can no longer be linked to the science of space or the science of regional facts. An ontologically adequate research conception of geography needs to respect the knowing and acting subject. This leads geography from the science of the spatial and regional to a science of the regionalizing implications of knowing and acting subjects. Therefore, regional geography has to be complemented with a social geography that explores the everyday regionalizations of lifeworlds respecting the standards of social scientific research. The remaining question is why traditional space-centered geography could persist until today and even attain a very strong position in the catalogue o f scientific disciplines. A space-centered account of socio­ cultural facts can— despite its epistemological shortcomings—reach a certain approximation o f everyday realities. But this is only possible under certain very specific conditions. These exist, when socio-cultural practices are deeply interrelated with the spatio-temporal dimensions o f the material basis of human actions. This condition is characteristic—this is my hypothesis—o f traditional life forms but not for modem and late-modem life forms. Because of this, spatial descriptions are not only losing their power empirically, but they are becoming more and more problematic politically. An accurate geographical account of the contemporary world with any capacity for enlightenment requires a new conceptual framework. I will now first develop the basis to make this proposition clearer and then elaborate in a

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more precise way the implicit politically problematic dimension of traditional geography with respect to late modem life forms. IV. Traditional Regional and Late-modern Globalized Societies The most important spatio-temporal characteristics of traditional, pre­ modem life forms and societies— in a ideal typical form—are summarized in Figure 2. Stability over time or embeddedness in a temporal respect is founded in the domination of traditions. Traditions interrelate the past with the future and are the central frame of reference for action orientation and legitimation in daily praxis. They set narrow bounds for individual decisions. Social relations are predominantly ruled by kinship-, tribe- or rank relations. Clearly defined social positions are attributed to persons depending on birth, age, and sex. Fig. 2: Ideal-type o f traditional life forms and regional societies 1 Traditions intertwine past, present, and future. 2 Kinship organizes and stabilizes social relations over time. 3 Birth, age, and sex determine social positions. 4 Face-to-face situations dominate communication. 5 Small amount o f interregional communication. 6 The local village constitutes the familiar life context.

Traditional life forms are temporally and spatially embedded Narrow spatial limitations, or “embeddedness” in a spatial sense,16 lies in the technical standards of transportation and communication. The dominant importance of walking and the limited significance of writing restrict social and cultural expressions to the local and regional level. Face-to-face interaction is nearly the only possible situation for commu­ nication. In addition, production processes have to respect natural condi­

l6Anthony Giddens, Consequences o f Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.

REG10NAL11 Y A N D ^ U L I I I U A L 5UL1H1 Y

tions because of the low level of technical development. Economies are consequently highly adapted to the prevailing physical conditions. In addition—as many anthropological studies teach us—temporal, spatial and socio-cultural aspects of everyday praxis are closely bound together. For traditional life forms, it is not only important to realize certain activities at a certain time, but also in a certain place, and sometimes even with a certain spatial orientation. In this way, social regulations and activity patterns are reproduced and enforced by spatiotemporal commitments. The unity of socio-cultural and spatio-temporal dimensions of activities becomes the basis for extremely powerful reification processes. In this way, for example, places of worship are identified with the act of worship. Only in this way it is possible to claim, that somebody who puts his or her feet on a certain place is desecrating the place. But this can only appear as a meaningful phrase if no distinction is made between significance and place. Or to put it an other way: only when the significance is seen as a quality of the place and not as a product of the subject’s constitution process, only then is it possible to talk about desecrating places. Exactly on the basis of this process of reification “space” and “time” are enriched, are filled up with specific meanings. Signification appears as a quality of things, deeply rooted in them and em­ bedded in the territory of a given culture. This characteristic is not typical of late modern life forms. Here traditions are not in the center of daily social praxis.17 Social orientations and social actions need discursive justification and legitimation. The dominant life context is not the local village. It is rather the global village or rather globalized societies. Life conditions are founded in a representation of the world in which reification is replaced by rational constructions. The subsequent late-modem societies, cultures and economies are no longer spatially and temporally embedded. They are rather— in Giddens’ stipulation—“disembedded.”18 See Figure 3.

l7See Anthony Giddens, Consequences o f Modernity, op. cit., and also his M odernity and Self-Identity. S e lf and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Also, Benno Werlen, Sozialgeographie alltaglicher Regionalisierungen. Band I: Zur Ontologie von Gesellschaft und Raum. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995, 105-134. 18See Anthony Giddens, Consequences o f Modernity, op. cit.

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Temporal stability is—because of the decreasing importance of tradition—replaced by constant social transformation. Late-modern everyday actions are not dominated by local traditions. It is rather routines which sustain ontological security. For individual decisions a wide field of possibilities stays open. Social relations are not basically regulated by kinship. Instead globally observable cultures, life styles, and life f orms— very often linked to a specific generation—become much more important. A person’s social position is determined by production and valued work and not by birth, age, and, following the principles of enlightenment, also not by sex or race. The spatial clustering and embeddedness of traditional social life forms is replaced by global interconnections and disembedding mechanisms. The actual and potential reach of actors is stretched to a global dimension. The most important disembedding mechanisms are money, writing, and technical artefacts. Means of transportation enable a high level of mobility. Together with individual freedom of movement, this produces a mixing of formerly locally fixed cultures. This multi-cultural mixing is combined with global communication systems and enables a diffusion of information and information storing not dependant on the corporeal presence of the actors. Face-to-face interaction is not inexistent. But the most substantial part of communication is mediated. Fig. 3: Ideal-type o f late-modern life forms and the globalized societies 1 Everyday routines sustain ontological security. 2 Globally observable cultures, life forms, and life styles. 3 Production and valued work determine social positions. 4 Abstract systems (money, writing, and expert systems) enable mediated social relations over enormous distances. 5 World-wide communication systems. 6 Global village as anonymous context o f experience.

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Late-modern life forms are spatially and temporally disembedded “Space” and “time” are emptied of fixed significations, are separated from them. The signification of things is much more the result of recom­ binations by the subject, depending on the performed action. What a thing signifies is no longer taken as a quality of the thing itself, but is rather attributed to them and the content of attribution depends in principle on what the subject is doing or wants to do. Therefore, the “When” and “Where” of social activities is something to agree on, a subject of agreement, and does not depend on fixed pregiven meaning-contents of social activities. The place of traditionally fixed meanings is taken by rationally and institutionally determined regulations open to communicative revision. Spatial and temporal dimensions do not determine the content of social actions as in traditional life forms. They are much more purely formal aspects of human activities. This is the basis for the standardized metrification and calculation of material facts and the succession of events. Both standardized metrification and calculation, together with the recognition of the difference between concept and object, form the nucleus of the rational constitution of late modem worlds and the end of mystical interpretations of nature. V. Regional Representations, Regionalism, and Identities If one accepts this typification, then it becomes obvious that a spacecentered representation of socio-cultural realities, from traditional regional geography to the spatial approach, from humanistic geography to new regional geography, is not able to grasp late-modern life forms. The spacecentered presentation and analysis of cultures and societies is at best plausible under the conditions of pre-modernity. Only when social, cultural, and economical practices are embedded spatially, can a space-centered view offer an approximately accurate account of these realities. Under these conditions, the space-centered approach enables a remarkably sensitive reconstruction of local action contexts. But if one declares that a traditional, space-centered geography can offer a generalized and valid description of late modem lifeworlds, then this will prepare the ground for emotional and demagogic

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fundamentalist regionalisms and nationalisms, two o f the most problematic social phenomena of the present. Regionalism, like traditional space-centered human geography, can be understood as an attempt to glorify traditional pre-modem life forms under conditions of late modernity. Both refer to embedded life forms, regio­ nalist and nationalist discourses by promoting blood and soil constructions of the unity of culture and soil, regional geography by looking for the unity of culture, space, and nature. Both use constantly biological metaphors to demonstrate the rootedness of society and culture in the territory of their belonging. And both are—very often explicitly and always at least implicitly—referring to Herder’s world view,19 claiming a unity of the nation’s spirit and the soil, as expressed in the following metaphor: Like the water smells of the moss-grown rocks of its source, the nations’ culture is the expression of its soil and territory! What the consequences of such thinking under conditions of late-modemity are is demonstrated by the ethnic cleansing in recent years on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In this perspective, they have—at least implicitly— the tendency to promote “eine Zaunhaftigkeit des Denkens,”20 a “fencety,” a boundedness in our thinking, and claim a need for the exclusion of otherness, even if our lifeworld is part of globalized and globalizing processes. The attraction of this representation of the world may lay exactly in this contradiction which offers the possibility of secure, if problematic, identities in a rapidly changing world. I will formulate some reflections on this topic, before I then illustrate an alternative and hopefully more appropriate framework for geographical research and a corresponding worldview. We can start out from the premise that the disembedding mechanisms that are extending the field of possibilities of personal decisions in a consi­ derable way lead to insecurities on the personal level. Under this condition, the need for stabilizing identities is growing. “Regionalism” can in these terms be seen as a compensation for the insecurities provoked by globalization processes. This could be the main reason why “regionalism” and “identity” are so closely tied together.

l9Cf., Johann Gottfried Herder, Samliche Werke. Bd. 5. Berlin: Dunker, 1877, 84. 20Ulrich Beck, D ie E rfindung des Politischen. Zu einer Theorie Reflexiver Modernisierung. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1993, 114.

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In talking of “identity” it has to be remembered that “identity” can only be made topical or actualized if “difference” is possible. This is obviously so, because “identity” refers always to two entities that in principle could be different, but not are. Consequently, “identity” is only actualized by growing difference. If we see it in this way, then we can understand why in late modernity when problems of identity have become so prominent, a politics of difference, such as nationalism or regionalism, might take root. In this sense, contemporary regionalism and nationalism are, on the one hand, bound up with the emerging dialectics of the global and the local. While this may be an important and necessary dilemma of late modem life, it is my concern that if the logic of regionalism and nationalism is applied to all aspects of modem life, it could and has become very destructive. I will briefly talk about some of these problematic implications. The first problematic form of regionalism is certainly the process of social typification which it entails. Here spatial and regional categories are used to produce stereotypes and totalizing qualifications of persons in the form, for example, of “Sicilians are criminals,” “Corsicans are cunning,” etc. The most crucial point of this is that social or personal characteristics—positive or negative ones—are transmitted to all person living in a certain area. The Janus-faced, double-edged character of regionalist discourses is partly grounded in this process. Socially indifferent spatial categories— like biological ones— are used in an ideologically “loaded” or “charged” way for social typification. Because they are not social, they can be used in an arbitrary way. What becomes “racist” or “sexist” by using biological categories for social typification, becomes “regionalist” by using spatial categories. All of these forms of typification undermine the rights of subjects in modem societies and are therefore deeply anti­ modem. It is in the context of such socially typifying regionalism that the political regionalism finds its preferred basis. This is because such regionalist typifications create the best conditions for instituting exclusive measures towards others, while internally the same strategy consists in the creation of identity. In the form of an excluding identity, this strategy can easily be used for political mobilization: both to create the image of an enemy and to strengthen internal solidarity. Internal differences evaporate by emphasizing external differences. These are, as many empirical studies

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have demonstrated, some of the core elements of regionalist and nationalist discourses. And both of them have at the level of the process of typification quite a strong similarity with the logic of the conceptual framework of space-centered geographical descriptions and explanations of the world. Because of the disembeddedness of late-modern life forms, these preconditions for such thinking are often no longer present for the most important aspects of contemporary societies, cultures, and economies. Spatially homogenous societies and cultures hardly exist anymore and the contours of spatial differentiation are becoming more and more indistinct. Consequently, spatial characterizations of the socio-cultural are losing their precision and validity. The “third world,” for example, can also be found in New York or Paris, as the first world can be found in Nairobi, Kinshasa, La Paz, or Bangkok. A contemporary, efficient, and adequate human geography has to able to take this new ontology of the social world into account, both concep­ tually and methodologically. If we are not able to do so, geography will not only lose its potential for enlightenment, but it will also deliver extremely problematic accounts of contemporary social realities. What is needed is a scientific approach that is not alienated from the actual lifeforms produced by the actors in the natural attitude, despite the ideological discourses of nationalist and regionalist movements. To grasp the factual day-to-day geographies is consequently the project of a scientific geography as social science. If David Harvey still postulates, that “uneven geographical deve­ lopment” should be still the main occupation of geographical research,21 the geographical representation of late-modern day-to-day realities will miss its most characteristic features. The power of the disembedding mechanisms for people’s actions cannot be taken into account. One implication of this mechanism certainly is and will be that the most important social differences will lose more and more their spatial forms. Already today we can observe the very impressive differences of incomes in the smallest spatial contexts. There is strong evidence that these tendencies will rather be more accentuated in the future, rather than lose its transformational power. If geographers do not change the focus of

2lDavid Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography o f Difference. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996, 429.

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research from “space” to “action,” they will be blind for the new day-today geographies of the next decades. VI. The Globalization of Lifeworlds The transformation power of the disembedding tools becomes of course only effective in the lifeworld, if the subject integrates them in her or his course of action. Because they do so, the transformations of their own everyday life are so radical, that the social scientific use of the concept of “lifeworld” itself has to be reconsidered. Niklas Luhmann argues,22 that under such conditions the lifeworld concept—as it is used as for example in the work of Schutz/Luckmann and Habermas23 for the understanding of the contemporary cultures and societies—has become nothing else than a confusing metaphor. I will argue that this confusion lies in the fact that the basic distinctions in Husserl’s definition of “lifeworld” have not been transferred with enough accuracy to the social sciences. To discuss this, I will briefly reconstruct the reception of Husserl’s key concept in the social and cultural sciences. For Husserl “the life-world is the natural world— in the attitude of natural life we are living functioning subjects together in an open circle of other functioning subjects.”24 Schutz/Luckmann identify this with the realm of reality, such that the “everyday lifeworld is to be understood as that province of reality which the wide-awake and normal adult simply takes for granted in the attitude of common sense. By this taken-for-grantedness, we designate everything which we experience as unquestionable; every state of affairs is for us unproblematic until further notice.”25

22Niklas Luhmann, “ Lebenswelt— nach Riicksprach mit den Phanomenologen,” Archiv Jiir Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 72 (1986): 176-194. 23Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, Structures o f the Life World, trs. R.M. Zaner and H.T. Engelhardt, Jr.. London: Heinemann, 1974 and Jurgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Band I: H andlungsrationalitat und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung. Frankfurt a. M.: Surkamp, 1981. 24Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book, trs. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989, 385. 25Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, Structures o f the Life-World, op. cit., 3.

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Now, if we interpret this definition in such a way that the familiar, unquestioned sections of the pregiven world are those that are spatially close, then it loses its analytical potential for social scientific enquiry into social-cultural worlds under the condition of globalization. And this is certainly the case for the interpretation that Schutz/Luckmann attributed to it by linking “certainty” with the different reaches of action, from ready at hand “within immediate reach,” which offers the “the fundamental test of all realities,”26 to most distant “zones” with high uncertainty.27 Consequently “man within natural attitude is primarily interested in that sector of the world of his everyday life which is within his scope and which is centered in space and time around himself.”28 Also Habermas links “life-world”—through the mechanisms of social integration—to the insider perspective of co-present group members.29 But Husserl’s definition implies no immediate space nexus. One’s lifeworld is characterized by a certain “attitude” and a certain topical “horizon.” The first one—Ulrich Claesges calls it “grounding function” (Boden-Funktion) of the life world concept30—makes it possible to clarify the difference between natural (everyday level) and theoretical attitude (scientific level). The second refers to different topical horizons of interest, in which subjects live in their courses of action in their everyday lives. The interests of action limits specific “particular worlds” (Sonderwelten).31 Luhmann is only right to talk about confusion if a clear distinction between the two concepts is neglected. This is especially the case if the two are not seen as different accesses towards the socio-cultural world, but as an ontological distinction. It is very important to see that according to Husserl the “BodenFunktion" refers to the epistemological dimension and the “HorizontFunktion” to the empirical aspect of everyday activities. The importance

“ Schutz and Luckmann, Structures o f the Life-world, op. c it, 42. 27See Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers. Volume I, ed. and introduced Maurice Natanson. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1962, 226. 28Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers. Volume /, op. c it, 222. 29Jiirgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, op. c it, 226. 30Ulrich Claesges, “Zweideutigkeit in Husserls Lebenswelt-Begriff,” in Ulrich Claesges and Klaus Held, e d s , Perspektiven transzendentaler Phanomenologie. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972, 82-101. 31Edmund Husserl, Krisis der europaischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phanomenologie. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, 194.

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of this distinction becomes obvious first of all in a globalized world. Under these condition the familiar is no longer strictly linked to the local community, as it was/is the case in traditional life-forms. Topical lifeworlds are not free of doubt and uncertainties. Late-modern subjects can live in “Sonderwelten” with global reach. Lifeworld studies in geographical perspective have to take that into account. VII. Globalized Lifeworlds, Globalized Social Geographies Consequently it should be the aim of a contemporary phenomenologically based human geography not to analyze space anymore, but rather to analyze the everyday geographies produced by social actions. We not only make everyday history, but also everyday geography. Depending on our social position, we have differential access to power and different potentials for transformation. But exactly as we produce and reproduce “society” through our actions, we produce and re­ produce contemporary geographies. Consequently the aim of an ontologically accurate late-modern human geography lies in the reconstruction of the ways in which everyday geographies are constructed. Fig. 4: Main and sub-types o f everyday regionalizations MAIN-TYPES

SUB-TYPES Geographies o f production

PRODUCTIVE - CONSUM PTIVE Geographies o f consumption G eographies o f normative appropriation NORM ATIVE - POLITICAL Geographies o f political control G eographies o f information & knowledge INFORM ATIVE-SIGNIFICATIVE G eographies o f symbolic appropriation

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What types of everyday geographies or geographical lifeworlds under globalized conditions can hypothetically be identified?32 According to the central thesis of modernity, the knowing and acting subject has to be in the center of the adequate contemporary geographical worldview and—as al­ ready mentioned—not longer space or regions. One of the main implica­ tions of this argument is that the regionalizing implications of human actions are of central interest, and not only for regional studies. In referring to action theory and Giddens’ structuration theory, three main types of everyday regionalizations of life worlds can be thematized. See Figure 4. In analyzing everyday geographies from an action perspective, as with any scientific investigation, we must place selective emphasis on certain aspects. The first question I address is, how do subjects produce geographies by placing objects for particular activities and how do they create and maintain a certain order of objects by means of consumption? This orients our analysis firstly towards the less complex forms of regionalization of the lifeworld, in the productive-consumptive domain centered on the economic dimensions of everyday reality. The productive side is most obvious in the form of location decisions for productive activities, the subsequent fixation of the action spaces of the working people, and the patterns of commodity flows as inputs to the production process. This corresponds with the global organization of the capitalist production regime. It is not only as producers that we make geographies, of course, but also as consumers, even if these forms are more implicit. Under conditions of late modernity, our personally defined life styles have strong implications for the structuration of the world economy. All in all, the aim of the analysis of this main type of regionalization is not the explanation of spatial patterns, but much more the reconstruction of the global implications of our locally based life forms. A second domain of-everyday social geography concerns the normativepolitical interpretations o f zones of actions, of territories. Starting points are the body-centered regionalizations of the front-regions of social presentation (i.e., stage, performance, etc.) and back-regions of social hiding (i.e., intimacy, shame, etc.) with their differentiation in respect of

32See Benno Werlen, Sozialgeographie alltaglicher Regionalisierungen. Band 2: Globalisierung, Region, und Regionalisierung. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997.

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age, sex, status, and role. In addition one could consider the territorial regulation of inclusion and exclusion of actors through property rights, political/legal definitions of nation states, and citizenship rights. These forms of everyday social geographies are linked to the authoritative control of people through territorial means, as in “geographies of policing” and specific types of control of the means of violence. A very important component of the making of these everyday geographies consists of the activities of regionalist and nationalist move­ ments, aiming for a new political geography, and the different forms of regional and national identities on which they are based. Finally, a third research area of everyday geography could involve asking how the constitution process of the actor’s stock of knowledge is linked to global tele- and electronic communication and how this affects symbolization processes. This kind of informative-significative social geography is first of all interested in the conditions of communication, information networks, and “the access particular agents have to such means of communication.” This geography of the distribution of information has to be differen­ tiated by different means and channels of communication (books, news­ papers, radio, TV, data highways, etc.). But the form of the constitution of the stock of knowledge has to be linked to the constitution of the meaningcontent and symbolization processes of different areas of the everyday world. Conclusions In this way, an action-based social geography aims to reconstruct every­ day regionalizations of the lifeworld by human subjects and critically examines the taken-for-granted geographical representations of the world that are so often mobilized politically by regionalist and nationalist discourses. It should become obvious, then, that regionalism and nationalism are only two specific forms of political attempts at the regionalization of the world. Every subject is constantly regionalizing the world through his or her actions. A modem geographical representation of the world has in this sense to take the subject into account: to study how subjects live the world and not just in what world they live is one of the challenging duties of contemporary human geography. Scientific geography could then offer an

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enlightened view of reality and produce therefore a critical account that questions some very powerful political interpretations of our world. For this we need a geography which can make obvious the social constructedness of all kinds of regions and which makes it clear that “blood” and “soil” are by no means appropriate categories for social justification and legitimation. To contribute to this project is one of the most important challenges and political duties facing contemporary and future generations of geographers. Today not much is more important than the consolidation of an understanding of the world that gives no quarter to the persistence of a blood and soil rhetoric under the conditions of late modernity. If the reinterpretation of the lifeworld concept is accepted, one should be aware that it also includes important consequences for the understanding of regionalizations under globalized conditions. Globalization can be seen as a consequence of modernity and especially as an outcome of modem conceptions of time and space. Both of them are linked to the central position of the acting and knowing subject in a modem interpretation of reality. Consequently, processes of regionalization can also be seen as forms of world-binding processes, and not just as praxis of spatial delimitation for scientific or social and political purposes. Regionalization under globalization has rather to be reconsidered in a subject centered form: how do subjects tie the globalized world in their lifeworlds to themselves is the question to be asked. The observable forms consequently can as well be understood as different types of the making of multiple everyday geographies, as globalization altogether can be interpreted as the out come of modem forms of geography-making.

Chapter 2

The O rigin of the Political Ilja Srubar Universitat Erlangen-Niimberg Abstract: The social sciences have to include also the field o f the political Since Plato both the social and the political order, even though seen as different, are considered as grounded in the human nature, but the emergence o f the politicalfrom the primary social order and the relatively natural attitude attached to it has never been explained in a satisfactory way. The Schutzian approach to mundane phenomenology in general and his analysis o f the relationship between in-groups and out-groups in particular helps to bridge this gap. Introduction Considering the fact that Alfred Schutz intended to reestablish the social sciences via his theory of the meaningful construction of the social world and later via the theory of the lifeworld, we are confronted with a specific problem. To succeed, this foundation must encompass the entire spectrum of the social sciences and their subject matters, in other words, it must refer to the “social” in general as well as to the “economic” and “political.” This does not seem to be difficult, as long as the term “social” is understood in the sense of “society” that includes the subsystems of politics and economics. This systems-theoretical approach, however, contradicts Schutz’s original intentions which were, as is generally known, concerned with revealing the constitution of meaningful social reality before the theoretical intervention of the social sciences. He is concerned with the way in which people access the world in their relatively natural attitudes where the structures of their lifeworlds are constituted. To reestablish the social sciences on this basis, one has to clarify how human activities that have become the object of the various disciplines of the social sciences are already included in the structure of the lifeworld. This is, however, where a problem arises: Whereas the economic, in the sense of the primary reproduction o f life, can be easily subsumed in systems of typifications and relevances under the pragmatically motivated structure of L e ste r E m b ree (e d .) Schutzian So cial Science, 2 3 -4 5 . © 1999 K lu w e r A c a d e m ic P u b lish e rs. P rin te d in th e N e th erla n d s.

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the lifeworld,1 we can obviously not take this for granted in regard to the “political.” Much more, it seems that the structure of the lifeworld that is realized by our interaction with objects and our fellow-men and that represents the primary social reality of groups in the form of systems of typifications and relevances, does not include elements of political organiza­ tion in Schutz’s interpretation.2 Contrary to the economic, which belongs to the structure of primary human access to the world understood as structure of the life-world, and which is thus able to integrate into even the most elementary units of social organization, we are evidently not able to speak of a political organization on this level of primary sociality. It does not help to subsume the political under the eidos of “social organization” as, for example, Tomoo Otaka does,3 since this only covers up the problem that has just become clear rather than solving it. I. Constitutive Differences in Social and Political Order The insight that the “political” cannot simply be attributed to the social organization of collectives was already evident at the onset of European political philosophy. Plato maintains in Republic (Book V and VIII), that the social and economic order that has “developed naturally” must be revoked if a rational political order is to be established in a polis. This indicates, on the one hand, that he sees clearly the difference between the political and social reality, as is constructed in the relatively natural attitude. On the other hand, his thesis that “the polis is a man written large”4 also shows that he presumed there was a connection between the political and human nature even though he could not clearly demonstrate it. The way to arrive at this connection, in Plato’s opinion, did not lead through the analysis of the

'Schutz includes action, in which life is reproduced, in his definition o f primary means that overcome the “fundamental anxiety” which stems from the experience o f one’s own finiteness in light o f the transcendency o f the world. See Schutz, “Das Problem der Personality der Sozialwelt, “ in Werkausgabe, Band V/2. Frankfut a.M.: Surkamp, 1998. 2Alfred Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen W elt” (“Equality and the Meaning Structure o f the World”), in Gesammelte Aufsatze II. Den Haag: M artinus Nijhoff, 1971,203 3Tom oo Otaka, D ie Grundlegung der Lehre vom sozialen Verband. Wein: Springer, 1932, 135 f. 4Plato, Republic, 368 c-d; see also Eric Voegelin, D ie neue Wissenschaft der Politik. Miinchen: Pustet, 1965,93. (Original: The New Science o f Politics.)

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relatively natural attitude and the structure of the lifeworld. Rather he seeks to move away from the cave of everyday life into the clarifying Logos on the basis of which the “eidetic structure” that connects man and the polis then becomes visible. Aristotle sees the difference between the “pre-political” social, to borrow a term used by Hannah Arendt,5 and the political order of social reality perhaps even more clearer than Plato does. The social organization that has developed “naturally,” and thus genetically preceded the polis, is that of the oikos or oikia, i.e., the family households dominated by the male head of the family in which men, women, children, and slaves were composed together in an economic collective.6 The hierarchical inequality of social positions denoted by freedom/servitude as well as by independency/dependency is characteristic of this organization. A household in this sense, as Hannah Arendt points out,7 represents the idion, i.e., what belongs to the family, which stands clearly in contrast to the community (koinon) of the polis, just as the social organization of the polis in its productive conditions, trade, it’s family relations, and its social structure stands in contrast to the political community of the polis. The latter consists according to Aristotle of freemen, who are in particular also free from salaried labor. These free citizens are entitled to take part in the government and the law.8A characteristic of social positions within the political community is thus contrary to the characteris­ tics within the “natural” social order, the equality of “different individuals.” Even when different types of political constitutions effect a hierarchy among the citizens, the hierarchy created is not naturally social— it is, on the contrary, a recasting of the original political equality of the citizens. This draws our attention to an important constitutive moment of the political that consists in its defining power, which is able remove individuals from their “naturally” developing social world and their relatively natural attitude and transfer them into a different and transcendent system of typifications and relevances. The obvious difference between the prepolitical social and the political of course induced Aristotle to question their reciprocal relation and the origin of the political order. He tries to solve the problem by hinting at the “zoon

sHannah Arendt, Vita Activa. Munchen: Piper, 1971. (Original The Human Condition.) 6Aristotle, Politics, 1252a, 10-20; 1253a-1254a, b l, f 7Arendt, Vita Activa, op. c it, 35. 8Politics, 1261 a, 20 f

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politikon” who in his essence strives for a “state.”9Therefore, forming a state is in man’s nature and is so to a much greater degree than in animals since humans have the gift of speech and are thus able to understand the difference between good and evil, just and unjust. The first few pages of Aristotle’s Politics seem to provide us with the clear fact that the political belongs to man’s telos, because of man’s nature as conditio humana. Since the polis represents the realization of the law, and the law constitutes the realization of justice—which distinguishes man from animals—the state precedes even the natural Oikia because it realizes that which is specific to human telos.10 This line of argumentation, which Aristotle also recognized, neither solves the issue of the difference between the political and the social, nor does it tell us which conditions are required for the transition from one to the other. The discussion of primacy only makes sense if we make a distinction between primary and secondary and therefore the problem of differentiation remains. Likewise, the discussion of m an’s “natural inclination” towards the political does not clarify the conditions of transition. In his Nicomachian Ethics, Aristotle illuminates the fact that something additional is necessary in order to go from normal life to “bios politikos” or to a good life in the polis. The administrative power of the polis does not just emerge from the “eidos" of the law but rather from its member’s power to act.11 The problem of Greek political theory consists precisely in developing this power to act in a way that it will lead to a good and just order. As Aristotle shows, the pursuit of “good,” in the sense of satisfying desires, is not sufficient because it does not separate humans from animals. To act in such a way that one receives the recognition of others is just as insufficient because this is an external criterion the content of which is relative and coincidental. We can speak of a virtuous life by means of which the power of citizens to act is kept in the course of justice and a “bios politikos” is established when recognition is given for “good deeds,” that is, for action (praxis) and speech (lexis) in the sense of the just dimension (mesotes). Neither the natural maxims of action, nor those resulting from social recognition, can thus automatically lead to political action in an Aristotelian sense.

9Politics, 1253a, 30f ^Politics, 1253a, 20f 11Politics, 1328a, 35f.

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Special effort is needed to realize the zoon politikon which Aristotle—as is generally known—saw as the endeavor to gain insight (phronesis) into the determination of man’s telos. Therefore, a kind of reflective performance is required the conditions for which, on the one hand, are inherent to the structure of the natural access of humans to the world. On the other hand this is not executed automatically, but rather has to be intended in order to transcend the borders of the relatively natural attitude to a province of meaning different to those of everyday life. In addition, referring to the defining power inherent in the political, Aristotle also points out two other moments constitutive for the political order. Firstly, he indicates that the political must always include a limitation on the power to act inherent to the members o f the polis whose virtue it is not only to command but also to obey.12 Secondly, he points out that the defining power of the political is legitimated by its reference to systems of knowledge which transcend the relatively natural attitude. We thus see that Aristotle’s remarks on the transience of the state and of the zoon politicon in no way means equating the social order with the political order and are very subtle in formulating of the problem of its reciprocal relation and its entire range. He indicates the particular features o f the political which can be used to differentiate the social and political types of order. Yet, at the same time, he shows that both domains have something in common that is based in “human nature” and also that they both refer to the relationship of humans amongst themselves. Hence he raises two basic issues of the “political” into a philosophical-theoretical consciousness. First of all, where can we find the common roots of the social and the political and, secondly, how do we take the step from one to the other? Seen in the perspective of the history of culture, Aristotle completes a movement in the transition from the relatively natural attitude, based within the naturally developed social groups, to social orders that are based on more generalized normative patterns of action which go beyond the primary schemes of interpretation of particular groupings. This type of order legitimizes itself as a symbolic representation of transcendent systems of knowledge.13In the historical times of this transition—called by Karl Jaspers “Achsenzeit” (axial time), such systems include not only the universal religions but also Greek philosophy itself.

12Politics, 1277b. l3Voegelin, D ie neue Wissenschaft der Politik, 17.

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As observed from a perspective of the history of ideas, Greek political philosophy, in posing the question about the actual relation between the social and political, reveals a problem and, at the same time, discloses an instrument that has been of great importance for the discussion of the “political” in European thought—even when its contours have become a bit blurred in the meantime. In Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, we can learn how the original analytic capacity belonging to the political philosophy of classical antiquity declines in the Middle Ages because of the insufficient degree of structural differentiation in Medieval societies. Under the impression of the structural homology of private, i.e., familial, and feudal rule, Thomas Aquinas put the social and political together and maintained that “homo est naturaliter politicus, id est, socialis” (man is by nature political, that is, social).14Yet even this synthesis cannot hold its own against the ever reoccurring evidence of the difference between the two domains: The synthesis of the political and social takes place historically when the social relations of the “house” becomes the object of the political.15 As this process advances, society (Gesellschaft) evolves into a social reality that is intentionally and increasingly ordered by the instrumental and rational ruling power of state (and at a later time also by economics). The proceeding synthesis of the social and political at the same time induces, however, the contrasting concept of the “societal community” (Gemeinschaft) to characterize the social sphere in which “natural” social relations prevail. We find this differentiation between the political and pre­ political organizational mode of social reality again in the well-known differentiation made by Ferdinand Tonnies and Max Weber between associative integration ( Vergesellschaftung) and communal integration (Vergemeinschaftung).16However, it was not the explosive beginnings of German industrialization and the modernization of society that make us aware of the variability of these organizational forms. A radical, detailed formulation of the opposing character can be found at a much earlier time, at the very beginning of modernity in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s critique of civilization from the view point of natural law. From this perspective, social development can change the natural state of man with his natural sociality

l4Arendt, Vita Activa, op. c it, 34, 38. 15Arendt, Vita Activa, op. c it, 44. l6Ferdinad Tonnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 1979. Max W eber, Wirtscha.fi und Gesellschaft. Tiibigen: Mohr, 1971, 20 f.

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to such a degree that man becomes estranged from his own nature. Within the framework of this figure of thought, the desire to construct a just society in which “good life” is possible leads to a recourse back to the pre-political natural state which is free from associative relationship ( Vergesellschaftung) and that is brought about by human nature— a figure on which the Marxist utopia is also based. Both Edmund Husserl’s and Schutz’s concept of the lifeworld as a critical notion can be conceived as a variant of the figure described above. The intention of phenomenology as a science of the lifeworld—whether if it proceeds in a mundane or transcendental way—is to disclose the acts that constitute the validity of the world, the social included. It once again becomes clear here that we cannot just assume that the structure of the lifeworld—as the basis for the relatively natural attitude—also includes the political as one of its distinct components since the figure of the lifeworld derives its critical and substantiating intention by setting the pre-political “natural” order of the lifeworld in opposition to all other orders. The reference to the political thus puts the phenomenological theory of the lifeworld in front of the classical Greek question of how the move from life to political life is made or, more precisely, which are the moments of the structure of the lifeworld from which this transition can emerge. Posing the question in this manner is not just an academic-philosophic exercise. The connection we are looking for does have scientific relevance: Sociology, history, and political science empirically ascertain the evolution­ ary difference between these two kinds of social organizations and establish the actual fact that the political emerged from the social. We have just seen that this difference has great influence on the concepts of social science as well as philosophy. The actual circumstances behind this occurrence and, in particular, its conditions, which are inherent in the structure of human access to the world in the relatively natural attitude, prove to be difficult to pin down, as is illustrated in the following examples. Max Weber, for example, distinguishes communal integration (Vergemeinschaftung) which is based on emotional solidarity of customs from instrumentally rational associations based on law ( Vergesellschaftung). He designates customs to be the idealtypical organizing principle found on simple power, in opposition to the law and political dominance corresponding to developed societies. At the same time, however, he declares power to be a sociologically “amorphous” term because “all imaginable qualities” can put a person in the position to

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“succeed in his intentions in a certain situation.”17 Thus Weber sees the difference in the orders, nevertheless, he does not believe that the “pre­ political” conditions of the constitution of social order— if they are tied to the power of the individual—can be dealt with theoretically. They can only be defined empirically in their collective form, i.e., in so far as they regulate social action in the form of an observable system of norms, customs, and traditions etc. Weber illustrates the transition from customs to political laws with empirical historical cases, yet he does not elucidate the constitutive conditions of this transition—he does not even formulate them as a theoretical problem.18 But even where the emergence of a political society from a pre-political social condition is dealt with as, for example, in Eric Voegelin’s book, The New Science o f Politics, the more exact conditions of this process are not sufficiently explained. Voegelin sees a political society as being composed by “representation.” This means that a society has to have a scheme of interpretation in which its reference to the transcendent truths is symbolized and then by means of which society can legitimize itself as an order. Through this “transcendent representation” of its order, society represents a cosmion, classified by meaning. Alfred Schutz, relying on Voegelin, also discusses the concept of cosmion in his own perspective.19 Voegelin sees it as being existential for a society to become political. A society becomes political by articulating itself and producing an existential representative of its political will, be it a person or committee.20 Let us focus on the concept of articulation, which is obviously aiming towards the transition from pre­ political to political society. To shed light on this subject, Voegelin refers to various historical sources and analysts dealing with these processes.21 The results, however, leave

l7Weber, op. cit., 17, 21, 28. l8W eber’s philosophical and scientific-theoretical orientation tow ards Neo-Kantianism certainly played a role here. This orientation does not stand in contrast to constitutional processes o f social reality, but rather tries to understand them through an ideal-type reconstruction (Schutz, D er Sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Wein: Springer, 1932, § 2, 3 and 4). l9Voegelin, D ie neue Wissenschaft der Politik, op. cit., 84; Alfred Schutz, “Symbol, Wirklichkeit, Gesellschaft” (“Symbol, Reality, and Society”), in Gesammelte Aufsatze I. Den Haag: M artinus Nijhoff, 1971,410. 20Voegelin, op. cit., 78. 2lVoegelin, op. cit., 67 ff.

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much to be desired. He produces organic analogies, as, for example, the development of the body from an embryo to a full grown adult, he intro­ duces terms such as “eruption” {ex populo erumpit regnum), and finally he discusses the the historical personification of a community, that has turned political, in the character of a king. To put it briefly, he gives proof of the phenomenon of articulation and illustrates and illuminates it from all sides, but he does not explain its constitutive conditions: The articulation as a “intentio populi” must ultimately be characterized as the “intangible living center of the realm as a whole.”22 II. The Political and The Structure of the Lifeworld In view of this state of the discussion, we realize the importance of the clarification of the constitutional conditions of the political in the lifeworld structure both in respect to the foundation or reorientation of the social sciences as well as in respect to the solution of concrete problems in social and cultural history. It also becomes clear that—as far as we are egaged in a phenomenological approach to the problem—an investigation on the “eidetic” level will not be very helpful. “Dominance” and “law” can certainly be substantiated as the eidetic characteristics of political order. This is also quite useful, since in doing so the difference between the social and political becomes clear. However, since each eidetic structure has to be identified within the acts from which the constitution of its objects inevitably emerges, we cannot base the phenomenological question of the “possibility” of the political on the eidetic structure of its finished form; we must instead consider the possible constitutional conditions of this form. And this means that, in a constitutional analytical sense, we must clear the latent foundation of these conditions in the structure of the lifeworld, i.e., finally, also within the relative natural attitude. A. Helmuth Plessner One of the most important contributions to the study of constitutional conditions of the political in this sense can be found in the phenomenologi­

22Voegelin, op. c it, 44 (emphasis added).

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cally orientated political anthropology of Helmuth Plessner.23 Plessner tries to find the connection between “human nature” and the “political.”24 In doing this, he deserts the attempt to determine certain human characteristics that were inherent to mankind’s inclination to constitute order. This kind of definition is, in Plessner’s perspective, always in danger of absolutizing culturally specific assumptions about human nature. For him the human characteristic that also bases the political in human constitution lies, on the contrary, in the absence of all substantial action-orienting properties that were given to us by nature from the onset. Because of this openness and inscrutability, the actions of humans are unlimited by nature. Therefore, man can seek to subdue anything to his/her actions. The power of man has no boundaries in this sense. Nevertheless, the unlimited openness of man’s actions stands at the same time for his loss of orientation. In order to act in a meaningful way, man has to limit his own openness by a self-made order. The variety of orders and cultures that we witness throughout history and in the present result from these self-made boundaries, from this self-limitation of the power of an open man.25 In a way, one could maintain that this attempt to reveal the political in the universal structure of the conditio humana shows some moments that were already clarified in Aristotle’s definition of the political. Aristotle also saw the order of the polis as only being possible through the self-moderation (mesotes) of its members’ power to act. For him a man “with no limitations” who lacks this virtue and its laws is similar to an animal which is excessively enjoying its power. Plessner is, however, too much of a phenomenologist to want to decide, as Aristotle would, what the correct amount of self-limitation would be and which virtues in substance would lead man in this direction. He instead looks for general moments of what he calls “the outline of the human life situation.”26 This means, in our terms, that he is searching for the moments that determine the structure of the lifeworld in the relatively natural attitude. In this way, he discovers the fundamental difference on which the structure of the lifeworld is based—namely on the differentiation between familiarity and unfamiliarity. It categorizes the world into spheres of that

23See Helmuth Plessner’s essays “M acht und die menschliche N atur” and “Die Grenzen der Gemienschaft,” both in Gesammelte Schriften V. Frankfurt a.M.: Surkamp, 1981. 24Plessner, “M acht und die menschliche Natur,” op. cit., 201. “ Plessner, op. cit., 232. 26Plessner, op. cit., 191.

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which is taken for granted, familiarly “correct,” and that which is unfamiliar, uncertain, and “contrary to our nature.”27 On the level of social relationships, these differences, as Plessner sees them, almost automatically classify fellow-men into intimate friends and distant foes. This particularizing mechanism that categorizes people and the world on the axis of familiar/unfamiliar and own/strange naturally has an “ethnocentric” effect. In his opinion this mechanism stands for the bond between men and a “people” (Volk) with its separate spheres of familiarity of cultures and customs and, in this order, it also stands for the national communities which compete for existence.28 In the possibility of a subject’s insight into the contingency of what can emerge as its own particular standpoint related to a “Volk” Plessner sees a chance to relativize the undeniableness of the friend-foe relationship and to “civilize” the politics in consequence.29 Plessner succeeds in showing that might, openness, and the resulting necessity of self-limitation as basic requirements of politics are already contained in the natural genesis of the structure of the human access to the world. In our connection, it is very important that he is able to demonstrate that these requirements are also general constitutive moments of the relatively natural attitude, meaning that they have to be valid as general conditions of the regularity of human actions—whether they are reflected in a pre-political or apolitical social order. From this point we can then show that powerfulness and self-limitation—which Aristotle specifies as moments of the political—represent the lifeworldly conditions for any kind of social order, i.e., insofar as any order must be seen as emerging from experience based on socially authorized schemes of interpretation coming out of the interaction with others and objects. These schemes of interpretation are not just a result of consensual bargaining but also include assymetrizing moments of power. They are selectively effective as orientation guides for action and limit the range of its meaningful projects. Their production is always connected with representing behavior, the result of which is their communicative objectification. The motivation of action is, in this way, transfered to the institutionalized level of symbolic systems that veil the partly power-based, assymetrized origins of the symbolized patterns of

27Plessner, op. cit., 192. 28Plessner, op. cit., 232 f. 29Plessner, op. cit., 233.

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action and establish the impression of consensual commitment. Action is thus regulated by an apparently external and socially imposed order in which the inequality of social positions goes hand in hand with the unequal distribution of the defining power. Locating the conditions of the political in the general conditions of the human access to the world must not imply that we lose sight of the differentia specifica of the political order and its constitution. Plessner, however, runs this risk in many ways. He transfers the “political” to areas where Weber would speak of simple power games within social relation­ ships. In Plessner’s view, “politics” can exist within everyday, private relationships between men and women as well as in the public sphere of the state.30 The political is, in his eyes, the result of the originally unformed character of humankind and is therefore not bound to grounds which go beyond everyday life.31 With this thesis, Plessner pretentiously levels out Aristotle’s as well as Voegelin’s distinction between the political and social. He logically sees the friend-foe relationship as not being a specifically political relationship because it can also dominate the private sphere. The way in which this division is structured within the universal lifeworldly perspective of familiar and unfamiliar that determines the worldview of the “pre-political” of, for example, ethnocentric groups, speaks for the fact that friendship and enemity are not considered solely political terms in Plessner’s opinion. Provided that the category of the “people” ( Volk) is constitutively bound to these processes, the question then arises whether a “Volk” in this sense is a political term or whether it much more signifies a community which is—to put it in Voegelinian terms—in a politically non-articulate state. In this light, Carl Schmitt’s view was correct in the end, that the political could only emerge after a community no longer differentiates between friend and foe in the relatively natural attitude in a quasi-automatic nonreflexive way, but has left this attitude and carries out these decisions sovereignly, according to its changing interests. Plessner certainly does not follow Schmitt while setting a division between the political and pre-political usage of the friend-foe relationship: it is not the sovereignty of this division but the insight into the coincidence of this relation that marks the starting point for actual political reflection on and political use of the friend-foe relationship. Plessner calls this insight the

30Plessner, op. c it, 194. 3lPlessner, op. c it, 194.

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moment of the “civilization of politics” and thus completes willy nilly another Aristotelian figure, namely, the view of the political as the equality of different individuals which necessarilly stands in contrast to the category of the “people” (Volk) as a principle of the pre-political equality of “blood.” While this possibility of differentiation can be found in Plessner’s text, it remains unused by him. He classifies the “affiliation with a people” as a constitutive moment of the political and thereby obliterates the necessary differentiation of the political and pre-political ways of action within the general condition of the mankind defined through power, openness, and self­ limitation. Plessner discloses the universal framework of the conditio humana where the political is established before it has become congruent with “law” and “dominance.” Power, openness, and self-limitation as the fundamental conditions from which the political originates distinguish a potentiality that has an influence on the entire realm of human practice. This potentiality must be understood as the mechanism of variation, selection, and stabiliza­ tion of human behavior upon which the development and institutionalization of any order of action are based— starting with the development of speech and cultural styles and extending to political orders. As important it is to recognize the moment of power in these areas, it is just as evident that the power inherent, for example, in orders of speech or art are as indifferent and originally independent from that of politics—one has only to think of the illocutionary power of speech that John L. Austin and Jurgen Habermas have investigated. The power inherent in them can be politically instrumentalized, yet we must differentiate it from the power of the political exactly for this reason. Even though Plessner helped us to make progress in finding the answer to the question of the moments that make the political possible within the structures of the human access to the world, the mechanisms, however, which specify the “articulation” or “emanation” of the political more closely remain here too, once again, unclear. B. Alfred Schutz The Schutzian approach developed in his study, “Equality and the Meaning Structure of the World” of 1955 is of use to clarify the roots of the political in the structure of the natural attitude and to then forward the

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phenomenological foundation of a science of politics.32 Here Schutz discusses, among other things, three questions which are essential to the study of the genesis of the political from the structure of the lifeworld. (1) How do the schemes of interpretation of the world in the relatively natural attitude and the characteristics of equality inherent to them become established? (2) Which processes are underway in the relationships between in-groups and out-groups, in particular when one group is able to impose its scheme of interpretation on the other? (3) What are the conditions of acceptance of a scheme of interpretation that is imposed on several different groups? Schutz deals with these problems within the scope of his general theoretical project and, above all, within the framework of his constitution theory of the lifeworld, which is of high relevance here.33 The thematic and systematic connections in his analysis to the issues already discussed in this paper are not accidental: The pragmatic and anthropological orientation of his lifeworld theory reveals positions close to Plessner’s approach which—as well as Schutz’s thinking—is related to the works of Husserl and Max Scheler.34 Schutz’s reference to Voegelin’s works is especially intense in the 1950s, when both scholars discussed Voegelin’s New Science and the first volume of his Order and History. And—without any doubts—all three authors refer to Aristotelian politics in their works. The theoretical framework of Schutz’s study of equality can be outlined as far as is necessary to help us to answer the question of the emergence of the political from the lifeworld. For Schutz, schemes of interpretation belonging to a group are systems of typifications and relevances that are taken for granted in the group and constitute its socio-cultural “world.”35 He wants to limit himself to the everyday sphere of these worlds, but he makes clear that the lifeworld as seen as the world of humans in the relatively natural attitude also exhibits spheres outside of everyday life and refers to the fact that this world has a fundamental structure that develop in the

32Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen W elt,” op. cit. 33Schutz, “Das Problem der Personality in der Sozialwelt,” op. cit.; “Symbol, W irklichkeit, G esellschaft,” op. cit.; D er Sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, op. cit.; “Uber die mannigfaltigen Wirklichkeiten” (“On Multiple Realities”), in Gesammelte Aufsatze I, op. cit. 34Ilja Srubar, Kosmion. Die Genese derpragm atische Lebenswelttheorie von A lfred Schutz und ihr anthropologischer Hintergrund. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988. 35Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen W elt,” op. cit., 206f.

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“conditio humana.”36 It is useful to briefly recall the principle characteristics o f this lifeworldly structure and their constituting mechanisms.I will limit m yself here to moments which are relevant to the formulation of our problem. The structure of the lifeworld as a cultural world is inferred from human pragmatic access to the world.37 Systems of typologies and relevances evolve in the actor’s interaction with objects and his fellow-men, which shape the actor’s temporal, spatial, and social dimensions and range of action fields in different manners, constituting in this way their cultural differences. The temporal, spatial, and social dimensions, the range of action field, and the motives for the development of typologies and relevances, however, have their foundations even deeper within the conditio humana. They result from the reflectiveness and temporality of consciousness, from the bodily constraints of worldly experiences, from human sociality and from the resulting plasticity and the social, that is, communicative and interactive formability of human world. The schemes of a world that is valid and taken for granted are classified in zones o f familiarity/unfamiliarity and originate from the contacts with objects and people as well as from social approval or disapproval of their development. The condition of being imbedded in those relationships erects a border of inclusion and exclusion through the social sphere dividing the in-groups from out-groups even when the typifications of the out-group belong to the familiar system of typologies and relevances of the in-group. This last point has a systematic reason in Schutz’s account that is of importance to us. The lifeworldly constitution of the other is based on the presumption of the reciprocity of perspectives. If the reciprocity of perspectives does not actually exist, for instance, by means of communication, then it must be constructed by means of presumptions about others that are inherent in the group or else a relationship to the other—even if it had to do with a misunderstanding—would be impossible. In the relatively natural attitude, what one knows about the others always has the characteristic o f prejudice.38 Social reality constituted in this way and its meaning structure are nevertheless never limited to the everyday realm, that is, a group’s “lifeworld” is not identical with its everyday world. In their

36Schutz, op. cit., 207. 37Schutz, “Das Problem der P ersonality in der Sozialwelt,” op. cit. 38Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen W elt,” op. cit.

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intercourse with the world, humans are confronted with the experiences of the transcendence of this world on different levels—with the transcendence of reality, which lies outside of his range of action, with the transcendence of the other, which requires communication, and, finally, with the transcendence of the world in its entirety in view of one’s own finiteness. Experiencing transcendence in this way also allows for spheres of reality and knowledge that lie outside the realm of the everyday world to appear in the relatively natural attitude. The experienced transcendence demands an assimilation into the groups’ own code (semantics) and its symbolic presence influences the everyday area and practice.39 If we consider the main features of Schutz’s concept, we are able to discern a series of topoi that are analogous to Plessner’s and Voegelin’s approaches. In Schutz’s theory, we once again come across the figure of the origin of the human world in the pragmatic motives, which is connected to the thesis of the self-limitation of action by means of its communicativeinteractive regulation we have seen at the basis of Plessner’s anthropological foundation of the political. Both Plessner and Schutz orientate their theories on Husserl’s lifeworld analysis. As a result of this, they both conceive the constitution of the different group worlds before the background of different schemes of familiarity and unfamiliarity and see the conflict-generating mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion as inherent to these processes. Whereas Plessner’s concepts are “more expressive” and stress the conflictprone power of action, Schutz’s more neutral style of speaking about action and in-groups and out-groups makes it possible to contemplate the potentials for confrontation in this relationship in a more differentiated manner. He sees the reciprocal friend-foe perception of groups as representing only one o f the possibilities which can result from the structure of a group’s own typifications related to the others. In Schutz’s concept of the group world, which he sees as being meaningfully illuminated from within, we can recognize the concord with Voegelin’s idea of symbolic representation of societies. The same applies to the way in which he includes the reference to spheres transcendent to the relatively natural attitude. There are, of course, significant differences. Schutz asserts in his correspondence with Voegelin that the sacral does not always have to resonate in these kinds of transcendental references and

39Schutz, “Uber die mannigfaltigen W irklichkeiten,” op. cit., and “Symbol, W irklichkeit, Gesellschaft,” op. cit.

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criticizes Voegelin for not sufficiently examining the reciprocity of inclusion and exclusion between different groups.40 And it is in fact Schutz’s analysis o f the problem of the reciprocal relation between in- and out-groups that produces an instrument that can be used to approach the problem of the emergence of the political from the point of view of the structure of the lifeworld also lacking in Voegelin: Schutz analyzes this problem based on the distinction between the subjective and objective meaning of the group membership.41 The subjective meaning of the group for its members lies in the commonly shared system of typifications and relevances, that is, in their relatively natural worldview by means of which social positions and status are given, and which defines the homogenous self-typification of the group members that is shared by all. The objective meaning of group membership arises from the perspective of an outsider (or of an out-group) whose scheme o f typifications does not follow the homogeneity o f the in-group’s selftypification, but rather disregards it by necessity and thus subsumes that which is heterogenous from the point of view of the in-group under a scheme o f typification homogenous for him—the outsider. As long as two or more groups can simply exist side by side, no problems will result from the differing structures of their relatively natural worldviews. However, the situation can radically change as soon as these groups start competing with one another for the defining power or try to force a scheme of interpretation on the other or others. The self-evidence of auto-typifications and hetero-typifications will be upset by the confrontation. Above all, the defeated party is in danger of losing its identity in consequence. In this situation, the question arises of how the stability of a self-definition that has been damaged in this way and thus also the stability of the social order can be restored again. Schutz indicates that this situation becomes the more difficult the deeper the hetero-typifications imposed by the group that posses the defining power penetrates into the in-group’s conception of itself. The first ascertainable condition for the acceptance of the new scheme of interpretation and consequently for the stabilization of the new social relations is, therefore, that the defining group has to re-asses its own power of action. This, however, has two preconditions: Firstly, the group holding

40Peter J. Opitz, Briefivechsel iiber "Die neue Wissenschaft der Politik. " Freiburg: Alber, 1993, 100 4lSchutz, op. cit., 232 f.

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the defining power must at least partially disassociate itself from the total validity and taken-for-grantedness of its own everyday scheme of interpretation—even though there is no doubt about the superiority of their own system. Secondly, some modification of the defining group’s original scheme of interpretation is necessary that would allow for a connection of the foreign, defined group with this scheme and which consequently would effects an, at least partial, inclusion of the dominated in the social sphere that is protected by the norms of the defining group.42 What systematic consequences do the results gained above have for our main concern, i.e., for the emergence of the political from the structure of the lifeworld? Let us begin with the question of how the political is established within this structure. Plessner’s as well as Schutz’s study of the foundation of the relatively natural worldview suggest that conditions of the political are based on human power (Plessner), on the pragmatic approach to the world (Schutz), and on the insight into the constructed character of social reality. The power to act, the human reflective plasticity (openness), and the self­ regulation of action by a socially generated scheme o f interpretation make up the foundation for the constitutional mechanism inherent to the conditio humana on which the relatively natural worldview is based. The articulation (or emergence) of the political can now be understood as a step in the sequential process of reflection where the constructed character of social reality as a consequence of human acting power is grasped and instrumentalized.43 The insight into the pragmatic production of reality that is already tied to the evidence of “I-can-do-it-again” has accompanied humans ever since the first tool was made and must be more closely specified in regards to the political. We can speak of the emergence of the political as soon as the social conditions of intersubjectivity, that is, the definition of the reciprocity of perspectives among actors, becomes itself the object o f their reflection and construction. Schutz’s discussion shows that this happens when a group’s “subjective meaning” of membership is upset by confrontation with others and when its taken-for-grantedness is consequently questioned. In this situation, the need arises to redefine the conditions under which the actors

42Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen W elt,” op. cit., 236 "Com pare the characterization o f the political in the polis as a consciousness o f performance (Konnens-Bewusstsein) in Christian Maier, Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkam p 1995, 435 f.

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recognize (or do not recognize) themselves as fellow men, that is, to determine the depth and width of the reciprocity of perspectives and thus also the social (i.e., defined by common culture) or even anthropological (i.e., defined by means o f belonging to the same genus) intersubjectivity. If understood as the area of social order which is characterized by the friend-foe relationship, this is exactly what the definition of the political is aiming for. However, we have to distinguish between the definition of friendship and enmity in the relatively natural attitude, which is based on the primary differentiation of familiarity and unfamiliarity, and the definition which has broken away from this original relationship of auto-typification and hetero-typification and which then sets different “artificial” standards for the friend-foe differentiation. Only in the second case, that is, only when this relationship is reflectively chosen and applied, are we able to speak of a political construct o f friendship and enmity, as Carl Schmitt appropriately points out.44 Nevertheless, in the view that Schutz has opened up for us, we can see clearly that the rootedness of the political in the structure of the lifeworld and its articulation from this structure is in no way adequately covered by the reference merely to the reflective redefinition of the friend-foe relationship45 If we conceive the political as the redefinition of the reciprocity of the actor’s perspectives, then both exclusion and inclusion become clear as its constitutive moments in a way in which inclusion itself becomes visible as the background for the friend-foe relationship46 Certainly, our attention is primarily drawn to the friend-foe relationship, most likely because of the fact that the political emerges out of the confrontation or competition between

44Carl Schmitt, D er B e g riff des Politischen. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1963. 45This is not the appropriate place to go into detail about the curtailment o f the political to the nationalistic friend-foe perspective that can be illustrated by the situation in Germany between W W I and W W II. Above all the attempt to de-emotionalize the political and to separate it from the transcendent, i.e. the “simply moralizing or ideologizing” dimension of its legitimation, which we have seen in Plessner’s and particularly in Schm itt’s theories, shows, among other things, how upset educated German citizens were when they found out that the A llies’ propaganda in W orld W ar I defined them as being primitive, blood-thirsty barbarians. Compare here Emile Durkheim, "Deutschland iiber a lle s." D ie deutsche G esinnung und der Krieg. Paris: Libraire Armand Colin, 1915. 46This background function can also be found in Carl Schm itt’s w ritings, who sees wars as being apolitical when the enemy’s human dignity is morally denied, so that the war does not serve to expel the enemies but rather to eradicate them (Schmitt, D er B e g riff des Politischen, op. cit., 37).

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several groups and their relative natural concepts of the world. Whenever the everyday taken-for-grantedness of auto- and hetero-typifications is questioned and thus redefined, the problem arises of establishing and legitimizing a new definition. The defining power no longer belongs to the scheme of interpretation that is taken for granted, but rather results from the conflict between competing groups. Its establishment requires often a nonsymmetrical social relationship between the actors involved. But the fact that the political is constituted by an extrication of the definition of the reciprocity of perspectives from the taken-for-grantedness of the relatively natural attitude has, however, further consequences. Because the new definition no longer can be entirely based on the previous taken-for-grantedness, the defining power must try to find its legitimation in a definition that transcends everyday attitudes. This means, using Schutz’s terms developed in “On Multiple Realities,” that the reality constructed in the relatively natural attitude becomes the subject within a framework of different cognitive style that transcends the everyday sphere and modifies its reality. In this way, the active power relationship toward the hetero-typified Other that has been a matter of course up to this point becomes precarious. The legitimation of the political through reference to the scheme of interpretation that transcends the particularity of the relatively natural attitude becomes more necessary and therefore the chance is given that the reciprocity of perspectives of actors based in this framework exceeds the particularity of the relatively natural friend-foe relationship and provides a more general framework in which the political can— at least in a few respects—be realized as the equality of different others. At the same time, the chance is actualized that the actors’s power can be limited by expansion and generalization of the mutual recognition so that otherness will not lead automatically to an aggressive friend-foe relationship. Reflectively upsetting the taken-for-grantedness of the member’s “subjective meaning” can, of course, give rise to natural reactions that aim to re-establish the lost unquestionability of the friend-foe relationship. This can only take place in the form of a reconstructive action that is based on insight into the constructed character of social relations and should therefore also be seen as a political act. This case forms the basis for Schmit’s

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construction of the political. Reprimitivizing?7 or demodemizing48 social movements appear in fact often throughout history as reactions to the emergence of social reflectivity and the generalization of conditions of reciprocity.49 The structure of prejudices of the relatively natural relations of in- and out-groups pointed out to us by Schutz is applied reflectively in such cases in order to create a new kind of friend-foe relationship by which the reflective insight making this action possible should be cancelled. The friend-foe relationship in this case is, nevertheless, not the foundation for the political, but simply represents a possible reaction to its emergence. The emergence of the political itself remains primarily bound to the reflection on the constructive character of the social conditions of intersubjectivity, to the generalization of the legitimating schemes of interpretation as well as to the self-limitation of the acting power. Therefore, it is the dynamics of the inclusion belonging to the political that proves to be the framework for its power of exclusion. Whether the friend-foe relationship becomes political is connected to the genesis of the generalizing scheme of interpretation that transcends the naturalness of this opposition given in the natural attitude and thus recognizes in the opponent at least a few characteristics of reciprocity and equality that limit the range of reciprocal power. In this sense, the political does not result from the sovereignty of equals (states or nations) in order to determine the friend-foe relationship, but rather from the conflicting, asymmetrical, and controversial interrelation of two different groups from which such schemes of interpretation emerge. Not the state, dominance, and laws, but rather the pragmatic access to the world, conflicts, communication, and inclusion therefore generate the political. In this way, the political yields again to the constitutional mechanism of social order, the relatively natural basis of which it had originally detached itself from by means of its reflectivity. What tools does Alfred Schutz’s account of the political being located in the structure of the lifeworld offer us for our analysis of the political? Above

47Karl Mannheim, Uber den Gegenstand, die Methode, und die Einstellung der Soziologie. M anuskript. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1930. 48Ulrich Beck, Reflexive Modernisierung. Frankfurt a.M. (Held in Sozialwissenschtliches Archiv Konstanz), 1996. 49An example o f this is the interplay between Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe during the 17th through 19th centuries. The genesis o f nationalism as a reaction to the universalisation o f modem conditions o f life through the industrial revolution is another example (Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).

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all, we gain an approach to the analysis of political semantics and to its discursive genesis. It is possible, first of all, to determine to what extent a political practice, as well as the schemes of interpretation by which it is represented in a society, emphasize exclusive or inclusive moments in the definition of the actor’s reciprocity of perspectives: On the axis of exclusion, we are able to trace the extent to which the socially approved reciprocity of perspectives is defined within the framework of the friend-foe relationship. We can, for example, trace how approved reciprocity declines into the extreme, negating human status totally and forcing the “opponent” beyond of the limits of the political and social as well, thus making them become inhuman, animal-like objects—as for example happened with the Jews during the Third Reich or black Africans during the time of slave trade. On the axis of inclusion, there is the generalization of the scheme of interpretation and its ability of affiliation and absorption of heterogeneous groups as well as the extent of the resulting normative protection. A further analytical dimension emerges from the view of the degree and way in which the defining power of a political representative scheme of interpretation intervenes in the areas of the life-style of individuals and groups and hence expects an identification. On this axis, we could depict, for example, liberal as compared to totalitarian semantics. It would be especially interesting to investigate the transcendent references from which the legitimization of the schemes of interpretation results. The distinctive size would be the degree of reflectivity of such semantics, that is, the development of its instrumental or communicative rationalization in a Habermasian sense, or its formal and material rationality in the sense of Max Weber. The examination of the configuration of all these moments within historically concrete political discourses should yield good results. It would be particularly tempting to employ these instruments to examine in what respects Talcott Parson’s,50Niklas Luhmann’s51 or Samuel P. Huntington’s52 evolution theories, for example, hold true, which suggests that a higher level of reflectivity goes hand in hand with a lesser degree of exclusiveness. And on the level of social action, the perspective elaborated here permits an investigation of the ambiguous processes leading to the constitution of the

50Talcott Parsons, The System o f M odem Societies. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1970. 5lNiklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997. 52Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave. Democratization in Late Twenieth Century Norman/London: University o f Oklahoma Press, 1991.

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defining power, which, on the one hand, takes place within the conflict of actors, but which, on the other hand, have to offer inclusive connections for the opponents as well, if the defining power is going to be politically effective. * *

*

As has become apparent, the investigation of the genesis of the political from the structure of the lifeworld that we have attempted here with reference to Alfred Schutz’s approach and to the way in which he applied it makes it possible to establish an understanding of the political that is helpful in two ways: Firstly, it allows us to overcome or correct some of the polarizing definitions of the term “the political” as it is traditionally understood in political philosophy. Secondly, we were able with its help to gain concepts that allow us to subject the practice of the political and its semantic representations to empirical research. With help from the Schutzian approach, the political has in this way found a conceptualization which can be applied both theoretically and empirically. (Translated by Allison Wetterlin)

Chapter 3

On the Study of Hum an Action: Schutz and G arfm kel on Social Science George Psathas Boston University Abstract: In contrast to Schutz’s approach to social science, Garfmkel presents ethnomethodology as an “alternate technology o f social analysis ” which seeks to respecify the phenomena o f order* as produced and achieved order and to show how such phenomena become accessible through the various study policies which it enumerates and delineates. The result is systematic, rigorous, empirical studies o f practical action and practical reasoning in and as o f the methods actually used, con­ cretely, by members in the course o f living their ordinary society. Introduction In his essay, “Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action,” Alfred Schutz delineates the differences between two types of constructs and also develops his ideas concerning the defining features of social science.1The problems of the social sciences he says are posed by two questions: How is it possible to grasp subjective meaning scientifically? and how is it possible to grasp by a system of objective knowledge subjective meaning structures? Since he wishes to develop a social science that is able to study common sense knowledge and ordinary actions, his approach to a solution of these problems involves an analysis of the differences between common sense and scientific constructs. This approach is both theoretical and methodological. He analyzes the different standpoint and interests of the social scientist vis a vis the person living in the natural attitude in the world of everyday life and also proposes that a particular methodology used by the social scientist

'Alfred Schutz, “Common Sense and Scientific Interpretation o f Human Action,” in Collected Papers, Vol. I. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962, 35ff. Hereafter referred to as C P I. L e ste r E m b ree (e d .) Schutzian Social Science , 47-68 . © 1999 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P u b lish e rs. P rin te d in the N eth erlan d s.

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will enable the achievement of a “system of objective knowledge of subjective meaning structures.” His solution can be summarized as involving the recognition that the social scientist’s stock o f knowledge at hand is the corpus o f his science, and he has to take it for granted. . . . To this corpus o f science belong also the rules o f procedure which have stood the test, namely, the methods o f his science, including the methods of forming constructs in a scientifically sound w a y ,. . . but this structurization will depend upon knowledge o f problems solved, of their still hidden implications and open horizons o f other still not formulated problems. The scientist takes for granted what he defines to be a datum, and this is independent o f the beliefs accepted by any in-group in the world o f everyday life. The scientific problem, once established, determines alone the structure o f relevance.

The social scientist, then, follows the scientific model: He begins to construct typical course-of-action patterns corresponding to the observed events. Thereupon he co-ordinates to these typical course-of-action patterns a personal type, a model o f an actor whom he imagines as being gifted with consciousness. ... He ascribes, thus, to this fictitious consciousness a set of typical in-order-to motives corresponding to the goals o f the observed course-ofaction patterns and typical because-motives upon which the in-order-to motives are founded. Both types o f motives are assumed to be invariant in the mind of the imaginary actor-model.

Schutz elaborates on the characteristics of the ideal-typical model of analysis of action and social situations. It is the scientist who defines what is to his puppet a Here and a There, what is within his reach, what is to him a We and a You or a They. The scientist determines the stock o f knowledge his model has supposedly at hand. . .The relevance system pertinent to the scientific problem under scrutiny alone determines its intrinsic structure, namely the elements ‘about’ which the homunculus is supposed to have knowledge, those o f which he has a mere knowledge o f acquaintance and those others which he just takes for granted (CPI, 4 Iff).

The postulates for the scientific model constructs of the social world include: (a) a postulate of logical consistency in which the system of typical

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constructs must have “the highest degree of clarity and distinctness.. .and be consistent with the principles of formal logic”; (b) a postulate of subjective interpretation which involves a model of mind and what “typical contents must be attributed to it in order to explain the observed facts. . . [which will] warrant the possibility of referring all kinds of human action or their result to the subjective meaning such action or result of an action had for the actor”; and (c) a postulate of adequacy whereby each term in the “scientific model of human action must be constructed in such a way that a human act performed within the life world by an individual actor in the way indicated by the typical construct would be understandable for the actor himself as well as for his fellow-men in terms of common-sense interpreta­ tion of everyday life.” The result says Schutz is a model of human action containing the puppets created by the scientist: “the puppet and its reduced environment, are the creation of the scientist. And the scientist succeeds...in discovering within the universe, thus created, the perfect harmony established by himself.” That is, the ideal-typical model is self-contained, consistent, and rational. It is a model of the world of everyday life but not a description of the actualities of that world. It is an abstraction, developed by the social scientist for the purpose at hand, the solution of the scientific problem he has posed. In developing ethnomethodology and proposing what its study policies consist of, Harold Garfmkel presents a different approach to the study of human action.2 The problem for the social scientist is finding how the organization of human actions is achieved: discovering and describing how orderliness is an achieved phenomenon. He assumes that ongoing social life is understandable for the ordinary actor, that ordinary actions recur, are

2His writings were first collected in the publication, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967. Republished Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1984) and have appeared in a num ber o f papers and presentations in subsequent years. This paper draws particularly from the later works (“Respecification: Evidence for Locally Produced, Naturally Accountable Phenomena o f Order, Logic, Reason, Meaning, Method, etc. in and as o f the Essential Haecceity o f Immortal Ordinary Society, (I) - An Announcement o f Studies,” in Graham Button, Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 and (with D. Lawrence Wieder) “Two Incommensurable, Asymmetrically Alternative Technologies o f Social Analysis,” in Graham Watson and Robert M. Seiler, Text in Context: Contributions to Ethnomethodology. N ewbury Park and London: Sage Publications, 1992) and the studies o f work program, which was first presented with exem plary studies in 1986 (Harold Garfmkel, ed. Ethnomethodological Studies o f Work. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).

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patterned, and are meaningful. Therefore, organization is already present. The task for the social scientist is to study, discover, observe, describe, and analyze the methods by which that organization achieves its sense, coherence, intelligibility, and structure. Garfmkel seeks to describe the actualities, the particularities, the haecceities, the specifics in and by which the organization of the phenomena of ordinary social life is achieved and produced. Logical consistency is relevant for explication and description but since no “system of typical constructs” is being developed, it is not necessary that such constructs be different from the common sense constructs used in everyday life. There is no need to “supersede” the constructs of everyday life, in the sense of replacing them with constructs that are “better” or “more logical.” As for subjective interpretation, he proposes that no “explanation of human actions” and no model of an explanatory form is to be constructed. The assumption that human actions are the result of “activities of a mind,” which Schutz makes, is not made by Garfmkel. “Mind,” rather is found in “action,” or, stated differently, actions are “minded” in the sense of being “meaningful” for the actors. Since the phenomena of order are meaningful, the task for the social scientist is to discover, describe, and analyze such meamngs-in-action. No prior causes of such meanings-in-action need be sought to “explain” them and no concept of “mind” is utilized or found to be necessary for analysis. As for the postulate of adequacy, as defined by Schutz, which refers to the consistency of the constructs of the social scientist with the constructs of common-sense experience, for Garfmkel the descriptions of the world of everyday life are grounded in the activities actually engaged in by members. Members’ constructs are grounded in their uses, in, as, and of the occasions of such use. Descriptions which are faithful to the actualities of social life, would be consistent with the understandings of those same situated occasions utilized by and available to members. Adequacy, in this sense, is not an issue requiring a test of the congruence of the scientist’s model of action with the member’s understanding, since the descriptions are those of member’s understandings in the first place. There are no ideal typical models, or systems of constructs (i.e., sets of abstractions, generalizations, formalizations, idealizations), or puppets in Garfmkel’s studies of action. His rejection of the ideal type as a model for analysis in the social sciences is quite clear. However, if types and

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typifications are part of practical reasoning for persons in everyday life, then these methods (of practical reasoning) can become topics for analysis. In contrast, although Schutz first saw that types and typifications were practices engaged in by members, in his view these were then to be replaced by the scientist’s ideal types. Some of the scientist’s types may be “ideal types of members’ ideal types,” i.e., second order constructs in Schutz’s theorizing. However, Schutz’s view of the social scientist as one who formulates a problem and proceeds to solve it from within the systems of relevance of his science, drawing on and using only the methodologies of that science (e.g., ideal-type analysis), effectively distances the social scientist from the world of everyday life. The scientist’s interest is in developing his science, connecting his study to other studies, using the developed and developing methods of his science as well as adding to the system of constructs of that science rather than producing detailed analyses of how concrete, particular, and specific instances of locally achieved order achieve coherence and sense. In his earliest studies, Garfinkel undertook to examine how the taken-forgranted assumptions which Schutz and Husserl had identified as operative within the natural attitude are involved in the processes by which intersubjective sense and meaning were constituted. His early “breaching experiments”3were oriented to discovering the taken-for-granted, to locating and describing aspects of the foundational, seen but unnoticed, the back­ ground expectancies, as these operated in everyday life. By modifying or disrupting assumptions, it was possible to reveal their foundational character, and the ways in which they were involved in all manner of sense making. He was able to show that members could mobilize, utilize, and draw upon as needed those unstated presuppositions and assumptions which could be of practical value, in the specific situation, to normalize, stabilize, or achieve sense out of senselessness.4

3See especially “Studies o f the Routine Grounds o f Everyday Activities”, in Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, op. cit., 35-75. 4And, as John Heritage (Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984, 306) says: “as long as the participants in a scene can remain assured that their ordinary trusted methods o f common-sense reasoning were adequate to their tasks, they continued to employ them with varying degrees o f cognitive discomfort. As soon as the applicability o f the methods them selves was threatened, anger and bewilderment immediately made their appearance. . . (thus showing that) while a shared cognitive order is ultimately based on shared and trusted methods o f understanding, the use o f the methods is the object of

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The programmatic character of these early studies was background for what Garfmkel later developed as the “studies of work” approach. This later approach, formulated in a number of writings and including the citation and description of particular exemplary studies, seeks to study in detail the “mundane actions and the competences which inform them”5by carrying out naturalistic observation in actual settings. There is no “in principle” solution to the problem of adequate description nor any set of readily available methodological procedures to be used in the description of the varieties of situated actions in ordinary everyday society.6 It is this approach, the later Garfmkel as developed in the studies of work program, that I wish to examine in detail. By drawing on his own explica­ tions of this program, it should then be possible to show how Garfmkel has gone on, from his earlier grounding in Schutz’s studies, to develop a distinctive and different approach to social science. His approach treats Schutz’s discovery and analysis of the foundational character of the natural attitude of everyday life and its embedded presuppositions seriously, but goes further in seeking to understand how, in everyday praxis, members ongoingly achieve intersubjective sense and interactional order. The analysis of the presuppositional foundations, he shows, does not provide an adequate accounting. Nor can any study which prescribes an analytic methodology or theoretical framework in advance hope to reveal the actualities, the haecceities, of the accomplishment of order in everyday life. Rather, true to his phenomenological roots, Garfmkel advocates the direct examination of the phenomena of order and the utilization of whatever methods may be

extremely powerful normative sanctions.” 5Heritage, op cit., 301. 6The studies-of-work program, as described by Heritage (op. cit., 302), involves, then, an effort to “treat as relevant materials for analysis all exhibits of activity which are recognized as belonging to a domain o f action by the participants to that domain. These materials are subjected to a rigorous naturalistic description in which the focus is on the production, management and recognition o f specific, material competences as they are exhibited in real tim e and in settings in which their employment is recognizably consequential. Ordinary activities are thus examined for the ways in which they exhibit accountably competent work practice as viewed by practitioners4 Competences are exclusively treated ‘from w ithin’ within scenes o f commonplace work activity and by mundanely competent practitioners - for com petent occupational practice is recognizably produced only within such scenes and by such persons and not elsewhere. . . . [W]ork competences are found, not in the privacy o f individual consciousness, but as publicly observable courses o f specific, local and temporally organized conduct.”

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adequate for the focused task of such direct examination. To the extent that the phenomena provide their own indications of the methods needed to study them, the social scientist (read: ethnomethodologist) would be guided by such indications. The results would be expected to be discoveries and descriptions of the phenomena of order as well as their modes of appearing, and their modes of achieving (constituting) coherence, consistency, accountability and the like. I. Garfinkel’s Studies of Work Program It is ethnomethodological about ethnomethodological (EM) studies that they show for ordinary society’s substantive events, in material contents, just and only in any actual case, that and just how vulgarly competent members concert their activities to produce and show, exhibit, make observably the case*, demonstrate, and so on, coherence, cogency, analysis, detail, structure, consistency, order, m eaning, mistakes, errors, coincidence, facticity, reason, methods — locally, reflexively, naturally accountable phenomena — in and as o f the haecceities of their ordinary lives together.7

This amazing and wonderful sentence provides a concise version of Garfmkel’s views of an ethnomethodological approach to social analysis. I shall select from this quotation and other writings to explicate his view. Since the early 1960’s, Garfmkel has tried to formulate what he calls the “study policies” of ethnomethodology (EM). He explicitly differentiates the project of EM from that of conventional or professional sociology by referring to the two approaches as “incommensurable, asymmetrically alternate technologies of social analysis.”8 As such, EM is “distinctive” and different. It is not to be confused with professional sociology nor is it to be seen as a corrective to that form of social analysis. As a distinctive “technology of social analysis” it is to be understood on its own terms, its

7GarfinkeI and Wieder, “Two Incommensurable,” 202. 8See Garfmkel and W ieder “Two Incom mensurable” (op. cit.) for the most recent statement o f this difference. This paper is titled “Two Incommensurable, Asymmetrically Alternate Technologies o f Social Analysis” and is offered as the fourth in a series o f writings which explicate his claims concerning the distinctiveness o f EM studies.

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studies to be used to discover what it does, and its study policies to serve as addressing methodological issues concerning how to carry out such studies.9 To return to the quote above, the focus of social analysis is on the ordinary society and on the activities of “vulgarly competent10 members.”11 The focus is on actual occurrences (the “actual case”) which means that EM is necessarily an empirical science. It cannot/does not consider hypothetical or reported or “typical,” or “idealized” instances. It requires the ethnomethodologistto engage in the direct study of that which is occurring or has occurred. In this respect, the time frame is the present for ordinary actions. Actions which have already occurred can be studied in their various manifestations such as artifacts, constructed objects, texts, documents, and the like. Practical reasoning, for example, may be found in written documents but the text or product must be examined directly; not reports about the text but the text itself. The events are studied to discern, describe, and analyze not only what they are, their “just whatness” (“haecceities”12), but also “how” they come to be

9In contrast, conventional sociology conducts its studies as “(a) naturally theoretic inquiries, (b) w ith the policies and methods o f constructive analysis, and (c) for all questions of adequate accountability o f the phenomena o f practical action uses established theories o f logic to make them decidable as issues o f truth and correctness.” 10Lynch says that this refers to “the fluency that comes with being able to take one’s mastery for granted” (“Silence in Context: Ethnomethodology and Social Theory,” presented at the conference, Ethnom ethodology and Conversation Analysis. East and West. Tokyo, Japan, 1997, fn 16). " In Schutz’s terms, this would be a focus on practical actions and “common sense know ledge” in the w orld o f everyday life. 12Ethnomethodological studies are oriented to the examination o f “haecceities” by which Garfinkel means “the just here, ju st now, with ju st what is at hand, with ju st who is here, in just the time that just this local gang o f us have, in and with just what the local gang o f us can make o f just the time we need, and therein, in, about, as, and over the course o f the in vivo work, achieving and exhibiting everything that those great achievements o f comparability, universality, transcendentality o f results, indifference o f methods to local parties who are using them, for what they consisted of, looked like, the ‘missing w hat’ o f formal analytic studies o f practical action.” (Garfinkel and W ieder, “Two Incommensurable,” op. cit., fn. 2, 203). I cannot think o f any English equivalent o f haecceity other than to call it the “justthisness” o f a phenomenon. The main point is that to study the “just-thisness” is to focus on the actual, the ju st how, the locally, reflexively, naturally accountable phenomena, themselves, are being accomplished. This focus enables EM to respecify phenom ena and to contrast such respecified phenom ena with the “current, established, . . .received terms of

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what they are. That is, how they are produced and organized collaboratively and interactionally (how members “concert” their activities); how sense is achieved; how activities are organized to produce whatever it is they come to. This includes the production and exhibition of “coherence, cogency, analysis, detail, structure, consistency, order, meaning, mistakes, errors, coincidence, facticity, reason, (and) methods.” In other words, all of these are produced and exhibited “haecceities” (just-thisnesses), particular instances of orderly phenomena. “Cogency,” “analysis,” “structure,” etc., are the products of human activities, locally achieved, by ordinary members. This list is not exhaustive nor should it be read as exhaustive. But as a list it is designed to show that human activities are involved in the production of sense and meaning, order and disorder (“mistakes, errors”), in short, in the range of “results” or “outcomes,” of all manner of analyzable and interpret­ able meanings concerning “what it comes to/came to.” Note especially here that Garfmkel includes “facticity” and “methods” as also involving human actions. We shall return to this in more detail later but at this point we want to note that “fact production” and “method production” are regarded as studiable, locally occasioned matters as these are accom­ plished by ordinary members. This is not the same as Schutz’s notion about the study of facts by the scientist where “facts” are selected and organized into conceptual frame­ works to be used for further analysis of similar activities, events or situations. Instead, Garfmkel points to the way in which members produce and achieve what is for them “facticity” just as they produce “sense,” “coherence,” “error,” and the like. These are phenomena. These are “locally, reflexively and naturally accountable phenomena.” What he means is that on this occasion, in this place and this time, members are achieving order; that members both

meaning and order* (as these) are available in received texts o f intellectual history.” In other w ords, in the received texts we may find all o f these terms (e.g., order, meaning, cogency, detail, structure, etc.) as though they were based on the study o f the same phenom ena with which EM is concerned with. But only an ethnomethodological approach which respecifies these topics as locally, reflexively, naturally accountable phenomena engages in the study o f these as to their “just-thisness.” In this respect, Garfmkel is im plying that the social sciences have not attended to the actual, produced and achieved orderliness, to the “ju st here, ju st now, with ju st what is at hand, etc.” aspect o f ordinary social phenomena.

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produce and orient to the orderliness of their activities and are able to provide for themselves (and others) accounts of that order, i.e., that this order is a “reflexively and naturally accountable” order. Here, “order” includes all manner of orderly phenomena which they are engaged in accomplishing. This order is part of their “ordinary lives together”; it is in and as of the world of evetyday life, found on just this occasion, in just this place and just this time that they are together with others. In other words, we can find the phenomena of order everywhere, on each and every occasion when members are involved in actions together with others, in the most ordinary settings and among the most ordinary of persons. Garfmkel is thus able to say that “immortal ordinary society [is] a wondrous thing,” as EM studies have begun to show.13 This view can be contrasted with a Weberian or Parsonian perspective which sees confusion and lack of order in the world of everyday life. The scientist’s theories, using and developing concepts systematically and preceding with consistent methodologies, will make the social world coherent and understandable.14Schutz, in contrast, claimed that for members

'’Order* as used by Garfinkel is used to reference the following: (it is) “a collector and a proxy for any and every topic o f logic, meaning, method, reason, and order. It stands in for any and all the marvelous topics that are available in received lingoes and received topics in intellectual history. O f course these include the lingoes and studies in the endless arts and sciences o f practical action. W e ask that order* be read as a proxy for any topic o f reason, logic, meaning, proof, uniformity, generalization, universal, comparability, clarity, consistency, coherence, objectivity, objective knowledge, observation, detail, structure, and the re s t.. . EM seeks to respecify them as locally produced, naturally accountable phenomena o f order*. . . Any and all topics o f order* are candidates for EM study and respecification. . . But with whatever ‘guise’ o f candidacy a topic o f order* is presented, it is respecifiable only as discoverably and inspectably the case.” (Garfinkel and Wieder, “Two Incommensurate,” op. cit., fn. 1, 202203). '“See here Garfinkel “Respecification” (op. cit.) for the discussion o f Parsons’ plenum and the view that “there is no order in the plenum.” (Parsons’ Structure o f Social Action distinguished between the) “concreteness o f organizational things on the one hand and real society that methods o f constructive analysis could provide on the other. . .” (p. 14) Parsons’ view was that only the methods o f constructive analysis, i.e., social scientific theorizing and research methods could provide for the topics o f order. “Parsons’ thematic agenda was in every respect answerable to the observability of immortal, ordinary society. It was therein everywhere sensitive to the difference between the concreteness o f actions, and actions construed analytically. . .in respect o f unanimous

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of society the types and typifications used in everyday life provide “ordering” with the sedimented stock of knowledge providing expectations, anticipations, and recipes for sense making. Schutz’s views in this regard offer a more cognitivist interpretation of human action and assume an active, cognitive orientation on the part of ordinary members of society as well. Garfinkel is more willing to accept the Schutzian perspective but unwilling to grant cognition any primacy in the production of order. As already mentioned, he finds “mind” in the actions and activities of persons in the world of everyday life.15 II. The Study Policies of Ethnomethodology Ethnomethodology approaches methods and methodology in a particular and distinctive way. No pre-established and developed methods of inquiry are selected in advance of any study. No list of “social science research methods” developed and standardized for research purposes is consulted in advance of any inquiry. Instead, the topic of inquiry leads the investigator to search for the phenomenon of inquiry, to discover just what it is in its ordinariness, in its everydayness, and by examining the phenomenon(a) directly also discover the appropriate means (methods) for its/their study. III. Respecification of Phenomena of Order The topics and phenomena of inquiry are the topics and phenomena of order* as “an achievement in and as of practical action.”16Thus, every topic of order* offers “itself as ...an achieved phenomenon of order*, .. . finding it with the use of EM policies and methods.. .” There are distinctive “maxims, policies, instructions, and methods” for ethnomethodological studies, but first and foremost it is necessary to understand that the phenomena which are to be studied are "phenomena o f order * as an achievement in and as o f practical action. ”

agreem ent that there is no order in the plenum. Parsons talked on behalf o f professional sociology, and o f the world-wide social science movement.” l5See especially Coulter, M ind In Action (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. 1989) for an elaboration o f this argument. '‘Garfinkel and W ieder, “Two Incommensurate,” 180.

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What does this mean? What Garfmkel respecifies for ethnomethodology is the very phenomena of study. The phenomena are an “achieved order*.” Therefore, the focus of inquiry must be on discovering, examining, and describing their details, revealing just how and just what that order* consists in, just how it is produced/achieved/organized. Every topic of order* is to be respecified as a phenomenon of order*. Thus, every topic in the social sciences— order, logic, meaning, reason, and method—is respecified as an achieved phenomenon of order* “in and as of practical action.” Respecification means that rather than accept received notions concerning order (e.g., that the topics of order are rules, norms, conformity, deviance, power, bureaucracy, leadership, legitimation) the topic of order is to be respecified as an achieved phenomenon whose organization and methods of achievement is to be discovered/examined/described. My re-statement of this is to say that the concern is with “just how is it done,” where the “it” has to be specified as the achieved orderliness. The methods for carrying out such studies are not methods as understood conventionally. They do not consist of a set of “tools” or a set of procedures to be selected and applied in any next study. Rather, the study policies which Garfmkel formulates include such approaches and procedures as the “unique adequacy of methods requirement” and the use of “perspicuous settings” among others. IV. Unique Adequacy The unique adequacy of methods is formulated in terms of a weak and a strong version. The weak version he says refers to the analyst’s vulgar competence in the local production and reflexively natural accountability of the phenomenon of order* which he is studying. In this respect, close familiarity with and competence in the actual accomplishment of the phenomenon of order* is required. An example is David Sudnow’s study of improvisational jazz in which he himself was performing improvisational jazz at the piano and undertook to discover, examine, and describe phenomena of order* within such performance. The methods used to carry out such an inquiry are the methods already possessed by the competent performer. Unless s/he is competent to perform, s/he is unable to carry out the inquiry. Competence in jazz performance involves the competence in the use o f methods to produce the competent

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performance, i.e., the competent performer knows how to do it. This can be extended to any and all phenomena of order for which competence can be achieved by the analyst whose aim is also to study the achieved phenomena of order*, cf., the production of a mathematical proof,17 of work at the laboratory bench,18etc. Such competence would also involve competence in recognizing, identifying, and displaying, the phenomenon of order*, i.e., knowing how to play improvisational jazz and actually performing it entailed for Sudnow also recognizing and identifying various aspects of that performance as well as being able to display for himself and others the performable aspects of improvisational jazz; or, for Livingston, knowing how and being able to produce the mathematical proof. By virtue of being competent to produce the phenomenon of order*, the analyst is also competent in the possession of methods for its analysis. These methods, as Garfinkel says, “are uniquely possessed in, and as of, the object’s endogenous local production and natural accountability.” This does not mean that every/any performer is or becomes an analyst. The re­ searcher/social scientist who achieves competence in the production of the phenomenon of order* can choose to engage in such analysis. How an analysis may be done, the methods for such an inquiry, are available as part of that production process. For example, knowing how to play the scale, provides also a way to examine it by, for example, varying one’s fingers on the keys, playing in different keys, varying the timing, etc. In the strong sense of unique adequacy, the “phenomenon of order* already possesses whatever as methods methods could be of [finding it].” That is, the phenomenon of order* already contains/incorporates the methods uniquely adequate for discovering/examining/describing it. This would be consistent with the already mentioned notion of a vulgar compe­ tence in the production of the phenomenon of order* by the analyst. In principle, the phenomenon of order* already contains whatever it is that would be necessary for studying it.19

17E. Livingston, The Ethnomethodological Foundations o f Mathematics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. l8M ichael Lynch, A rt and Artifact in Laboratory Science. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. 19Garfinkel and W ieder (“Two Incommensurate,” op. cit., 182) state it as “Just in any actual case a phenom enon o f order* already possesses whatever as methods methods could be o f [finding it] if [methods for finding it] are at issue. Comparably, a phenomenon o f order* already possesses whatever as methods methods could be o f [observing], o f [recognizing],

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PSATHAS V. Perspicuous Settings

Perspicuous settings refers to the setting making available that which the phenomena of order* consist of. Such a setting consists of “material disclosures of practices of local production and natural accountability in technical details with which to find, examine, elucidate, learn of, show, and teach the organizational object as an in vivo work site. ”20 One way to find a perspicuous setting is by use of Sacks’ gloss. This refers to a procedure first mentioned by Harvey Sacks in which he formu­ lated the distinction between possessitives and possessables. By possessables he referred to things one may find in the world which one notices immedi­ ately that one can take it or acquire it versus those things which one sees one cannot have, that they belong to somebody already (i.e., possessitives). How could one study such things and their differences? A perspicuous setting is therefore a setting or range of settings in which the study of such phenomena of order* are studiable, in that the settings reveal the differences in detail, as part of an “in vivo work site,” i.e., as work done in real time, real places, by competent members, as an achieved phenomenon of order*. In this case, Sacks found that by observing police who spot cars that they decide are abandoned and who differentiate these from cars that they decide are not abandoned they are, in the course of their lived work, engaged in actually doing the work of deciding on possessables and possessitives. The close observation of the police at work instructs the analyst as to just how this phenomenon is produced.21 A perspicuous setting provides the analyst with what Garfinkel calls the “haecceities,” the local just thisness, the detailed ongoing, lived ordinariness of the phenomenon of order*. As such the setting can “instruct” the analyst, provide just what he “needs to learn and to know” from those who operate

o f [counting], o f [collecting], o f [topicalizing], o f [describing] it, and so on if, and as o f the in vivo lived local production and natural accountability o f the phenomenon, [observing], [recognizing], [counting], [collecting], [topicalizing], or [describing] it is at issue. “ Garfinkel and Wieder, “Two Incommensurate,” op. cit., 184. 21As Sacks is quoted as saying: “. . . I d o n ’t want to write definitions; and I d o n ’t want to consult authorities. Instead, I want to fin d a work group, somewhere, perhaps in Los Angeles, who, as their day's work, and because they know it as their day’s work, will be able to teach me what / could be talking about as they know it as the day’s w ork.” (Garfinkel and Wieder, “Two Incommensurate,” op. cit., 185)

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in the setting since they are engaged in the production/achievement of the very phenomenon of order* which is the analyst’s topic of study.22 VI. Ethnomethodological Indifference Another study policy as elaborated by Garfmkel is what he calls “ethnomethodological indifference.” This is not a general skepticism but rather has to do with an indifference to the “whole of practical sociological reasoning”23 because the latter presents an “incommensurable, asymmetricallly alternative” approach to that of ethnomethodology.24

22T his is stated as follows by Garfmkel and Wieder: “[T]he analyst looks to find, as o f the haecceities o f some local gang’s work affairs, the organizational thing that they are up against and that they can be brought to teach the analyst what he needs to learn and to know from them, with which, by learning from them, to teach them what their affairs consist o f as locally produced, locally occasioned, and locally ordered, locally described, locally questionable, counted, recorded, observed phenom ena o f order*, in and as o f their in vivo accountably doable coherent and cogent detailfo r each another next first time" (“Two Incommensurate,” op. cit., 186). 23Harold Garfmkel and H. Sacks, “On Formal Structures o f Practical Actions,” in J. C. McKinney and E. A. Tiryakian, eds., Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970, 338-366. 24“It is a procedure o f not needing to consult the corpus of classic methods and findings with which to carry out the tasks o f EM research. For the time being, we will carry out the tasks o f our research while abstaining from the use o f the classic corpus o f findings, policies, methods, and the rest. The policy does not advocate the abandonment o f established studies. It is a research practice; one does it as an observance, something like driving in traffic effectively and correctly teaches one to observe it as a skill. Administering ethnom ethodological indifference is an instructable way to work in such a fashion as specifically and deliberately, over actual exigencies o f the research, to pay no ontological judgm ental attention to the established corpus o f social science.” It means “withholding the corpus status o f formal analytic descriptive facts, avoiding the design and administration o f generic representations and their methodized dopes, and in related ways making no use o f the methods o f constructive analysis” (Garfmkel and Wieder, 1992, “Two Incom mensurate,” op. cit., 186-7). As Lynch describes it “The attitude o f indifference is not the same as a value-free or valueneutral posture. Contrary to the classic Germanic notion o f value freedom, ethnom ethodological indifference extends to the conceptions o f scientific rationality that social scientists customarily claim as neutral grounds for describing and (re)evaluating the actions observed in a field o f conduct. There is nothing heroic about indifference. It does not require an effort to purge the soul o f all prejudice, or the performance o f a technique that controls or rules out sources o f bias. It is not a matter o f freeing oneself o f mentalities that are inherent in an ordinary situation; instead, it is a matter o f explicating such situations with a

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It is especially the case that what Garfinkel seeks to avoid is appearing to be explicating, elaborating, modifying, or contributing to the work of “constructive analysis”25 which, he says, characterizes professional sociological (social science) reasoning. He has been clear in stating that ethnomethodology represents an alternate and incommensurably different approach to the phenomena of order* than that which is found in sociology. In order to maintain and to emphasize that difference, ethnomethodology remains “indifferent” to sociological reasoning, refuses to take up topics and issues in the ways that sociology formulates them, and instead regards such formulations as instances of practical reasoning which could, in their turn, be examined as members’ practices. That this indifference extends to sociological research methods can be discerned already from the previous discussion of unique adequacy and perspicuous settings. Social science research methods are based on an alternate approach to the phenomena of order* and as such would not enable

full attention to their ordinary accountability. In other words, ethnomethodological indifference is not a matter of taking som ething away, but o f not taking up a gratuitous ‘scientific’ instrument: a social science model, method, or scheme o f rationality for observing, analyzing, and evaluating what members already can see and describe as a matter o f course. The main difficulty associated with ethnomethodological indifference is convincing sociologists that the questions and topics ethnomethodologists take up are w orthy of attention.” “Indifference is a kind o f objectivistic attitude, but it is misleading to compare it with the more familiar versions o f objectivism. The idea is not to describe social objects as though they were subject to physical laws or governed by mechanisms, but to come to terms with ju st the sorts o f thing they are for those who routinely produce and recognize them. There is no reason not to treat an embodied gesture, a greeting sequence, a traffic jam or a service line as an object, but the difficult task that lies ahead is to discover and describe how this object is produced. The ‘how ’ is an achievement in action, o f action, and as action” (“ Silence in C ontext,” op. cit., 13-14). “ Constructive analysis refers to the program o f practical sociological reasoning which undertakes the “elaboration and defense o f unified sociological theory, model building, costbenefit analysis, the use o f natural metaphors to collect wider settings under the experience o f a locally known setting, the use o f laboratory arrangements as experimental schemes of inference, schematic reporting and statistical evaluations o f frequency, reproducibility, or effectiveness o f natural language practices and o f various social arrangements that entail their use, and so on. For convenience, we shall collect such practices o f professional sociology’s practical technology with the term “constructive analysis” (Harold Garfinkel and H. Sacks, “On the Formal Structures o f Practical Actions,” in J.C. M cKinney and E.A. Tiryakian, eds., Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970, 340).

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the study of such phenomena as achievements of practical action and practical reasoning. Additional study policies which are found in several sources in Garfmkel’s writings can be described under the following points.26 1. Any occasion whatsoever. Ethnomethodology approaches the study of the world of everyday life without regard to any prior formulation of hierarchies of important topics or necessary topics nor of what should or ought or must be studied nor just where, when or how such studies have to be undertaken. The domain of possible studies is indefinitely large, unspecifiable, unlimited and indefinable. Any occasion whatsoever can be examined to discover phenomena of order* since within such occasions will be found, in the practices of ordinary members, the ways in which such practices achieve sense and orderliness.27 2. Non-acceptance of members’ explanations. Members, in the course of carrying out their everyday activities as organized accomplishments, also invoke rules as ways to describe the coherence, consistency or planfulness, i.e., the “logic” or “rationality” of their actions. Such invocations or citations or references to rule are not to be accepted as adequate accounts of their actions. Nor can analysts utilize notions such as rules, norms, principles and typicalities as providing guidance, instruction or direction for members

26The ones presented here are drawn from Garfinkel’s earliest formulations in Studies in Ethnom ethodology (31-34) and the headings are my paraphrases o f his paragraphs. 27Garfmkel states this as : “No inquiries can be excluded no matter where or when they occur, no matter how vast or trivial their scope, organization, cost, duration, consequences, whatever their successes, whatever their repute, their practitioners, their claims, their philosophies or philosophers. Procedures and results o f water witching, divination, mathematics, sociology -whether done by lay persons or professionals— are addressed according to the policy that every feature o f sense, o f fact, o f method, for every particular case o f inquiry without exception, is the managed accomplishment o f organized settings o f practical actions, and that particular determinations in m em bers’ practices and results— from witchcraft to topology— are acquired and assured only through particular, located organizations o f artful practices” (Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, op. cit., 32).

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activities such that they may be said to be “complying with a rule” or “following a rule.” Instead, all topics of “logic” or “methodology” are to be considered glosses for practical, contingent achievements and are “organizational phenomena” which require study in their own right. How they are achieved as well as how they may be used by members to make sense of what they do is a matter for inquiry. 3. Avoid explanation by rule. No outside rule or standard brought from any theory or outside setting is to be used to assess, recognize, categorize or describe the setting’s features in terms of efficacy, consistency, typicality, uniformity and the like. Rather, such outside rules or standards may be examined as phenomena in their own right and as capable of EM study. Every feature of sense, order, logic, facticity and the like are to be treated as “contingent accomplishments of socially organized common practices,”28 i.e., as locally situated practices which are not to be brought under some general, universal or typicalizing rule or explanation. 4. Settings as Self-organizing. Any setting is to be viewed as self-organizing in the sense of organizing its activities “to make its properties as an organized environment of practical activities detectable, countable, recordable, reportable, tell-a-story-aboutable, analyzable, in short, accountable. ” Settings consist of various methods for making that setting’s activities accountable, as being clear, coherent, consistent, knowable, in short, rational, understandable. Those involved in the organized affairs of the setting are able to provide for themselves and others the appearances of “consistent, coherent, clear, chosen, planful arrangements.” Members in settings are provided with ways of accomplishing these.29

28Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, 33. 29A s Garfm kel states it: “In exactly the ways that a setting is organized, it consists o f m em bers’ methods for making evident that setting’s ways as clear coherent, planful, consistent, chosen, knowable, uniform, reproducible connections— i.e. rational connections...In exactly the ways in which a setting is organized, it consists o f methods w hereby its members are provided with accounts o f the setting as countable, storyable,

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5. The Rational Properties of Elliptical Expressions and the like. Every inquiry includes “partially formulated advice, partial description, elliptical expressions, passing remarks, fables, cautionary tales and the like,” whose sense and rationality is provided for and made demonstrable by organized artful practices. Indexical expressions and indexical actions are consistently demonstrated as having rational properties by virtue of members’ practices for accomplish­ ing such. This is undertaken as a serious and practical task by members and is consequential in their activities of everyday life. The task of the analyst is the study of such processes. And, since all inquiries have these features, the inquiries conducted under the auspices of ethnomethodology are themselves subject to such analysis.30

comparable, picturable, representable— i.e. accountable events” (Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, op. cit., 34). 30This has been referred to by Pollner as “radical reflexivity,” a dimension o f ethnomethodological studies which has more recently received less attention. “ [E]thnomethodology is referentially reflexive to the extent it appreciates its own analyses as constitutive and endogenous accomplishments. Referentially reflexive appreciation o f constitution is radicalized when the appreciator is included within the scope o f reflexivity, i.e., when the formulation o f reflexivity— as well as every other feature o f analysis— is appreciated as an endogenous achievement. . .in differing degrees o f radicalism, studies attend to the practices and presuppositions o f the researcher as they address those of participants in the settings under consideration” (“Left o f Ethnomethodology: The Rise and Decline o f Radical Reflexivity,” American Sociological Review 56 (June 1991), 372-373). However, in more recent work, says Pollner, “in contrast to early studies o f everyday practices, which encouraged estrangement and distance as a purchase on the taken-forgranted, ...a prem ium (is placed) on familiarity and immersion. ... it is argued (that) actual practices cannot be adequately appreciated save through participation in ongoing (activities).” Nevertheless, this may result in a dissolution o f the subject/object duality through a merger o f subject and object rather than by an “epistemological radicalism.” “From the viewpoint o f classical epistemology, the ostensibly pointless, groundless, and subversive efforts o f radical reflexivity are incomprehensible and intolerable. . .radically referential reflexive inquiry is the antithesis o f the fundamental suppositions and ideals o f social scientific inquiry. It is in this opposition, however, that radical reflexivity is most valuable. As one o f the most intense expressions o f reflexive concern in sociology, ethnom ethodology may perform a service to itself and to the social sciences” (375).

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PSATHAS Conclusion

It should be evident by now that the studies of the world of everyday life which Garfinkel proposes are not directed toward developing theoretical explanations, generalizations, or causal analyses of social phenomena. The study policies for ethnomethodology represent an effort to discover, describe and analyze the ways in which the ordinary activities of everyday life are organized, how they achieve their orderliness, intelligibility, and sense. The social scientist is not placed in a different finite province of meaning, such as the world of scientific theorizing, from within which are selected the systems of relevance, theories, and methodologies to be used in orienting his/her inquiries.31 He does not assume that minds and motives and an already socialized and sedimented stock of knowledge including types and typifications are operative for actors in the world of everyday life as sources of order. Such conceptualizations he would argue pre-judge and both pre- and pro-scribe just how and just what is to be looked for and may not be faithful to the phenomena of order which are to be studied. The focus of ethnomethodological studies is on human action, occasioned and situated, ongoing and practical, embodied and “minded,” meaningful throughout, action which achieves an endogenous order that is actively produced by those engaged in it. These study policies do not conceive of the social analyst/theorist as being better able, using the techniques of “constructive analysis,” to know better what it is that members are doing and whose theories will provide coherence and explanation as well as an understanding of human social actions. The social analyst is not directed first to search the body of relevant disciplinary theoretical writings about the topic at hand in order to know in advance what to look for, how to recognize it, what is significant about it, how to relate it to other theoretical conceptualizations and how to develop abstract and general theories about the topics being studied.

31See Lynch’s “Alfred Schutz and the Sociology o f Science” (in Lester Embree, ed., Worldly Phenomenology: The Continuing Influence o f A lfred Schutz on North American Human Science. Washington D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press o f America, 1988, 71-100) for discussion o f this and several other aspects o f how Schutz’ views o f the social scientist’s approach are similar to that o f the other sciences.

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Nor do these policies propose hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing, inductive or deductive modes of inquiry, nor a set of standardized methods and procedures to be applied across a variety of settings, nor the develop­ ment of plans for how to identify, collect, examine and analyze phenomena in advance of any inquiry. Garfmkel has, by respecifying the phenomena of order*, shown how such phenomena become accessible through the various study policies he enumerates and delineates. The structures of practical action and practical reasoning can be discov­ ered, described and analyzed. Such phenomena of order* would be the phenomena for social analysis. Garfmkel seeks to remain faithful to the phenomena of. order* as a produced and achieved order. The result would be an ethnomethodological science32 of practical action and practical reasoning in and as of the methods actually used, concretely, by members in the course of living their ordinary society.33 Such a “science” would not be a separate discipline with

■ “ Although Garfmkel him self does not claim EM to be a science in any conventional sense, I would argue an ethnomethodological sociology or “science” would be one which engages in system atic, rigorous and empirical studies carried out under the auspices o f ethnomethodological study policies. However, as Lynch notes, the turn away from theory and m ethod “leaves. . .a rather empty discipline. Taken to a radical limit, the unique adequacy requirem ent empties ethnom ethodology o f every possible general methodological rule, analytic procedure, or evaluative criterion, because all o f these become discoverable as endogenous properties o f the substantive methods ethnom ethodologists study. . . Nothing is left for ethnom ethodology, because nothing is left over from the ordinary society’s incessant oprations. Any uniquely adequate study will already be incorporated into the methodological program in which it is situated, and it is doubtful that any proceeds will accrue to ethnom ethodology” (Lynch, “Silence in C ontext,” op. cit., 11). 33Here a clear distinction between EM and sociology is captured in the words o f Graham Button: “sociology does not require reference to the details o f accountable action in and as o f the em bodied practices o f particular living breathing human beings - even though it is living breathing human beings who, in the details o f what they do, are being sociable - when it considers how to apprehend sociality, or considers o f what sociality consists, or attempts to actually describe sociality. Other human sciences proceed likewise, For example, linguistics has often considered ‘language’ as somehow removed from its actual use by persons. As sociologists have discussed ‘action’ and ‘actors’ without reference to the fact that it is people w ho engage in embodied action in ‘real tim e’, so too has linguistics often discussed ‘language’; w ithout reference to its use by speaking people. Model building in econom ics shuts out the confusing contingencies o f real world irascible transactions. Anthropology has often glossed over the details o f circumstantial action through having the occasioned account o f the native informant stand as proxy for a society. Psychology would

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distinctive theories and methodological practices which develops a body of knowledge of and about that ordinary society. But, similar to a phenomenological dimension in philosophy,34it would represent a “systemic discipline”35 in the human sciences, following a variety of “study policies” which serve to make visible the phenomena of order* as produced and achieved orders.

rather construct an experiment to, for example, examine people’s reaction to authority and have subjects ‘shock’ accomplices ‘to death’, than enquire into how obedience to authority is relevantly built into their practical everyday lives, where random orders to administer people with electric shocks would be regarded with some skepticism. . . .The point is that. . when the human sciences examine such issues as method, theory, epistemology and the like, they do so without recourse to the situations and phenomena such matters are to apprehend” (G. Button, “Introduction,” in G. Button, ed., Ethnom ethodology and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1991, 6-7). 34Zaner considers phenomenology as “one o f the systemic disciplines o f philosophic concern, .. analogous to logic, ethics, aesthetics, or epistemology” whose task is radical criticism. He sum marizes phenom enology’s task as the “reflective-descriptive explication, analysis, and assessment o f the life o f consciousness, and o f man generally.” ( The Way o f Phenomenology. New York: Pegasus, 1970, 122). In this respect, the topics o f study are limitless, not specifiable in advance, and the ‘findings’ are as varied as the topics themselves. The “order o f inquiry,” as Zaner puts it, “is one which is not imposed from without, but is, rather, derived fro m and grounded in the materials themselves to be studied” (173). 3SZaner, The Way o f Phenomenology, op. cit., 83.

Chapter 4

Alfred Schutz’s Conception of M ultiple Realities Sociologically Interpreted Hisashi Nasu Waseda University, Japan Abstract: Schutz’s conception o f multiple realities is an essential part o f his sociology o f everyday life. Founded on an analysis o f constitutionphenomena in inner-time consciousness within the phenomenologically reduced sphere, it not only escapes from the objections the sociology o f everyday life faces within a philosophically naive position, but also extends and radicalizes the connotations o f the key sociological concepts. Introduction Why is the social theory of Alfred Schutz called phenomenological? Is it possible to call it phenomenological? If it is possible, which aspects of his theory can be considered to be phenomenological? Some answers could be offered to these questions, e.g., he actually carried out “the analysis of constitution-phenomena in the inner time-consciousness within the phenomenologically reduced sphere,”1 and then applied its findings in his critiques of Max Weber’s basic sociological concepts.2 In this paper, however, I would like to focus myself on just one aspect, i.e., how he turned to the world of everyday life and made it not a “resource” but a “topic” for sociological research. From my point of view, Schutz is one of the first sociologists to turn to the world of everyday life and make it the topic of sociological research in the strict sense.

’Alfred Schutz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Wien: Julius Springer, 1932, chap. 2. Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “Aufbau.” 2The author has discussed Schutz’s critique o f W eber’s basic sociological concepts and his orientation toward their renewal in other paper, “Amplifying the 'Sociological Aspects o f Literature’ with the Concept o f Social Relationship,” in Alfred Schutz's "Sociological Aspect o f L ite r a tu r e C o n s tr u c tio n and Complementary Essays, ed. Lester Embree. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998, 129-148. L e ste r E m b re e (e d .) Schutzian Social Science, 69-85. © 1999 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P ub lish ers. P rin ted in th e N e th erla n d s.

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Some objections might be expected to this statement. For example, using Max Weber’s statement that “ ‘the daily experience,’ from which our theory starts, is of course the common starting point of all empirical disciplines,”3 an objection might be expressed that as shown clearly in the passege quoted just before, experience in our daily life is already dealt with in Weber’s work and thus prior to Schutz. I feel no reluctance in acknowledging that in his well-known and persuative sociological explication of the development of modem capitalism in Western society, Weber was clearly oriented toward the actions of Protestants in daily life. His focus was actually and firmly on daily activites inspired by the concept of “calling” (Beruf) which was in turn founded on the Protestant “inner-worldly asceticism” (die innerwehliche Askese) and “the doctrine of predestination” (die Pradestinationslehre). If our discussion would continue on this level, it might be said that almost all sociological investigations have been and are oriented toward the world o f everyday life. We can certainly find in the history of sociology many efforts which are alleged to be oriented toward the world of everyday life. Almost all of them, however, started their research after “accept[ing] naively the social world with all the alter egos and institutions in it as a meaningful universe.”4 The world of everyday life is not a “topic” but a “resource” for these researches, because they begin their “inquiry with the object of knowledge,” and do not turn to “the conditions for the possibility of knowledge.”5 Two points need to be made about such a naive position of research. The first is that such a position can be found not only in the work of Talcott Parsons but also in the discussion of pluralistic society by Peter L.Berger and his colleagues. The second is about objections to such a position, which will be dealt with below in section II.

3 Max W eber, Gesammelt Aufsatze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 4 Aufl. Tubingen: J.C.B.M ohr, 1973,393. 4 Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol.2, ed. Arvid Brodersen. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1964, 5. Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “CP2.” 5Maurice Natanson, "Foreword,” in Alfred Schutz and Talcott Parsons, The Theory o f Social Action, ed. Richard Grathoff. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978, xii.

MULTIPLE REALITIES SOCIOLOGICALLY INTERPRETED 71 I. The World of Everyday Life in Parsons and Berger There might be little need to demonstrate that the position of Parsons is “philosophically naive.”6 So I would like to say just one thing here. Because he defined “fact,” following the definition by L. J. Henderson, as an “empirically verifiable statement about phenomema in terms of a conceptual scheme,”7and made a demarcation between common-sense interpretation of social facts and scientific statements in terms of the degree of refinement, he had to make a statement in consequence that “[m]y insistence on the continuity of the basic categories o f logic and observation on the one hand in the most sophisticated science, on the other hand in the most simple common-sense action, is fundamental to my whole position.”8 Schutz objected to this definition of fact in saying that “[e]ven if this definition could be accepted within the framework of Professor Parsons’ study, it seems to me not only unusual, but rather dangerous” (TSA: 10; emphasized by the author). I completely agree with Schutz’s objection. But he does not point out clearly what kind o f danger this definition entails. My opinion is that there are two kinds of trap opened up by the definition of fact by Parsons and therefore catching the “inquiry with the object of knowledge” founded on such a definition. The one trap is a possibility that common-sense concep­ tions are tacitly imported into scientific inquiry. Parsons might be said to remain in this sense committing himself to the “straightforward act” (Die Akt geradehin)? The other is a possibility that the world of everyday life is covered and made forgotten by the so-called “garment of ideas” (Ideen-

6 Cf., ibid. 7Talcott Parsons, The Structure o f Social Action. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937, 41. 8Alfred Schutz and Talcott Parsons, The Theory o f Social Action, ed. Richard Grathoff. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978, 76. Emphasis is the author’s. Hereafter, this w ork will be cited textually as “TSA.” The conception that a difference between commonsense and scientific knowledge consists in the degree o f refinement is valid insofar as the same criterion can be applied to both cases. For example, the possibility o f presentation in mathematical form, verificability or falsifiability are introduced from outside, and in reference to them the one is evaluated as more refined and the other as less refined. However, such evaluation is based on an assumption that these two forms o f knowledge refer to objects o f the sam e level. 9Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage, ed. S. Strasser, Husserliana, vol. 1. Den Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1963, 72.

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kleid) which must be considered by Parsons as the highest degree of refinement and sophistication. On the other hand, our concern about the work of Peter Berger and his colleagues may sound strange, since he has been widely recognized as one of the most influential and significant successors to Schutz. Moreover, the work of Berger has been one of the main routes by which the work of Schutz is introduced into sociology not only in North America but also in Japan and possibly around the world. As far as the theme now discussed is concerned, Berger surely looks like a direct successor to Schutz in at least two respects. First, he and his colleagues have stated clearly that they are oriented in their discussion of pluralistic society toward the “everyday consciousness of ordinary people.”10 Second, based on their recognition that “[e]ach field of consciousness is a structure constituted by the modes and contents of what is consciously experienced,” they make a distinction between the organization o f knowl­ edge and the cognitive style of a particular consciousness, and then they discuss the pluralization of society in terms of the cognitive style which refers not to the what but to the how of conscious experience (cf., HM: 20). The theory of pluralistic society developed by Berger and his colleagues looks highly similar to the multiple realities theory of Schutz. Both Berger and Schutz make a distinction between the contents and form of experience and attempt to discuss the sub-division of society or reality in terms of not the contents but the modes or form. As a matter of fact, they use the same term, “cognitive style,” for the plurality of society and multiplicity of reality. From my point of view, however, their discussions diverge at a decisive point. Berger and his colleagues certainly state that their cognitive style refers not to the “contents” but to the “modes” of experience and knowledge. However, as we can realize from a glance at some examples of their cognitive styles, e.g., “separability of means and ends,” “implicit abstrac­ tion” as intrinsic to technological production, or “orderliness,” and “non­ separability of means and ends” as the cognitive style of bureaucratic consciousness (cf., HM: chaps. 1 & 2), they are more factual and more concrete in comparison with the cognitive style in Schutz’s theory on multiple realities.

10Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The H omeless Mind. New York: Penguin Books, 1973, 29. Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “H M .”

MULTIPLE REALITIES SOCIOLOGICALLY INTERPRETED 73 In the former, each action within its particular sub-society is assumed to be factually and substantially determined by the cognitive styles. The cognitive styles are assumed to have been already established and known to or taken for granted by each actor as intrinsic to such and such a sub-society. It is assumed to exist outside of the individual as an object of possesion. Then, actors can enter into any sub-societies only if they learn the estab­ lished cognitive style intrinsic to the sub-society and orient their action according to it. In considering such a characteristic, we had better say first that the cognitive styles in the discussion of Berger et al. is a kind of “knowledge in hand"u which has already lost its interpretational inner and outer horizon, and now stands there in itself as reified or “ Vorhandenheit" independent of actors within a sub-society. Second, each sub-society in their discussion is also assumed to have been already articulated, established, and to be there in itself independent o f an actor’s action. And finally each sub-society does not have the nature of “finiteness” in the sense of Schutz’s discussion of multiple realities.12As a matter of fact, they speak of “carry-over effects” of the cognitive styles, e.g., “a problem-solving and deeply technological attitude may also carry over into the manner in which the individual looks at politics, the education of his children.. .” (HM: 35). It is obviously true that Berger and his colleagues attempt to thematize the world of everyday life, and to focus themselves not on the theoretical but on everyday common-sense knowledge in their discussion of the pluralization o f society. But in so far as they begin their inquiry from the assumptions mentioned above, it is enough for them to discuss only choice among the problematic possibilities already articulated and established. And there is no need for them to ask about the selection and constitution of some problem­ atic possibilities from open possibilities as such. The everyday commonsense knowledge which they deal with as the cognitive style is, as a matter of fact, an object of learning, acquisition, and possesion, and therefore it is dealt with not on the level of eidetic but on the level of empirical-factual science. For their analysis, the world, society, and sub-society are nothing

u Cf., Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem o f Relevance, ed. Richard M. Zaner. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1970, 144f., and also Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol.4, ed. Helmut W agner and George Psathas in collaboration with Fred Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, 68-69. 12Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, v o l.l, ed. Maurice Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, 232. Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “CPI

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other than being-there simply given in themselves, already articulated independent o f actors. They are assumed to be there “as they exist and as they really are” (C P I: 106). It might be said therefore that Berger and his colleagues certainly make a reflection upon the “straightforward act,” but their reflection remains so-called “natural reflection” (natiirliche Reflexion).13 They begin their inquiry, in this sense, “with the object of knowledge” and do not turn to the “conditions for the possibility of knowledge.” They have no need to question the articulation and constitution of the world, society, and sub-society as such. In contrast with this, Schutz endeavors to explore “the general principles according to which man in daily life organizes his experiences, and especially those of the social world” (CPI: 59). So he cannot take it for granted that problematic possibilities have been estabished for choice. As a phenomenologist, he follows the thesis of Husserl that “[a] 11real unities are ‘unities o f meaning.'1'"4 This is the reason why Schutz “does not have to do with the objects themselves; he is interested in their meaning, as it is constituted by the activities of our mind” (C PI: 115). He actually wants to ask why and how man acting in the social world “transforms his social environment of ‘open possibilities’ into a unified field of ‘problematic possibilities’ within which choice and decision.. .becomes possible” (CPI: 83), and in order to do that, he has to bracket the problem­ atic possibilities already established and taken for granted, and also the existential modes of actual society. The sociology of everyday life conceived in the work of Schutz can be, therefore, characterized not simply by turning to the world of everyday life itself but by the way and the level of the turning to it. II. The Sociology of Everyday Life in the Work of Schutz Let us come to the second point regarding turning to the world of everyday life within a naive position of research, that is, some objections to the sociology of everyday life. The sociology of everyday life certaily attempts to turn to the familiar world of everyday life which is given not

13Husserl, Cartesianische M editationen, 72. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zur einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanom enologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch, ed. K. Schumann, H usserliana, vol. III. Den Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, 120.

MULTIPLE REALITIES SOCIOLOGICALLY INTERPRETED 75 conceptually and abstractly but concretely and intuitionally, to focus on everyday social interaction, and to describe it in terms o f the subjective meaning which is attached to the action by the actor in spite of its analysis in terms of the conceptual scheme established by the scientific observers. Such a sociology might be criticized as micro social theory which is not able to deal with macro phenomena. It might also be criticized for leading to simply uncritical acceptance or ratification of common-sense knowledge. The latter has a corollary whereby such a sociology can not make a distinction between the common-sense and scientific interpretation of human action. These objections also seem to hold true for the work of Schutz, since he actually turns to the world of everyday life, assigns the epistemological and ontological priority to the “face-to-face relationship” or “we-relation” (cf., C PI: 16f., 172ff, 220-221), and attempts to describe how the individual man in daily life experiences his world of everyday life. For Schutz, Verstehen as a technique o f dealing with human affairs is “primarily not a method used by the social scientist, but the particular experiential form in which commonsense thinking takes cognizance of the social cultural world” (C PI: 56), and therefore “the constructs used by the social scientist are, so to speak, constructs of the second degree, namely constructs of the constructs made by the actors on the social scene” (CPI: 6). These objections might be effective, insofar as they were concerned with the “philosophically naive” thematization of the world of everyday life, whether it is in the “straightforward act” or in “natural reflection.” Because such a discussion of the world of everyday life tends to leave philosophers to investigate fundamental concepts such as “fact,” “experience,” “phenom­ enon,” etc. and to accept naively the world of everyday life with all the alter egos and institutions in it based on the assumption that the alter egos and institutions are as they are, and with “[t]he identification of experience with sensory observation in general” (C PI: 54). In such a discussion, the world of everyday life might be considered as a being-there in-itself and reified micro-sphere which is certaily centered in space and time around the actual Here and Now, but limited by physical time and space. If scientific research is actually based on such a discussion, it may lead to the subjective, experiential fusion between common-sense and scientific interpretation. Otherwise it may lead to the objective, scientific transcendence of the former by the latter.

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Schutz, however, developed his sociology of everyday life founded on his analysis of constitution-phenomena in the inner-time consciousness within the phenomenologically reduced sphere, confirming again and again that “the main importance of phenomenology for any attempt at exploring social reality consisted in the fact also established by Husserl that all knowledge achieved by analysis of the reduced transcendental sphere remained valid within the natural attitude.”15 It was just through such a foundation of his discussion that he has been able to reach the position that “[s]trictly speaking, there are no such things as facts, pure and simple. All facts are from the outset facts selected from a universal context by the activities of mind. . .[Facts] carry along their interpretational inner and outer horizon” (CPI: 5). By this formulation, which is shared by Aron Gurwitsch,16 Schutz’s conception of the sociology of everyday life actually escapes the objections mentioned above. First, if the fact carries along its interpretational inner and outer horizon, and if the sociology of everyday life attempts to thematize such conditions for the fact as it is, the turning to the micro face-to-face situation does not itself, in principle, impose any limitations on one’s field of vision. My experience of the things in my presence always and already transcends my actual Here and Now in terms of both physical time and space. This pen by which I am now writing this essay here in my office was made by anony­ mous other(s) whom I have never met and will never meet in future. And the pen has its own history as writing equipment. So it can be said that the micro-situation is in these ways always and already open to the macro­ situation, and the macro-situation always and already dwells within the micro-situation.17

l5A lfred Schutz, “Husserl and His Influence on Me,” ed. Lester Embree, Annals o f Phenom enological Sociology 2 (1977): 42. 16Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, Philosophers in Exile, ed. Richard Grathoff, trans. J. Claude Evans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, 184. Hereafter, this work will cited textually as “PE.” n In his paper, “Phenomenological Analysis and its Contemporary Significance,” read at the annual meeting o f the Society for Philosophy and Human Sciences at Georgetown University on O ctober 1996, Professor Ilja Srubar clearly shows that a phenomenological analysis o f society is “no longer limited to the micro area o f everyday interaction.” Published as Ilja Srubar, “Phenomenological Analysis and its Contemporary Significance,” Human Studies 21 (1998): 121-139.

MULTIPLE REALITIES SOCIOLOGICALLY INTERPRETED 77 The world of everyday life is actually structurized in various strata of reality which are centered in space and time around my body as the center 0 of my system of coordinates. Schutz’s “structural analysis of the social world” is founded on these insights. He describes and analyzes the world of everyday life in terms of distance in time and space from the center 0, i.e., on the one hand, the world within actual or potential reach, restorable or attainable reach, and, the other hand, consociates, contemporaries, predeces­ sors, and successors (cf., Aufbau: chap 4, CPI: 15ff., 222ff., 306-329). It must be, however, pointed out that these discussions refer to the “little” and “medium” transcendencies in everyday life18in which the world, the self, and knowledge can be assumed to be established and being-there in themselves. So actors can come to term with these transcendencies by means of “marks,” “indications,” or “signs” in Schutz’s sense in which both signifiant and signifie belong to the same reality, i.e., the reality of the world of everyday life (cf., CPI: 306-329). In other words, these transcendencies can be overcome by “cook-book knowledge” (CP2: 73) or the stock of recipes which is a kind of “knowledge in hand” already sedimented and reified or through its partial and/or staged modifications. These are transcendencies within the world of everyday life in which the ontological conditions for and the constitutional principles of the world of everyday life in time and space still remain valid. There is, however, another kind of transcendencies in the world of everyday life. We have, certainly, for example, experience of dreaming. In a dream, the ontological conditions for and the constitutional principles of the world of everyday life have no validity in time and space. The dream transcends the world of everyday life itself. The experience of dreaming is in this sense experience of “great” transcendencies (SLW: 161-177). In dream, not only the sedimented, reified and actually possessed knowledge in hand but also its partial and/or staged modifications are not available for a scheme of experience. Therefore, both of them are not available for the interpretation of a dream. In order to come to term with a dream, we need symbols in Schutz’s sense, i.e., “an appresentational reference of a higher order in which the appresenting member of the pair is an object, fact, or event within the reality of our daily life, whereas the other appresented member of the pair refers to an idea which transcends our

l8Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, Strukturen der Lebenswelt, vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkam p, 1984, 147-161. Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “SLW .”

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experience of everyday life” (CPI: 331; emphasized by the author). In dream, there is no appresented member of the pair already established and waiting for being chosen and paired with the other appresenting member. It has to be constituted according to the principle of each experience in a dream. It is such experience of “great” transcendencies which is thematized in the discussion on “multiple realties” by Schutz. In this context, Schutz treats each sub-universe as a “province of meaning” that is “finite”. He conceives that “all real unities are unities o f meaning,” and that “there is no possibility of refering one of these provinces to the other by introducing a formula of transformation. The passing from one to the other can only be performed by a ‘leap’. .., which manifests itself in the subjective experience of shock.” And he formulates a ‘leap’ or a ‘shock’ as “nothing else than a radical modification in the tension of our consciousness, founded in a different attention a la vie” (CPI: 232). It might be said that this “fmiteness” is an another expression of transcendence, not via indications, marks, and signs but via symbols in Schutz’s sense. If the sociology of everyday life attempts to thematize experience in such various finite provinces of meaning, the relationship between the world of everyday life as a finite province of meaning and other finite provinces of meaning and the transition between the former and the latter, it is not enough to posit the facts as already articulated and simply given there in themselves. Moreover it is not enough to just consider the fact in its chronological and/or spatial causation as in a discussion on the structure of social world. The sociology of everyday life, if it would like to follow the Schutz’s insights, especially his discussion on multiple realities, can no longer assume that the world, the self, and the stock of knowledge at hand have already been established and now exist in themselves. And therefore it cannot rest upon the sedimented, reified, and actually possessed knowledge in hand for interpreting experience. In order to deal with the topics mentioned above, the sociology of everyday life must refer not only to the fact in actuality, but also equally to the “fact” in potentiality and possibility. Furthermore, it has to shed light on the process of genesis “by which knowledge arises in its ‘origin-form’ of self-givenness” (CPI: 104, n.4), and therefore refers each experience and knowledge back to its originary experience not in a chronological sense but

MULTIPLE REALITIES SOCIOLOGICALLY INTERPRETED 79 in a structural sense.19It needs to disclose and explore the horizonal structure of experience and knowledge, i.e., what is taken for granted and what is made a topic in experience and knowledge, and on which “level” experience and knowledge are. “[N]ot all the elements of the stock of knowledge are equally ‘relevant’ for the solution of the problem involved in the theme” (CP3: 127), and not all the elements of the stock of knowledge at hand have already been established, made transparent, and are now waiting for being “discovered.” They have to be selected and constituted in reference to topical relevance before being chosen in reference to interpretative relevance. If Schutz’s discussion, only some points of which were summarized above concerning to the theme of this paper, is taken into account, then the second objection to the sociology of everyday life fails. An attempt to turn to the world of everyday life in the perspective of Schutz’s theory of multiple realities, to assign the epistemological and ontological priority to the face-toface relationship, and to describe how the individual experiences his world of everyday life does not necessarily lead to simply uncritical acceptance or ratification of common-sense knowledge. III. The Sociological Significance of Schutz’s Theory of Multiple Realities Schutz shares with William James the view that “[e]ach world whilst it is attended to is real after its own fashion; only the reality lapses with the attention”20 and with Husserl the view that ‘‘[a]ll real unities are ‘unities o f m eaning”' He therefore attempts to thematize the cleavage between the “straightforward act” and “natural reflection,” which can be disclosed only through the phenomenological reflection.21 In his discussion firmly founded on and oriented toward these views, “reality” has to be conceived as articulated and constituted through “intentional operations of the on-going conscious life” (CP3: 83), and

19Cf., Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol.3, ed. Use Schutz. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1966, 19. Hereafter, this work will be cited textually as “CP3.” See also Edmund Husserl, tdeen zur einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen Philosophic, Erstes Buch, 10, n .l. 20W illiam James, The Principles o f Psychology. New York: Dover Publications, 1918, vol. 11,293. 2lCf., Husserl, Cartesianische M editationen, 73.

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therefore as a “province of meaning.” This means that the moments by which experience is constituted, a meaning is bestowed on experience, reality is articulated and constituted, and the experiencing self is constituted are considered to be equivalent. So Schutz calls “a certain set of our experiences a finite province of meaning if all of them show a specific cognitive style and are— with respect to this style—not only consistent in themselves but also compatible with one another” (C PI: 230). Such a conception of multiple realities, which constitutes an essential part of his sociology of everyday life, makes important contributions to the methodology of social sciences.22Founded on these ideas, which are in turn firmly founded on his theory of relevance and on his penetrating insights into knowledge, Schutz can formulate postulates for research and concept formation in the social sciences, i.e., postulates of subjective interpretation, rationality, logical consistency, relevance, compatibility, and adequacy, all of which unite to “give the necessary guarantees that social sciences do in fact deal with the real social world, the one and unitary life-world of us all, and not with a strange fancy-world independent of and without connection to this everyday life-world” (CP2: 19), as well as ensure the open and creative circular-relationship between the world of scientific theory and the world of everyday life.23 This is not the whole contribution of Schutz’s multiple realities theory to social theory. It also leads us to reconsider the key sociological concepts. We cannot, however, discuss all of them at full length. Here only socialization, as one of the key concepts of sociology, is discussed in brief. It can be interpreted adequately from the view point of multiple realities developed by Schutz. Within the structural-functional paradigm, sociology might insist that one of the most important aspects of socialization consists in the process of internalization of the culture of the society, especially of its values and norms, into which the children are bom. Socialization is conceptualized

22The term “methodology” must not be understood in the restricted sense as, for example, a technique o f research. SeeTSA , p. 101-102, and also Lester Embree, “Methodology is Where Human Scientists and Philosophers Can Meet: Reflections on the Schutz-Parsons Exchange,” Human Studies, 3, 1980, 367-373. 23The author has discussed Schutz’s idea about the postulates for research and concept form ation in the social sciences in his book, Genshogaku-teki Shakaigaku eno Michi [The Way to Phenomenological Sociology], Tokyo: Kosei-sha Koseikaku, 1997, chap. 7, especially 189-201.

MULTIPLE REALITIES SOCIOLOGICALLY INTERPRETED 81 more concretely as dual processes in which the children internalize the commitements and capacities for successful performance of their future adult roles and are allocated within the role-structure of the adult society.24 In the actual and allegedly “normal” relation between adults and children, the latter are certainly obliged to learn the culture of the society involved. A child, for example, “scribbles” on the wall of the living room. His mother scolds or admonishes him with affection. His father deals with him also with affection and trust. Then the child is instructed that he must not “scribble” on the wall of the living room. In this way, the process of socialization proceeds successfully and the society consequently continues to be there beyond elapsing historical time. This might be the story believed or taken for granted in our daily experience. Depending on the fact that the patterns of relatively constant social relationships can be discovered by empirical observation and starting one’s inquiry with these patterns, the structural-functional social theory formulates socialization concretely and in substance as mentioned above according to the findings of empirical observation prior to the inquiry. Such a theory actually corresponds to our daily experience. What the correspon­ dence in this sense means is that such a social theory is guided uncon­ sciously by the same system of relevance as actors on the social scene are guided, and takes for granted the belief that the fact experienced by the adult actors is being-there as it exists. If socialization is conceptualized in such a way, it is thought of as a process to make the plastic and “incomplete” children join to “society,” the world of adults, which has been already established and now exists in itself. This conception is based on a belief that if there is a conflict between children and parents, the latter must finally achieve a victory, and such a belief in turn is given justification by the facts that they are just parents and assumed to be complete, or they scold with great affection, or in certain cases they have power or financial means, in sum by the conditions external to the situation at issue. If it is not the case, socialization is considered, from the structural-functional point of view, not to be successful and the reproduction of the social order becomes dubious.

24C f , Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales, Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956, 17, and also Talcott Parsons, Social Structure and Personality. New York: The Free Press, 1964, 130.

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Such a conception of socialization is based more fundamentally on conceiving both the adults and the children in terms of the same standard. This idea is possible only when the adults and the children can be conceived under the mode of continuity. Such a conception of the adults and the children is in turn based on an assumption that the former has the same system of relevance as the latter and therefore they are concerned with things and persons in the same level. It is needless to say that the relevance structures and the level of conceiving them are not ones of children but ones of adults socially approved and justified in many ways. This socialization theory, which assumes the adults to be complete and the children to be incomplete, and not vice versa, can therefore be said to adopt “an adult notion of what children are and what they ought to be,” and in this sense it is in an “ideological” position.25 There are however other aspects involved in the relation between the adults and the children. To the child, this scribble is really an “airplane” flying in the “sky,” which is, from his mother’s viewpoint, the blue wall of the living room. He is really a “captain” and is now “piloting the plane in the cockpit.” So far as he is in his world of play, he does not understand by any means why he is scolded by his mother. This holds true whether his mother actually has deep affection for him or not. A conflict about the “traces of crayon” on the wall of the living room arises between the worlds of adults and of children. These two worlds have, in principle, equal ontological rights to exist in themselves, and do not become peacefully reconciled unless some criteria external to the relation are introduced from the outside. A statement, “this is a blue wall in the living room,” is bracketed in the epoche deciding what is problematic and what is taken for granted and thereby constituting the world the child lives in. It is nothing but the “blue sky” for this child. This conflict can be characterized, therefore, by “an irreconcilable death-struggle like that between ‘God’ and the ‘Devil’ in which neither relativization nor compro­ mise is possible.”26 In other words, there is no “formula of transformation” (CPI: 232) between the worlds of adults and of children. Experience within the former is “incompatible” in the strict sense with experience within the latter.

25Cf., Matthew Speier, How to Observe Face-to-Face Communication. Pacific Palisades: Goodyear Publishing Company, 1973, 140f. 26Max W eber, Gesammelte Aufsdtze, 507.

MULTIPLE REALITIES SOCIOLOGICALLY INTERPRETED 83 If one deals with the relation between adults and children only from the standpoint of socialization theory within the structural-functional paradigm, however, cannnot turn to such an aspect, and therefore cannot thematizes the relationship itselfbetween the worlds of adults and of children. He always and already presupposes the worlds of adults and of children to be already established, and also the absolute priority of the world of adults in spite of many variants. So even if their relationship is thematized, these discussion might start from considering these conflicts as deviant and then investigate, for example, the causes of such deviance and the way to recover the “normal” relations, i.e., to lead to a final victory of the world of adults. Since the relevant elements for research, i.e., the elements to be researched, are assumed to be already articulated and given independent of the actors involved, such a research can be said to rest on “a kind of intellectual shorthand” (CPI: 35) which cuts short the interpretational inner and outer horizons of fact and experience. If one makes up one’s mind to adopt a standpoint which prefers thematizing the ongoing process of the actual relation between adults and children, however, he has to turn to the irreconcilable conflict of adults and children, and thematize the relation itself which is being constructed Here and Now. In order to do so, he cannot reduce the world of children to the world of adults, and cannot assume that the world of children is constructed by the system of relevance which is taken for granted in the world of adults. Both what is problematic and what is taken for granted might be fundamen­ tally different between them. About this fundamental difference, it has to be pointed out that it does not only means that an element “E” which is relevant in the world of adults might be irrelevant in the world of children and that while a statement “S is p” is relevent to the adult, “S is q” is relevant to the child. It also means a difference in just what is delineated and identified as an element of the world in reference to motivational, topical, and interpretative relevances. That is, for the same thing about which the adult make a statement, “S is p,” the child might say “T is q.” In order to take account of such a condition between the world of adults and of children, therefore, one has to attempt to inquire into worlds the adult and child live in. The constitutional principles of their worlds must be thematized in one’s research. I licre is no need here to explain why such a research can be performed successfully on the basis of multiple realities theory developed by Alfred Schutz. llis conception of multiple realities, which is founded on a

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“constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude” and on an idea that the four moments, by which experience is constituted, a meaning is bestowed on experience, reality is articulated and constituted, and the experiencing self is constituted, are considered to be equivalent does attempt to thematize the taken-for-grantedness of the world of everyday life, to explore the horizonal structure of experience and knowledge by refering them back to the constitutive activity of consciousness, to define reality as “finite province of meaning,” to leave the moment of transition from one to other reality only to “shock” or “leap,” and, in addition, to posit the world of everyday life as “paramount reality.” And then the meaning of the socialization process might be extended and radicalized. When the process of socialization is approached from the perspective of multiple realities in the sense of Schutz, an aspect of social intercourse between the worlds of adults and of children, and, secondly, an aspect of interaction between adults and children will be shown. If this is the case, the socialization process is not restricted to the processes in which the children as newcomers internalize the culture of the society into which they are bom, and become complete and full members of that society, like American sociology, especially Parsonian theory holds. The process of socialization involves a social intercourse and interaction between two or more persons. If this is the case, sociological research on such processes have to extend and radicalize its scope to turn to the fundamental sociologi­ cal problem, “How is society possible?” as Georg Simmel did with the term Vergesellschaftung (socialization) he elaborated. If socialization is conceptualized in such a way, the vector of this process, of course, will become to be conceived as being directed not only to the children but also to the adults. IV. Concluding Remarks Thus far, conceptions of the sociology of everyday life, especially that of multiple realities developed by Alfred Schutz, have been explicated and it has been shown that when the process of socialization is approached from the perspective of multiple realities, its connotation elaborated by structuralfunctional social theory is subject to some modification. That is, some aspects which were disregarded and cut short in such a theory are now thematized and become to be involved in the concept of socialization.

MULTIPLE REALITIES SOCIOLOGICALLY INTERPRETED 85 The same holds true for some other key concepts of sociology, i.e., definition o f the situation, social role, organization, and so on. As for the concept of definition of the situation, it might be extended to designate not only the choice among “problematic possibilities” already established, but also the selection and constitution o f some problematic possibilities from “open possibilities.” As for the concept of social role, its connotation might be changed from “the sum total of the cultural patterns associated with a particular status”27to “a token of the personality as far as its structurization appears to the ego itself’ (TSA: 43). Under such a modification, it is pretty much impossible to explain “role as the expression of an existential order” (PE: 155). And as for the concept of organization, it might be conceptualized not according to the principles of a “goal” and “effectiveness” as in Parsons,28 but according to members’ interaction based on their own interests, motivations, relevences, and so on.29 Such revisions in some key sociological concepts have some effects on sociologically substantial research, a demonstration of which needs one more paper at least.30

27 Ralph Linton, The Cultural Background o f Personality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1947, 50. 28Talcott Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies. New York: The Free Press, 1960, 17. The author has discussed why a new paradigm is needed, and what kind o f paradigm is adequate for the research on organizations, especially social movement organization in other papers, “Shakai-undo-soshiki-ron Saiko no tam eni” [For a Reconsideration o f Social M ovem ent Organization Theory], Shakai Kagaku Tokyu [The Social Sciences Review], Tokyo: Institute o f Social Sciences o f Waseda University, 1989, vol. 102, 455-487, and “Shakai-undo-soshiki no aratana Gainen-ka wo mezashite” [Toward a New Conceptualization o f Social Movement Organization], ed. Shakai-undo-ron Kenkyu-kai [Society for Research in Social Movement], Shakai-undo-ron no Sogo wo mezashite [Toward a Synthesis o f Social M ovement Theories]. Tokyo: Seibun-do, 1990, 149-176. 30A grassroots movement for an alternative life-style in Japan named “Seikatsu-kurabu Seikatsu Kyodo Kumiai” [Seikatsu Club Consum ers’ Cooperative], and the activities o f its members under such slogans as “The W orld can be seen from the Kitchen,” “Stop being an Accomplice,” “From Collective Purchasing to Total Lifestyle,” “Uniting Consumers and Producers” can be interpreted in their full senses neither from a resource mobilization perspective, nor from a relative deprivation perspective, but I think from the multiple realities perspective. As for the organization and movement o f the “Seikatsu Club,” see Josei-tachi no Seikatsu-sha Nettowahku [Women's Network fo r the Consumers ’ Cooperative Movement], ed. Yoshiyuki Sato. Tokyo: Bunshin-do, 1988, and Josei-tachi no Seikatsu-sha Undo [W omen's Grassroots M ovement fo r an Alternative life], eds. Yoshiyuki Sato, Masako Amano and Hisashi Nasu. Tokyo: Maruju-sha, 1995.

Chapter 5

Reading N atanson Reading Schutz Hwa Yol Jung Moravian College Abstract: A study o f Schutz as viewed by Natanson, his most devoted and distinguished student, but also quintessentially Schutzian. According to Natanson, Schutz’s main contribution is the erection o f an indestructible ‘‘architectonic’’ o f the quotidian lifeworld as social reality, with ano­ nymity as the central philosophical concept. My pondering o f inter­ corporeality and ethics should be read as a continuation. Acting is the hermeneutics o f the soul. — Maurice Natanson Philosophy is not a certain kind o f knowledge; it is the vigilance which does not permit us to forget the source o f all knowledge. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty Disenchantment is the existential condition for transcendence. — Maurice Natanson

Introduction Taking a cue from Alfred Schutz, Maurice Natanson intimates that one’s biographical facts are inseparable from and germane to the way of doing one’s philosophy. Thus it is not inappropriate for me to begin my paper with Natanson’s academic biography in relation to Schutz.1 Without doubt Natanson is the most distinguished student of Schutz. He wrote on Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world more than anyone else. He has become,

'For Schutz’s intellectual biographies in relation to Natanson, see Steven Galt Crowell, “A C onversation with Maurice N atanson,” in The Prism o f the Self, ed. Steven Galt Crowell. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996, 289-334, and Rodman B. Webb, “The Life and W ork o f Alfred Schutz: A Conversation with Maurice Natanson,” International Journal o f Qualitative Studies in Education, 5 (1992) : 283-94. L e ste r E m b re e (e d .) Schutzian Social Science, 87-1 13 . © 1999 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P ub lish ers. P rin te d in the N e th erla n d s.

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that is, an incomparable spokesman for Schutz. The influence of Schutz on Natanson, in turn, is profound, enormous and pervasive. Schutz is a constant presence in Natanson’s thought.2Natanson tells us that during his stay at the New School for Social Research in New York City between 1951 and 1953, he took or audited every course Schutz offered and that during his young academic career as phenomenologist, he sent Schutz everything he wrote. Together they prepared a paraphrase translation of Husserl’s Ideen II after it had appeared in 1952. It was also Schutz who introduced Natanson to the problematic subject of the social sciences and to the American pragmatic philosopher and social scientist George Herbert Mead who lived in the shadow of John Dewey and whose patterns of thought crisscross those of Schutz.3

2Several collected volumes edited by Natanson were dedicated to Schutz. See P hilosophy o f the Social Sciences, ed. M aurice Natanson. New York: Random House, 1963; Essays in Phenomenology, ed. Maurice Natanson. The Hague: Martinus NijhofF, 1966; Phenomenology and Social Reality, ed. M aurice Natanson. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1970; and Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, 2 v o ls , ed. Maurice Natanson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.1 was introduced to the writings o f Schutz by Natanson at the suggestion o f John Wild in the early 60s. When Natanson accepted my manuscript on a phenomenological critique o f political behavioralism for his tw o-volum e collection o f essays on phenomenology and the social sciences, I wanted to dedicate it to Wild. Natanson, however, informed me that I could not do so because the entire collection had already been dedicated to “someone else” w ho turned out to be Schutz. For the author’s article, see “A Critique o f the Behavioral Persuasion in Politics: A Phenomenological View,” in Phenomen­ ology and the Social Sciences, ed. Maurice Natanson, vol. 2. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973, 133-73. 3It appears that Schutz found in Mead the kindred spirit o f a thinker w ho found comfortably his professional career that intersects philosophy and sociology. N atanson relates that when Schutz began to teach at the New School, its president— Alvin Johnson— gave friendly advice to Schutz not to teach its American students phenomenology because they would not take it. So “Schutz presented his [phenomenological] ideas in the context o f the w ritings o f James, Dewey, Whitehead, Mead, Cooley, and Thomas” (“Foreword,” in The Theory o f Social A ction, ed. Richard Grathoff. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978, xiv). In his landmark essay on “multiple realities” in 1945, Schutz calls for a critical study o f Mead (see Collected Papers, I: The Problem o f Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, 216). Natanson studied Mead with care from a critical perspective o f phenomenology in The Social Dynamics o f George H. Mead. W ashington: Public Affairs Press, 1956. Later, he was still o f the opinion that Mead is “the most neglected figure o f the great pragmatic tradition in the United States” (see Anonymity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986, 140). Hans Joas writes that “Alfred Schutz who, while differing from

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In Anonymity (1986) which is his most original, sustained, and systematic “study” of Schutz’s philosophy, Natanson acknowledges that “Schutz has been my guide to Schutz. Where I have been misguided, I alone led the way.”4 At the end of his “Preface” to the same work, Natanson is candid and unassuming when he writes: “I refuse to end with pious formulae. ‘I shall be satisfied if my efforts lead the reader to my author’s [Schutz’s] books.’ I want the reader for my own; read me! But can anyone do so and not find Schutz?”5 Natanson, however, thinks that the influence of Schutz on both philosophy and the social sciences in this country has been minimal. The lack o f his influence may be due to the fact that he is caught in the no man’s land in this age of academic specialization, that is, philosophers would see him as a sociologist whereas sociologists would see him as a philosopher. Whatever influence Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world has had on ethnomethodology, Natanson is of the opinion that Harold Garfmkel’s appropriation of Schutz’s concepts is suspect, that is, “at best restricted and at worst illegitimate.”6 Be that as it may, Natanson is quintessential^ and self-professedly Schutzian. Everything he says or writes has a Schutzian accent, intonation, or inflection. It is often quite difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish where Schutz ends and Natanson begins.7So Schutz lives on in Natanson’s thought, and the latter attests, and is a witness to, the former as a living tradition. Natanson’s thought is the philosophical prism and extension in significant measure of Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world. Reading Natanson

him on many points, had repeatedly called attention to Mead’s importance, gave the direct impetus to Maurice Natanson, whose book The Social Dynamics o f G.H. M ead [sic] was to influence decisively many sociologists’ and philosophers’ image o f Mead" (see G.H. Mead, trans. Raymond Meyer. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985, 7). 4Anonym ity, ix. 5fbid., xiv. 6See Maurice Natanson, Phenomenology, Role, and Reason. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1974, 205. See Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnoniethodo!og\\ Enelewood Cliffs. PrenticeHall, 1967. 7N atanson calls him self an “existential phenomenologist” (see The Erotic Bird. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, 9-10). He was also interested in both literature and psychiatry from his student days before he met Schutz. Natanson’s last posthomously published work The Erotic Bird is an exploration o f the phenomenological in literature or an aesthetic phenomenology with a focus on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting fo r Godot, Thomas Mann’s The Magic M ountain, and Franz K afka’s Metamorphosis. Interestingly, he ends up with talking about “Action” in the concluding chapter.

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reading Schutz may, therefore, be likened-to the proverbial saying: catching two birds with one stone or—to use an analogy of business transaction which was the hub of Schutz’s work-world—getting two for the price of one. In the following pages, I will focus on the selected themes on Schutz which have also been highlighted by Natanson: (I) Schutz’s phenomenology of the Social World, (II) An Ontology of Social Roles, (III) The Conduct of Social Inquiry, and (IV) Critical Continuation with Respect to Intercorporeality and Ethics. I. Schutz’s Phenomenology of the Social World “To speak of the phenomenology of the social world,” Natanson emphasizes, “is to speak of Alfred Schutz.”8 Phenomenology is for Schutz an interdisciplinary undertaking at the point of which philosophy and the social sciences are brought together for the reason that science needs philosophy to justify its raison d ’etre while at the moment social scientists interpret their facts, they become philosophers. This Schutzian interdisciplin­ ary endeavor is called by Natanson “phenomenology applied”9 which constitutes a phenomenological introduction to the social sciences or the modus operandi of phenomenological philosophy in the social sciences. Schutz’s first major work Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1932)10 greatly impressed Edmund Husserl. With the English translation of this work as The Phenomenology o f the Social World,11 Natanson declared that “phenomenology has finally come of age in America.”12 The work was an attempt to ground Max Weber’s often misunderstood verstehende Soziologie in the philosophical soil of shared space and time based particularly on Henri Bergson’s lived flow of “duration” (duree) and Husserl’s “inner time consciousness” (inneren Zeitbewusstseins) and to graft phenomenological

8Anonymity, 1. ’The idea o f “application” does not mean something secondary, added, or supplementary. Rather, “phenom enology applied” is an integral part o f phenomenology as philosophy. Cf. Hans-G eorg G adamer w ho speaks o f “application” (subtilitas applicandi) as integral part— not an addendum— o f hermeneutics (see Truth and M ethod, trans. rev. Joel W einsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Crossroad, 1991, 307ff). I02nd ed. Wien: Springer-Verlag, 1960. "Trans. George Walsh and Fredrick Lehnert. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967. 12 Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 58.

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insights with Weber’s sociology.13In brief, Schutz’s work meant to address, clarify, and justify how the social world as variegated web of relationships is possible at all. Schutz divides the social world into four subworlds according to the shared experience of time and space: (1) the world of consociates ( Umwelt), (2) the world of contemporaries (Mitwelt), (3) the world of predecessors ( Vorwelt), and the world o f successors (Folgewelt).u The Vorwelt and the Folgewelt have the temporal character of the past and the future, respec­ tively. The Umwelt is the social world in which we directly encounter the presence of others as “consociates” (Mitmenschen) hie et nunc, that is, we share the temporal immediacy of the “now” and the spatial proximity of the “here.” Only in “we-orientation” ( Wirkensbeziehung) do we intimately experience the bodily presence of others in the face-to-face encounter. In the Mitwelt or mitweltische soziale Beziehung, which is organized in terms of “they-orientation” (Ihrbeziehung), we do not directly or immediately experience but understand our “contemporaries” (Nebenmenschen) as “abstract” and “anonymous” types (i.e., social roles). They are the subject matter of the social sciences. Schutz is, according to Natanson, “phenomenology’s spokesman of the Lebenswelt ”IS He is also, I might add, phenomenology’s best ambassador and contributor to the social sciences. The lifeworld is that seminal concept which was introduced and formulated by Husserl in his “great last work” entitled The Crisis o f European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenol­ ogy.‘6 Schutz considers it as “the coronation of his [Husserl’s] life work.”17 Here Husserl “redeems” the mundane lifeworld, whereas Plato “discounts”

l3See ibid., 37. l4A lm ost two centuries ago, Edmund Burke elegantly put this genealogical continuity o f hum anity and its social world as “partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be bom ” (Reflections on the Revolution in France. Indianapolis: Bobbs-M errill, 1955, 110). u The Erotic Bird, 134. Cf. Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures o f the LifeWorld, trans. Richard M. Zaner and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 and The Structures o f the Life-World, vol. 2, trans. Richard M. Zaner and David J. Parent. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1989. l6Trans. David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. 17 “Husserl and His Influence on Me,” in Interdisciplinary Phenomenology, ed. Don Ihde and Richard M. Zaner. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1977, 124-29.

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it as the cave world.18 With his supreme interest in the interdisciplinary region of philosophy and the social sciences, Schutz encapsulates the lifeworld as “social reality” and its mundanity or everydayness “hums” incessantly.19The everyday lifeworld as social reality is the central focus of Schutz’s works after Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. The first volume (1962) of Schutz’s posthumously published “collected papers” edited by Natanson fittingly bears the title The Problem o f Social Reality and contains a cluster of Schutz’s most important philosophical and sociological papers. I will focus my attention in the following pages on Schutz’s two­ pronged approach to social reality, that is, substantive and methodological. The lifeworld is, for all practical purposes, social reality. Schutz defines it as “the sum total of objects and occurrences within the social cultural world as experienced by the common-sense thinking of men living their daily lives among their fellow-men, connected with them in manifold relations of interaction.”20 Schutz’s “staccato account”—to use Natanson’s expression21—of social reality refers to the very meaning-structures of pregiven social objects and occurrences as they are “phenomenologically derived and phenomenologically realized.”22 It is important to note that as it is a function of phenomenology to investigate “the presuppositions of the natural attitude,”23 the phenomenological analysis of social reality refers to the “epoche of the natural attitude” which is distinguished from transcenden­ tal phenomenological epoche. The epoche of the natural attitude is employed by ordinary men and women in the street to suspend doubt itself in the existence of the world, whereas transcendental epoche, in contrast, suspends our very belief in the reality of the world itself. It is an act of what George Santayana calls “animal faith.” Schutz emphasizes that what is put in brackets is “the doubt that the world and its objects might be otherwise than it appears to him [an ordinary man in the street].”24 He comes to the

l8See Maurice Natanson, Edmund Husserl. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973, 127. John W ild, too, speaks o f inverting Plato’s image o f the cave world in philosophizing (see Human Freedom and Social Order. Durham: Duke University Press, 1959, 63). 19 See Natanson, Anonymity, 4. 20Collected Papers, I: 53 and cf. Natanson, Anonymity, 8. 21Anonymity, 8. 22Maurice Natanson, Literature, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1962, 166. 23 Natanson, The Social Dynamics o f George H. Mead, 81. 24Collected Papers, I: 229 and cf. Natanson, Anonymity, 65-66.

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conclusion that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is unable to provide a solution to the problem of intersubjectivity.25 It appears that Schutz’s epoche of the natural attitude dissolves, as it were, for ordinary men and women the thorny question of whether transcendental subjectivity is intersubjectivity. Defined in terms of (“subjective”) meaning-structure or attention a la vie (Bergson’s expression used by Schutz), there is no one (ultimate) reality as traditional metaphysics would presuppose it. There are rather, according to Schutz, “multiple realities” or multiple subworlds of reality, e.g., the world of dreams, the play world of the child, the world of the insane, etc.26 His conception of “multiple realities” parallels the sociological formation of society as manifold relations of social interaction. Because reality is constituted by the meaning-structure of our experience, we can speak of it as “a finite province of meaning,” which has its own “specific accent” or a different attention a la vie.21 Each province or level of meaning is called “finite” because it has, within boundaries of its own, a particular cognitive style that appears fictitious, inconsistent, and incompatible with another (finite) province of meaning, i.e., what we might call a “Rashomon” phenomenon after Kurozawa’s Japanese movie. We browse through or roam round freely from one province to another. The “paramount reality”—the term borrowed from William James28—is the province of meaning that refers

25See Natanson, Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 52. Natanson hastens to add the disclaim er that Schutz did not mean to renounce transcendental phenomenology (see Anonymity, 92). Cf. Helmut R. Wagner, “Toward an Anthropology o f the Life-World: Alfred Schutz’s Quest for the Ontological Justification o f the Phenomenological U ndertaking,” Human Studies, 6 (1983): 239-46 and “The Limitations o f Phenomenology: Alfred Schutz’s Critical D ialogue with Edmund Husserl,” Husserl Studies, 1 (1984): 179-99. 26See Collected Papers, I: 207-59. It is worth noting that Mead defines “sociality” as the human “capacity o f being several things at once.” Joas, however, cautions us that it is not “an operation o f consciousness.” Rather, the principle o f sociality is found throughout the universe w hose culm ination is “the appearance o f m ind” (see G.H. Mead, 183). Despite sim ilarities between Schutz’s “multiple realities” and M ead’s “sociality,” the latter’s form ulation is a metaphysical one. In this respect, M ead’s sociality resembles the W hiteheadian metaphysical conception o f reality as social process. 27Here the influence o f W illiam James in addition to Bergson is apparent. In “On Multiple Realities,” which is one o f his most seminal essays, Schutz speaks o f “Jam es’ genius” which touches on “one o f the most important philosophical questions” by citing the following passage o f James: “Each world whilst it is attended to is real after its own fashion; only the reality lapses with the attention” (Collected Papers, I: 207). 28See Natanson, Anonymity, 18.

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to wide-awake workaday consciousness. Thus Natanson characterizes “wide-awake adults” as the fully participating29 “citizens” of the lifeworld as social reality. This reality is called “paramount” because it is the standardbearer of all other realities. We know, for example, that we had a dream when and only when we wake up. Acting, whether it be theatrical performance on stage or actual doing in life, is “the hermeneutics of the soul”—to use Natanson’s phrase.30 Action or acting in real life certifies the reality of the mundane lifeworld as social reality, that is, it is the hub or epicenter of the world. Schutz always speaks of “the actor on the social scene.” For him, we guarantee intersubjectivity or “interbeing” by way of action, that is, our ineluctable connectedness to the world of others, of other fellow-human beings whether we are making music together or performing other activities. Since action is an individual’s relation with others, action is synonymous with social action. Motives, whether they be an “in-order-to motive” (Um-zu-Motiv) or “because-motive” ( Weil-Motiv), trigger the performance or completion of action (Handeln). The performance of action has a twofold structure in which one precedes the other temporally. The first is an external, bodily, and overt manifestation of what Schutz calls the “indications” (Anzeichen) or outer manifestations of action. The second, which is, from a standpoint of phenomenology, more important than the first, is “project” (Entwurf). Because of the inclusion of project, the phenomenological conception of action is radically different from that of psychological behaviorism and political behavioralism.

2’Natanson points out that “participation” must be distinguished from “observation” when he writes: “[p]articipation rather than observation is the prime mom ent o f the dialectic o f social life. Accordingly, the task o f the social scientist is to honor the pre-interpreted order o f com m on-sense experience by discerning and describing its structure and by trying to illum inate its relevance for the total range o f m an’s historical and cultural reality” (Phenomenology, Role and Reason, 120). }0Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 156. With his strong interest and well-versed know ledge in literature and theatre, Natanson would not hesitate to use the metaphor o f theatre in characterizing the life-world as the “theatre” o f action. The terms acting and actor refer also to theatrical acts as role-performing and role-performer. Indeed, N atanson’s literary style itself invariably has a theratrical flair, while Schutz’s predominant reference is music as performing art. The personal importance o f music as performing art, particularly the music o f Mozart, for Schutz is undeniable. The following are remarks which Schutz made to N atanson: “[i]n my twenties, it was me and Mozart. In my thirties, it was M ozart and me. Now in my fifties, it is only M ozart” (Natanson, Anonymity, xiv).

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Man can have a project because he is active and he is active because he can have a project. Insofar as action is a structure of meaning, it is an ongoing process based on a preconceived plan. What characterizes the principium of meaningful action is the presence of a project, an internal plan of operations framed in the future perfect tense (modo futuri exacti). Project is the “subjective” dimension of action because it is “visible” only from the inside (i.e., in/sight) and “invisible,” although inferable, from the outside. Meaning is a result of the interpretation which an actor on the social scene gives to his own act.31 Unlike performed or completed action by the medium of the body, a project may be changed or even cancelled at will while executed action is irreversible. In essence, the presence of a project makes human action “meaningful,” “purposive,” and “rational.” It makes the human actor distinct from an animal, an artificial machine, or an inert object. II. An Ontology of Social Roles By an ontology of social roles, Natanson means “a domain of order constituted by role-variables which permit the actor to enter into relationship with Others, fellow-men.”32 It is the most persistent and prolific theme in the writings of Natanson. It also constitutes, I think, his most inventive interpretation and resourceful extension of Schutz’s “world of contemporar­ ies” that promotes the phenomenological theory of society as the theatrical arena of action as well as the phenomenological hermeneutics of selfhood. Without question, the world of “consociates,” according to Schutz and Natanson, marks the inception of the social world. In it each participating actor synchronizes with others the intimate proximity of space and the vivid immediacy of time. Schutz remarks that: intersubjectivity is not a problem o f constitution which can be solved within the transcendental sphere, but is rather a datum ( G egebenheit ) o f the life-world. It is the ontological category o f human existence in the world and therefore o f all philosophical anthropology. As long as man is bom o f woman, intersubjectivity

’'Natanson, Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 115. 32Ibid., 172-73.

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and the we-relationship will be the foundation for all other categories o f human existence.33

Certainly, this assertion of Schutz is associated with Martin Buber’s classic conception of the interhuman with an accent on the dialogical encounter between “I and Thou” that recognizes the consociational Other as “ontologically prior to the Other as a partner in social relations.”34 In his discerning sociological presentation of music called “Making Music Together,” Schutz unequivocally confirms that “the mutual tuning-in relationship, the experience of the ‘We,’. . .is at the foundation of all possible communica­ tion.”35 Anonymity, role, and typification are a triptych of the common-sense lifeworld as the theatre of social action and interaction. For Natanson, what “recognition” is to personhood, “anonymity” is to agency. One of the two pairs complements the other. “We may,” he suggests, “distinguish between the person and the agent in role-taking. The person is the human being in his irreducible givenness; the agent is that being acting in accordance with the image and demands of his role [in society].”36 Anonymity and recognition are “polarities” in the ontological spectrum and continuum of the social world. Anonymity is the “emblem” of the mundane world, and it “cannot be written off as a bankrupt before its estate has been properly assessed.”37 Natanson is firmly convinced that anonymity is the master key to unlock the secret gateway of Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world which is most relevant to the social sciences in understanding the Latinized homunculi called homo politicus, homo sociologicus, and homo oeconomicus. Natanson even characterizes Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world as “making a carnival [not clowning but festivity] of anonymity.”38 In this respect, there is indeed a radical and inerasable gulf between Heidegger’s “fundamental

33Collected Papers, III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy, ed. I. Schutz. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966, 82 and see Maurice Natanson, “Alfred Schutz Symposium: The Pregivenness o f Sociality,” in Interdisciplinary Phenomenology, 110. 34Natanson, Anonymity, 16. 35 Collected Papers, II: Studies in Social Theory, ed. Arvid Brodersen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964, 174. 36Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 163. 31Ibid., 201. S8A nonymity, 137.

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ontology” and Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world whose focus, according to Natanson, is (anonymous) man the (social) actor. In Being and Time, Heidegger proposes that “ontology is possible only as phenomenol­ ogy.”39 He defines Dasein as “Being-in-the-world” (in-der-Welt-seiri) which includes the province of Dasein’s relation with others (Mitsein or Mitwelt). Since “in” in “Being-in-the-world” is ecstatic in the existentialist tradition of S0ren Kierkegaard, humans are radically distinct from non-human beings and things in nature. For Heidegger, the “authenticity” (Eigentlichkeit) of Dasein as Mitsein or Mitwelt is confined to consociational relationships. As das Man typifies the “nameless crowd” or “anonymous they,” it is a coded word for Dasein’s fallenness to “inauthenticity” (Uneigentlichkeit) from the grace of authenticity or uniqueness. This is opposed to (Schutzian) “typicality.”40 Role is “an ontological constant” of social reality as the open theatre of action: it is the ground of social interaction and transaction, that is, of human sociality. As man is a role-player and role-taker, anonymity is a Schutzian clue to the social self or selfhood. Natanson explains that the identity of the “journeying self’ or homo viator (Gabriel Marcel’s expression) is not irreconcilable with anonymity because the secret of individual identity is locked in the social world.41 The self is even said to be “clothed in the garments of society.”42 This, however, does not mean that the individual is a soulless homunculus or puppet of society because the individual actor is capable of inserting himself actively into the (social) world.

39Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University o f New York Press, 1996, 31. 40N atanson, Anonymity, 82-84. Natanson has in mind the essential difference between Schutz’s “anonym ity” and H eidegger’s “authenticity” when he writes that “[a]nonymity is the antonym o f authenticity” (Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 201). Nonetheless, interestingly, the mood (Stimmung) or “attunement” (Befm dlichkeit) o f H eidegger’s analysis o f Dasein is on the same w ave-length with Schutz’s “making m usic together” among consociates. N atanson notes that “[a lth o u g h I disagree with his assertion that Schutz’s concept o f the ‘w e-relationship’ owes something to Heidegger, Ricoeur is most insightful when he says: “Schutz did not, in fact, limit him self to reconciling Husserl and Weber. He integrated their concepts o f intersubjectivity and social action with a concept o f the werelationship borrowed from Heidegger, without losing the force o f the first two thinkers’ analyses, and w ithout limiting him self to a convenient eclecticism combining all these matters” (Anonym ity, 14). 41Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 121. 42 Ibid., 17.

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Role, in fact, signifies “a nexus of role possibilities.” Here Natanson means to emphasize that it is really “an abbreviation for a constant plural” and stands for “a plethora of performances.”43 In the mundane lifeworld as a theatrical arena of multiple performances, the Other, too, is conceived by way of role-structure: the Other as a professor, a student, an administrator, or a secretary. The roles of postal workers are, for a good reason, the most favorite example of Schutz. “Putting a letter in the mailbox,” he writes, “I expect that unknown [anonymous] people, called postmen, will act in a typical way, not quite intelligible to me, with the result that my letter will reach the addressee within typically reasonable time.”44 In the final analysis, common sense or sensus-communis, which, for its name sake, is shared by all men and women, is “a mark of sociality”45 because it actively constructs or “abstracts” the social world into role-types. It is the “matrix of typification,” while typicality, in turn, is “the stuff of roles.”46 As Natanson puts it succinctly, “[r]oles and role-playing are the forms typification takes in moving from the beginnings of intersubjectivity in bodily presence to the schemas and constructs of the public world in the regions of distance and absence.”47 Viewed in this light, typification is indigenous to the common world of everyday life: as sociality is the “ontological a priori” of the mundane world, typification is its “epistemological a priori.”48 In short, to say that the social world is the fabric richly woven with typification is to insist on “the primacy of anonymity.”49 “Far from being a deprivation,” Natanson contends, “the anonymity of our constructions enables us to come into touch with the full scope of the social world, for we can come to know how men lived and acted without being compelled to reconstruct in intimate detail the actuality of their concrete lives— an actuality to which we have no access when we inquire into the ancient past [i.e., our distant ‘predecessors’] and which we can only guess at in the case of the future [i.e., our prospective ‘successors’].”50

43The Journeying Self. Reading: Addison-W esley, 1970, 34. “ Collected Papers, I: 17. 45Natanson, Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 101. 46The Journeying Self, 33. 47Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 112. 4>Ibid., 251. i9Ibid., 202. 50Ibid., 202.

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III. The Conduct of Social Inquiry Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world is inseparably substan­ tive—as we have seen in the preceding section—and methodological—as we will see in the following pages. It is the affirmation of the primacy of ontology, that is, the ontology of social roles, over methodology. Schutz’s phenomenological method of the social sciences as “subjective interpreta­ tion,” just as the operation of Weber’s verstehende Soziologie, has often and profoundly been misunderstood. It has been criticized that since it is “subjective,” the phenomenological method has no “objective” validity. In other words, it is not (social-)scientific. Schutz’s phenomenological method of the social sciences may easily be defended as follows. In the preceding section, Schutz and Natanson contended that the everyday lifeworld is the arena of (social) action that is securely grounded in and governed by the rationality of common sense that is by definition both pre-philosophical and pre-scientific. It exists and will exist whether we philosophize or do scientific investigation of it. As the matrix of typicality, common-sense rationality has its own style of abstrac­ tion and knowing. By way of common-sense rationality, action has a meaning-structure for the actor on the social scene. Subjective meaningstructure signifies that meaning-structure which is constructed by the actor himself/herself. Now, the role of a social scientist is to “question,” that is, to investigate the “unquestioned” world of ordinary actors in carrying out their daily activities in interaction with one another the totality of which is called by Schutz “social reality.” The social scientist cannot bypass or ignore social reality because it is his/her very observational field. “The concept of Nature, . . . with which the natural sciences have to deal,” Schutz forcefully writes, “is . . . an idealizing abstraction from the Lebenswelt, an abstraction which, on principle and of course legitimately, excludes persons with their personal life and all objects o f culture which originate as such in practical human activity. Exactly this [socio-cultural] layer of the Lebenswelt, however, from which the natural sciences have to abstract, is the social reality which the social sciences have to investigate.”51 Phenomenologically viewed, thus, the philosophy of the social sciences is also the philosophy of (the Lebenswelt as) social reality.

'‘'Collected Papers, I: 58.

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To put it in a nutshell, in phenomenology social-scientific methodology presupposes and is grounded in the ontology of everyday life-activities. Social-scientific investigation is, therefore, the second-degree construct of the first-order common-sense construct of the world by living and thinking actors themselves. “The thought objects constructed by the social scientist, in order to grasp this social reality,” Schutz thus insists, “have to be founded upon the thought objects constructed by the common-sense thinking of men, living their daily life within their social world.”52 Accordingly, all forms of “scientism” including political behavioralism53 falsely claim that the method used to investigate natural phenomena is the only scientific method and is equally applicable to the investigation of human social phenomena, affairs and events. Ultimately, scientism commits empiricide. Of paramount importance is the unexplored point which Schutz advanced in the concluding remarks o f his phenomenological critique of the positivist “unity of science” movement in a paper entitled “Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences.”54 Unfortunately, this revisionary suggestion has never been recognized for its full import and is yet to be explored.55 Let me quote Schutz himself fully on this unsurpassable and unimpeachable point: [i]t seems to me that the social scientist can agree with the statement that the principal differences between the social and the natural sciences do not have to be looked for in a different logic governing each branch o f knowledge. But this does not involve the admission that the social sciences have to abandon the particular devices they use for exploring social reality for the sake o f an ideal unit o f methods which is founded on the entirely unwarranted assumption that only methods used by the natural sciences, especially by physics, are scientific ones.

51/bid., 59. 53See Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, IV, ed. Helmut Wagner, George Psathas and Fred Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996, 131-33; Jung, “A Critique o f the Behavioral Persuasion in Politics'. A Phenomenological View ”; Eric Voegelin, “The Origins o f Scientism, “ Social Research, 15 (1948) : 462-94; Natanson, Edm und Husserl, 105-46 and “Philosophy and Social Science: A Phenomenological A pproach,” in Foundation o f Political Science, ed. Donald M. Freeman. New York: Free Press, 1977, 517-52. 54The 1953 version o f this essay is “Positivistic Philosophy and the Actual Approach o f Interpretative Social Science: An Ineditum o f Alfred Schutz from Spring 1953,” ed. Lester Embree, H usserl Studies, 15 (1998): 1-27. ssSee Hwa Yol Jung, Rethinking Political Theory. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993, 2541.

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So far as I know, no serious attempt has been made by the proponents o f the “unity o f science” movement to answer or even to ask the question whether the methodological problem o f the natural sciences in their present state is not merely a special case o f the more general, still unexplored, problem [of] how scientific knowledge is possible at all and what its logical and methodological presupposi­ tions are. It is my personal conviction that phenomenological philosophy has prepared the ground for such an investigation. Its outcome might quite possibly show that the particular methodological devices developed by the social sciences in order to grasp social reality are better suited than those o f the natural sciences to lead to the discovery o f the general principles which govern all human knowledge.56

This Schutzian phenomenological critique of knowledge is corroborated by such contemporary philosophers of science as Thomas S. Kuhn, Stephen Toulmin, Michael Polanyi, Norwood R. Hanson, Mary Hesse, and even Paul Feyerabend whose broadly-defined hermeneutical tradition can be taken back to the anti-Cartesian Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico and his idea of verum ipsum factum. Since all knowledge—natural-scientific as well as social-scientific—is socially derived, approved, distributed, and consumed, Schutz’s phenomenologically-oriented social critique of knowledge would be a far more suitable model for validating truth-claims than is the positivist “unity of science” movement with its emphasis on physicalism.

56C ollected Papers, I: 65-66. This passage is not contained in the 1953 version (see n. 54 above). A ron Gurwitsch is more detailed than Schutz in outlining his argument against positivism and extending the relevance o f H usserl’s phenomenology o f the lifeworld for the unity o f the sciences (see Phenomenology and the Theory o f Science, ed. Lester Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974, esp. 132-149). Gurwitsch writes: “the cultural or human sciences prove to be all-encompassing, since they also comprise the natural sciences, since nature as conceived o f and constructed in modem natural sciences, i.e., mathematized nature, is itself a mental accomplishment, that is, a cultural phenomenon. The converse, however, is not true. The cultural sciences cannot be given a place among the natural sciences, any more than the cultural world can be reached beginning from m athem atized nature or, for that matter, from the thing-world, while, as we have seen, by taking o n e’s departure from the cultural world, one can arrive at the thing-world and the mathematized universe by means o f abstraction, idealization, and formalization. In general, then, there is a possible transition from the concrete to the abstract, but not the reverse” (Ibid., 148-149).

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IV. Critical Continuation with Respect to Intercorporeality and Ethics Let me begin my concluding remarks with the lasting philosophical legacy which Husserl left for his successors. It is the twofold idea that phenomenol­ ogy is a philosophy of infinite tasks. In the first place, the philosopher is a perpetual beginner or “introducer.” The practitioners of phenomenology after Husserl have proven again and again that the end of philosophizing is the account and justification of its beginning. It is that precious injunction which calls for the philosopher’s own constant vigilance and self-reflection. In the second place, in phenomenology as a philosophical movement, the “possibility” exceeds and surpasses its “actuality.” What is actual now is only the nourishing or fecund ground of what is possible later, that is, possible for further exploration, investigation, and application.57 Natanson is always and acutely aware of phenomenology as a philosophy of perpetual tasks: it is, as he puts it concisely, “philosophy in process, not philosophy become but philosophy becoming.”58Indeed, phenomenology is a corporate vocation. Whatever critical remarks I make of Schutz and Natanson on intercorporeality and ethics here should be taken in the spirit of phenomenol­ ogy as a philosophical movement in which nothing is finished and may be taken for granted. Natanson and Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world are ineluctably interlocked. To repeat: Schutz is a constant presence in Natanson, and Natanson is a constant reminder of Schutz as a consummate phenomenologist and a master of the philosophy of the social sciences. Throughout his life-long writings and professional activities, Natanson has tirelessly promoted Schutz as a philosopher cum social scientist who offered us an indestructible “architectonic” of the lifeworld as social reality by “humming” the mundane and celebrating common sense both as a mark of sociality and as the social matrix of anonymity. First and foremost, Schutz’s phenomenol­ ogy embodies for Natanson the intrepid spirit and Herculean task .of doing phenomenology by attending to that ambiguous and intertextual zone which intersects philosophy and the human cultural sciences. Nevertheless, there

57See Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness, trans. Thomas A. Carlson. Evanston: Northw estern University Press, 1998, 166. 58M aurice Natanson, “Foreword,” in Philosophers in Exile, ed. Richard G rathoff and trans. J. Claude Evans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, ix.

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are two important areas in particular which have been lacking in and missing from the phenomenological and existential orientation of both Schutz and Natanson the epicenter o f which is claimed to be the lifeworld as the arena of action and interaction both on stage and in real life. They concern the question of minding (1) the intercorporeal and (2) the ethical. O f course, as I have already said above, my critical comments are tempered by the idea of phenomenology as a philosophy of infinite tasks. They should be viewed in the corporate spirit of phenomenology to pursue the question of truth and reality as an unending task, as an ongoing journey. In the first place, the “relevance” of the body and its performativity to Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world, particularly to the subworld of “working” called “paramount reality” or “home base” which is the foundation of all sociality and from which all the other subworlds are derived, is undeniable although the various regions of social reality called “multiple realities” are defined primarily in terms of the “field of conscious­ ness” or their “cognitive styles.” Natanson affirms that “[a]cting is the hermeneutics of the soul”59 in the concluding sentence of his analysis of “man as an actor.” There is also no denying that acting, both on stage and in real life, does take place in the material presence of the body. In the venerable tradition particularly of Bergson, Marcel, and Merleau-Ponty, the reality of the body is viewed as the central problem of human existence and the solution of everything else hinges on the solution of it. Both Schutz and Natanson are well aware of the axial importance of the body in social interaction and transaction. “Working” involves for Schutz bodily movements, and bodily movements “gear”—to borrow the expression that Schutz often uses—us into the world. Working is indeed “bodily performance.”60 “Working acts” are synonymous with “performances.”

59Phenom enology, Role, and Reason, 156. 60I prefer to speak o f the perform ance o f action, which happens to be also a prom inent postmodern theme, for several reasons. First, performance is always and necessarily corporeal or embodied. Second, it is the linkage term between Schutz’s phenomenology o f the social w orld and his phenomenological “m icrosociology” o f literature (i.e., drama, poetry, and novel). See Alfred Schutz, “A Construction o f Alfred Schutz’s ‘Sociological Aspect o f Literature,” ’ in Alfred Schutz's "Sociological Aspect o f Literature," ed. Lester Embree. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998, 1-71 and Alfred Schutz, Life Forms and M eaning Structure, trans. Helmut R. Wagner. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982,158-207. Third, Schutz often speaks o f social relationships as “mutual tune-in” and thus connects them with music as performing art. Ancient Greeks include in mousike four “performing arts”: oral poetry (poetry

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Because of the body’s pragmatics, action is said to be performative. The telos or purposiveness of performance is “to bring about the projected state o f affairs by bodily movements.”61 Without performance, that is, action without bodily performance, the project would be abortive and no more than “dreaming,” “imagining,” or (Don Quixote’s) phantasm. Indeed, action for Schutz requires the consummation of a project or a preconceived plan in bodily performance. Without bodily performance, action exists only in the mind and would remain as an unfulfilled project, an unaccomplished plan. Only by way of bodily performance is the project made into actum or “the thing done.” In other words, the performance of the body alone empties or vacates, as it were, the project of action. Schutz is also concerned with the “stock of knowledge” in the perfor­ mance of action or the everyday “business of living.” It is that knowledge which is stored for further use. From the pragmatic standpoint of performing action, knowledge may be said to be “in” or “out o f ’ our reach or grip. Thus Schutz speaks of the “manipulatory sphere” of knowledge. Etymologically, of course, the “manipulation” of knowledge is a manual concept (i.e., I am my hand). In this respect, knowledge may be said to be “in our hand” or “out of our grip.” Schutz reminds us of Heidegger, when he uses the common expression “the stock of knowledge at hand.” One can speak of the stock of knowledge “at hand” (Heidegger’s Zuhandenheit) or “on hand” (Heidegger’s Vorhandenheit).62 However, Schutz adds another important category: knowledge “in hand” which may be called Inhandenheit. It is (the stock of) knowledge in our immediate and familiar “manipulatory sphere.” This penin-hand among “worldly objects,” for example, is an immediate and familiar tool for my writing here and now.

recitation), drama, music, and dance. Opera, incidentally, is treated by Schutz as an orchestration o f the two “performing arts” o f dram a and music. Even m ore im portantly, for Schutz— for that matter, for Natanson, too— what the actor on stage is to the playwright, the actor on the social scene is for the social scientist. Cf. Stanford M Lyman, “Dramas, Narratives, and the Postmodern Challenge,” in Alfred S ch u tz’s "Sociological Aspects o f Literature,” 197-218. Both types o f the actor are the “puppets” or “hom unculi”: one is the creation o f the playw right and the other the construct o f the social scientist. Fourth, in addition to being theatrical, linguistic, athletic, psychoanalytical or sexual, performance is a pragmatic and thus moral concept. In other words, it is the elixir or “viagra” o f action. 61Schutz, Collected Papers, I: 215. “ Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem o f Relevance, ed. Richard M. Zaner. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, 144-45 n. 12.

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Most importantly, moreover, the body is for Schutz the locus of our inhabitation in the world. As he focuses his attention on the meaningstructure of action from an insider’s view, so is he also concerned with the body for an insider’s lived experience. What the body is to lived space (espace vecu), consciousness is to lived time. The “body as mine” or lived body inhabits space in the world, whereas the body as a physical object merely occupies it. When he associates the “body as mine” with lived space, Schutz acknowledges his philosophical affinity with Husserl, Bergson, Scheler, Heidegger, Marcel, Sartre, and above all Merleau-Ponty. Schutz contends that to speak of the body merely as an “instrument” is both “dangerous and careless” because the body is, properly speaking, the way of our being in the world.63 Without the lived body or the body as subject, then, our practical or common-sense knowledge of the world would be “handicapped” or impaired. With Merleau-Ponty, Schutz declares that “space would not at all exist for me if I had no body. The space thus experienced through the intermediary of the body is, first of all, a space of orientation. My body is, so to speak, the center O o f the system o f coordi­ nates in terms of which I organize the objects surrounding me into left and right, before and behind, above and below.”64 The body is for Schutz, in other words, the “topological organization” that fathoms the intimacy or distance (anonymity) of my being “here” (hie) and another fellow-being “there” (illic). Natanson, too, knows well the body as the material and spatial axis of our social inhabitation of the world, and he speaks of the “existential motility of the body.”65 “In first person terms,” he puts forth forthrightly, “I find myself in a world set forth from the zero point of the coordinates of my spatiotemporal placement.”66 As the (lived) body organizes our (surround­ ing) world, it is the locus of the “manipulatory sphere” o f our thought and action in the mundane “business of living.” We may speak synergistically of “thinking” as “I am my head,” o f “speaking” as “I am my mouth,” of “walking” as “I am my legs,” of “standing” as “I am my feet,” of “hearing” as “I am all ears,” and of “existing” as “I am my body.”67

63Ibid., 172. MIbid., 173 and Natanson, Anonymity, 34 and Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 104ff. 65Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 38. mThe Journeying Self, 41. 67See Hwa Yol Jung, “Phenomenology and Body Politics,” Body and Society, 2 (1996): 1-22.

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Both Schutz and Natanson would agree that the body itself—particularly the face68—is the first and primordial discourse of the social. As the body is the ineradicably material condition of sociality, man without a body, that is, an “invisible man” is only a ghost or phantom but no “social man.” Inasmuch as it is our firm foothold, and the locus of our material and social inhabitation, in the world, the body is as much a mark of sociality as are common sense, typicality, and anonymity in the everyday lifeworld as the performative arena of action. Indeed, intersubjectivity or sociality isfirst and foremost intercorporeal. Without being embodied, it becomes a fatal abstraction. In the household of action, the body cannot be “an absentee landlord”—to use Natanson’s as well as Erwin W. Straus’s favorite metaphor. Nonetheless, there is no systematic phenomenology of the body, of the lived body in either Schutz and Natanson that is commensurate with their phenomenological theory of social action. Their phenomenological investment in the body is minimal and petite in size. Their emphasis is loud and clear: temporality is the primary ground of both meaning and action which are mutually bound and imbricated. It is particularly unfortunate because the (lived) body is our social anchorage in the world and our sociality begins first and necessarily as intercorporeality. It is no accident that Schutz defines “lived space” solely in terms of our “biographical” situation. Since social interaction—particularly in such consociational relationships as “making music together”—occurs at the shared coordinates of time and space, the spatial aspect of the body (spatiality) deserves as much attention as does time (temporality). The phenomenological psychologist Straus, who, as Natanson points out,69 is too close to Schutz to risk mutual “infiltration,” speaks of the body as the initial insertion of the self into the world of others, of other fellow-human beings and sociality as always already intercorporeal. The body is indeed the living site of sociality. We are our bodies, and our bodies answer the world by first authoring it. Straus, moreover, favors the body over the mind in

68Jean-Paul Sartre writes that “[i]n human societies, faces rule” (The Writing o f Jean-Paul Sartre, vol. 2: Selected Prose, ed. Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka and trans. Richard McCleary. Evanston: N orthwestern University Press, 1974, 67). There is a saying that prosopagnosia, that is, not remembering faces, is worse than forgetting names. 69“Erwin Straus and Alfred Schutz,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 42 (1982): 336.

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dealing with the question of sociality because “the body of an organism is related to other bodies; it is a part of the physical universe. The mind, however, is related to one body only; it is not directly related to the world, nor to other bodies, nor to other minds.”70The mind becomes a relatum only because the body inhabits the world with other inhabiting bodies.71 In sum, therefore, the phenomenology of the social world is in need of the hermeneu­ tics of the body as well as that of the soul. In the second place, the theory of the ethical in the phenomenological movement has not been appreciated. Schutz’s phenomenology of the social world argues most efficaciously against, and rescues the human cultural sciences from the quicksand of, scientism (including psychological behaviorism and political behavioralism), but provides no definitive and counterveiling answer to the “emotive theory” of logical empiricism or the “value-neutrality” of scientism which the political philosophers Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, for example, challenged relentlessly. In The Phenomenol­ ogy o f Moral Experience (1955), which is one of the earliest works on phenomenological ethics in this country, Maurice Mandelbaum judiciously maintains that the “phenomenology” of morals is “eductive,” whereas the “metaphysics” of morals (e.g., Kantian deontological ethics) is “deductive” because the former takes into account the moral axioms or judgments that common men and women in the street actually make in carrying out their ordinary lives and daily activities, whereas the latter ignores them.72

70Erwin W. Straus, Phenom enological Psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1966, 211. 7lSee Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into P/ace.(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 and The Fate o f Place. Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1997. The logic o f corporeal thinking w ould lead us to see the importance o f “habit” in human conduct, in everyday activities in the mundane world. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, writes: “[t]he conditionings associated with a particular class o f conditions o f existence produce habitus, systems o f durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes w ithout presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery o f the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without being in any way the product o f obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated w ithout being the product o f the organizing action o f a conductor” (The Logic o f Practice, trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990, 53). n The Phenomenology o f Moral Experience. Glencoe: Free Press, 1955, 17 and 31.

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As the lifeworld is from the start the world of approvals and disapprovals, value is integral, not a later addition, to the everyday “business of living.”73 The project, which is always “preconceived,” is a blueprint for action and as such determines the “purposiveness” (telos) of action. Despite the fact that the lifeworld is the most central theme of Schutz’s later phenomenology both substantively and methodologically and that value may be inserted into the project as an “in-order-to” motive of action, Schutz has left no important systematic writings on formal or normative ethics. His conception of phenomenology as a purely descriptive enterprise—purely theoretical rather than normative—is well in tune with Max Weber’s “value-free” methodol­ ogy o f the social sciences.74 Moreover, Schutz’s study of Scheler, who is the most outstanding phenomenological ethicist, leaves no traces of normative judgments including Scheler’s critique of Kant’s deontological ethics in which facile and non-eductive prescriptivism is susceptible to conceptual gerrymandering and juggernaut. “Scheler,” Schutz concludes, “transformed his theory of perspectivism of values into a new and highly original approach to a sociology of knowledge.”75Nonetheless, the section on his “applied theory” of phenomenology in Collected Papers, II: Studies in Social Theory is replete with ethical overtones and intimations in dealing particularly with the question of “the well-informed citizen,” “equality,” and “responsibility.”76

73See John W ild, Existence and the World o f Freedom. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963, 54 and “Man as a Responsible Agent,” in Conditio H umana, ed. W alter Ritter von B aeyer and Richard M. Griffith. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1966, 319-33. Based on the phenomenology o f the life-world, Wild attempts to develop social and political ethics which is meaningful, free, and responsible. 74In his recent discussion o f Schutz’s phenomenological microsociology o f literature, Lester Embree comes to the conclusion that Schutz’s “theory o f literature is . . . very like his theory o f action, i.e., value-free” (Alfred Schutz, “A Construction o f Alfred Schutz’s ‘Sociological Aspect o f Literature,” ’ in Alfred Schutz's "Sociological Aspect o f Literature,” op. cit., 1-71). 7SCollected Papers, II: 178. 76I choose only the following two statements o f Schutz which contain normative intimations and which show his attitude o f restraint and ambivalence toward value judgem ents. First, in the conclusion he draws from the discussion o f the “well-informed citizen” in democracy he writes: “A certain tendency to misinterpret democracy as a political institution in which the opinion o f the uninformed man on the street must predominate increases the danger. It is the duty and the privilege, therefore, o f the well-informed citizen in a democratic society to make his private opinion prevail over the public opinion o f the man on the street” (Collected Papers, II: 134). In drawing his conclusion on responsibility, Schutz who, as a Jew, fled Nazi Germ any writes: “It is one thing, if, in the Nuremberg trials, the Nazi leaders were held

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Schutz’s lack of concern for normative ethics, most importantly, in no way implies that he had no morals for his personal conduct. On the contrary, Natanson tells us that he learned from Schutz “a lot about human existence.” Schutz was able to inculcate in Natanson the moral notion that whoever we are and whatever we do, we all are fully human beings.11 In contrast to Schutz, Straus who, according to Natanson, preferred Scheler to Heidegger and the later Husserl to the early Husserl and held many ideas in common with Schutz, astutely and elegantly observes that man’s “upright” body posture points to humanity’s uniqueness and ethical gesture.78 We can even go further by insisting that the ethical is humanity’s most distinguishing characteristic. Not unlike Schutz’s phenomenology of social action with a focus on the idea of project (Entwurf), Straus holds that human action is purposive because it is directed toward a goal (telos) and that “[a] change is anticipated and realized through movements subserving a preconceived plan. In action, we reach beyond a given situation into the realm of possibilities; within a temporal horizon, open to the future, we busy ourselves producing a new situation. We do not simply react to things as they are, but we act on them—i.e., we move with the intention of modifying things from an actual to a desired condition.”79 Indeed, human beings are the only creatures who can refuse to be what they are here and now. As goal and change are twin brothers of human action with a project, they become a justification for phenomenological ethics. Straus, I think, provides us with a clear phenomenological clue to ethics or the normative theory of morals. Unlike Schutz but like Straus, Natanson is forthrightly normative in dealing with phenomenological theorizing as “a defense of Reason” and “a critique of philosophy.”80 Natanson defends Reason in opposition to the “invisible dragon” of what he calls “conceptual nihilism.” There is the nihilism of the “headless heart” as well as of the “heartless head.” By conceptual nihilism, Natanson means “a root denial of the validity of reason.”81 He is careful in delineating reason as a body of abstract principles and reason as a living matrix within which the individual confronts the

responsible by the Allied Powers, and quite another thing if they were held answerable by the German people” (ibid., 276). 77Crowell, “A Conversation with Maurice N atanson,” 301. lsPhenom enological Psychology, 137-65. n Ibid., 197-98. 80See E dm und Husserl, 12-19. 81Phenomenology, Role, Reason, 330.

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meaning of “the central terms of his existence.”82By so doing, he follows the existentialist path of Kierkegaard who is a scathing critic of Hegel’s “conceptual imperialism” which buries the detailed humanity of a singular individual in “an architechtonic of uncentered abstractions.”83 Natanson is a staunch defender of Weber’s thought in general and his “value-neutrality” in particular against critics of Weber such as Leo Strauss for allegedly committing the casterization of value which is a form of nihilism. By making the distinction between value and fact, Natanson insists that Weber neither denies nor rules out values. The social scientist ought to make value judgments. When he makes them, he must know where fact ends and value begins.84 Instead of threatening or denying reason and value, Weber recognizes the tension between the two which, according to Natanson, constitutes “the most fundamental and creative opposition to nihilism.”85 Natanson begins with Weber’s idea of “disenchantment” as “the existential condition for transcendence.”86 By the “disenchantment of the world” (Entzauberung der Welt), Weber originally meant that modernity has abandoned or desacralized the world by taking the “magic” out of it. For Natanson, disenchantment and transcendence are integrally bound to each other because “they spring from that subjectivity which is the source of commitment itself.”87 In other words, disenchantment leads to individual choice and commitment to reconstruct our world by way of the orderly “discipline of subjectivity” as both “locus” of and “gateway” to transcen­ dence. Subjectivity is the center of the individual’s identity, which is nothing but the individual’s awareness of his/her uniqueness and of responsibility for his/her action in relation to others and public events. “Man,” Natanson sums up his existentialist ethics, “is understood as a being who is responsible for what he makes of his life and of the world; responsibility presupposes choice by an individuated self; individuation arises out of ethical crisis and the acceptance of fundamental concern for the human community; concern is experienced as anguish before oneself, in the face of history, or before the

*2Ibid. %lIbid., 319. "Ib id ., 335. S5fbid., 343. >6Ibid., 319. Cf. Schutz, Collected Papers, II: 71. 81Phenomenology, Role, and Reason, 321.

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ultimacy of God; and out of anguish is generated the possibility of freedom.”88 Disenchantment indeed breeds change, and by it we are compelled to change or reenchant the world. Natanson, however, is very critical of Marx’s ideologism or ideological “lalapalooza”—to borrow his New Yorker’s expression. Natanson contends that Marx, who was a philosopher of change, of radical change, for the “reenchantment” of the world, is the philosopher who wrote “the most profoundly antiphilosophical sentence ever written.”89 Here, of course, Natanson is referring to Marx’s famous or— in Natanson’s view— infamous Eleventh Thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach which reads: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.”90 Natanson regards it as most antiphilosophical because it is “ideologizing,” not “philosophizing.” Natanson is absolutely incontrovertible in contending that Marx’s thesis for change, also, is necessarily a result of interpretation. What should be added here is that since interpretation is the inescapable task of philosophy, Marxism or otherwise, it becomes the beginning of change or what Natanson calls “transcendence.” Transcendence is an ethical gesture of the first magnitude. Natanson himself is quick to acknowledge that “the philosopher becomes the bridge between the solitude of radical reflection and the community of human action”91— one foot in the former and the other in the latter, as it were. To put it differently, the tension or even contradiction between the egological and the social is so persistent that Schutz calls it “a

isIbid., 310. 89E dm und Husserl, 203. 90Ibid. Some anti-M arxist philosophers such as Karl Popper cleverly uses M arx’s own Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach to criticize M arxists by accusing them o f interpreting Marx rather than changing him. One may even accuse Marx o f conceptual footbinding when he criticized his mentor Hegel for having his dialectics stand on its head rather than standing on its feet since it is true that one cannot stand on one’s head, but it is equally true that one cannot think with one’s feet. In his critique o f Hegel, Marx emphasized that in hum anity’s emancipation, the “head” o f philosophy and the “heart” o f the proletariat go together hand in hand. The Italian Marxist phenomenologist Enzo Paci may be called the Erich Fromm o f phenomenology, if, according to Natanson (see Edmund Husserl, 191), Heidegger is the Carl Jung o f phenomenology. Paci holds that Husserl was unaware o f the fact that the crisis o f the European sciences is the crisis o f human existence in capitalist society ( The Function o f the Sciences and the M eaning o f M an, trans. Paul Piccone and James E. Hansen. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, 323). 91E dm und Husserl, 125.

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metaphysical constant.”92 Nevertheless, the philosopher is a human being who cannot and should not separate his radical reflection from his participa­ tion in the community of fellow-human beings. In this sense, the ethical for his own conduct cannot be otherwise than that for the community of fellowhuman beings.93 To put it negatively, the philosopher cannot prescribe for others something he/she cannot prescribe for and live by himself/herself. In conclusion, let me kidnap Natanson’s idea. In his concluding remarks on “the nature of social man,” he emphasizes that “I am convinced that the secret of individual identity is locked in the nature of the social world. If common sense is the region in which our sociality is grounded, it may also be the existential locus of our normative possibilities. And if history is the covenant between man and God, daily life is the record of its fulfillment. There in the unexalted chronicle of the familiar is disclosed the image of what we may still become.”94 In the very “humming” of mundanity, indeed, we find the ethical imperative and redemption, if you will, of humanity’s future. The itinerant or journeying self cannot and should not be inimical but, rather, open by necessity to the ethical or moral. To “reenchant” human action or project, we must put back the “magic” of morals into it and the world. Neither Schutz nor Natanson has reached the promised land of choreographing humanity’s normative possibilities.95 We can only hope that if, as Schutz once told the young Natanson, death and anonymity—the focus of Natanson’s thoughtful analysis of Schutz’s phenomenological philoso­

,2See Natanson, Anonymity, 143-144. 93See Herbert Spiegelberg, Steppingstones Toward an Ethics o f Fellow Existers. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986. 94Phenomenology, Role,and Reason, 121 (my italics). 95 Gibson W inter’s Elements fo r Social Ethic (New York: Macmillian, 1966) is, as far as I know, is the earliest and perhaps the only attempt to incorporate Schutz’s phenomenology o f the soical world into ethics, into what W inter calls “an ethic o f the social w orld” with an accent on “an ethic o f responsibility.” Unfortunately, it has been completely ignored and forgotten. Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics as “first philosophy” (see Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1969) extends, and goes beyond the limits of, the tradition o f Husserlian constitutive phenomenology. Zygm unt Bauman pays the highest compliment to the achievement o f Levinas when he calls him “the greatest moral philosopher o f the twentieth century” (M odernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, 214). The face is for Levinas an ethical hermeneutic o f humanity. It is the first gesture o f the social and thus the moral. His is the ethics o f responsibility based on the primacy o f the Other over the self in human relationships. In the phenomenological movement, Levinas’s philosophy points to the triumph o f the moral over the ontological o f Heidegger who said that ontology is possible only as phenomenology.

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phy— are one and the same, their lack of discernment for humanity’s normative possibilities will not mean the death of the social. For the ethical or moral is the ultimate existential modality and the guiding torch of the social.

Chapter 6

Hum an Action, Ideal Types, and the M arket Process: A lfred Schutz and the A ustrian Economists Richard M. Ebeling Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics Hillsdale College Abstract: Schutz and the Austrian Economists emphasized meaning and intentionality fo r understanding social and market processes. This is clearest in their conception o f the logic o f action and choice, and the mental process by which social and market agents formulate interpersonal expectations fo r purposes o f successful mutual orientation. I. Alfred Schutz and the Vienna M iseskreis Alfred Schutz studied at the University of Vienna with legal philosopher, Hans Kelsen, and Austrian Economist, Friedrich von Wieser.1Among his classmates were Friedrich von Hayek (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974) and Fritz Machlup. Schutz first met Ludwig von Mises in 1920. Though Schutz never attended Mises’ seminar at the University, he had to pass a three-hour oral examination before a governmental commission of economists to receive his law degree. The students did not know who would be on the examining panel ahead of time. When they saw Mises coming up the staircase, they realized they were not in for an easy time; he was known to be a demanding examiner.2 By then, Mises was already well-known in Europe as a leading monetary theorist, based on his 1912 volume, The Theory o f Money and Credit? He 'Helmut Wagner, Alfred Schutz: An Intellectual Biography. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1983, 11-13. 2B.B. Greaves, “An Interview with Dr. Alfred Schutz” (unpublished, 1958). Hereafter referred to by author’s name. 3Ludwig von Mises, The Theory o f M oney and Credit. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981. Hereafter referred to as TMC. For a discussion o f M ises’ contributions to monetary theory and policy and their relationship to the writings o f other Austrians on the same themes, see, Richard M. Ebeling, “Ludwig von Mises and the Gold Standard,” in Llewellyn H. Rockwell, ed., The Gold Standard: An Austrian Perspective. Lexington: Lexington Books, 1985, 35-59. L ester E m b ree (e d .) Schutzian Social Science, 115-134. © 1999 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P ub lish ers. P rin ted in th e N e th erla n d s.

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was a senior economic advisor to the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, and had published a well-received book entitled, Nation, State and Economy (in 1919), in which he analyzed the causes and consequences of the Great War.4 Just about the time Schutz took his examination, Mises had published an article on, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth,” which soon caused a fire-storm of controversy.5 He argued that socialism was an economically unworkable system; with the nationalization of the means of production and the resulting abolition of market prices and competition, the socialist central planners would have eliminated the only method for rationally estimating the relative value of scarce resources in alternative productive uses. Thus, rather than offering a more efficient and wealthgenerating economic order, socialism in practice would lead to economic waste and stagnant standards of living.6 Mises had tried to trick Schutz during his University examination. He asked Schutz if he had ever read The Distribution o f Wealth by American economist, John Bates Clark. Schutz replied that he had. Mises then asked in what language he had read the book. Schutz answered that he had read it in the original English. Mises responded by saying, “It is good you answered as you did, because their is no German translation” (Greaves, unpubl.). Shortly after passing his own exam, Fritz Machlup told Schutz that Mises had organized a Privatseminar, and that it would be possible for him to attend. At first Schutz was not especially enthusiastic, having explained to Mises that his main interest was sociology, and not economics. But Mises began to give him topics for seminar presentations, and soon Schutz was finding the meetings interesting and stimulating. In fact, his first assignment for the Miseskreis (the Mises Circle), as it soon became known, was on Max Weber’s methodology (Greaves, unpubl.). Mises’ private seminar met every other Friday from October to June. The membership varied over the years and was made up of about 20 to 25

4Ludw ig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy. New York: New York University Press, 1983. sLudwig von Mises, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth,” in F A. Hayek, ed., Collectivist Economic Planning. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1935. 6For a more thorough discussion o f Mises’ critique o f socialist central planning, see, Richard Ebeling, “Economic Calculation Under Socialism: Ludwig von Mises and His Prcdcccssors,” in J.M. Herbener, ed., The M eaning o f Ludwig von Mises. Boston: Kluwer Academic Press, 1993,56-101.

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scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including economics, sociology, philosophy, history, political science, and psychology .The seminar continued from 1920 through the spring of 1934, shortly before Mises moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he took up a position as Professor of Interna­ tional Economic Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies. Mises’ own description of the private seminar shows its focus and quality: All who belonged to this circle came voluntarily, guided only by their thirst for knowledge. They came as pupils, but over the years became my friends. Several o f my contemporaries joined the circle. Foreign scholars visiting Vienna were welcome guests and actively participated in the discussions...We formed neither school, congregation, nor sect. We helped each other more through contradiction than agreement. But we were agreed and were united on one endeavor: to further the sciences o f hum an action. Each went his own way, guided by his own law. . .We never gave thought to publishing a journal or a collection o f essays. Each worked by himself, as it befits a thinker. And yet, each one o f us labored for the circle, seeking no compensation other than simple recognition, not the applause o f his friends. There was greatness in this unpretentious exchange o f ideas; in it we all found happiness and satisfaction.7

One of the members of the Miseskreis was Martha Steffy Browne, who later taught at Brooklyn College. She remembered the seminar as follows: Professor Mises proved his intuition as well as his judgm ent o f perception in the choice o f the participants o f his seminar. In the beginning, it was a small circle o f economists only...But it was only a few years later that Mises invited people o f various intellectual capacities. Scholars like Eric Voegelin, Felix Kaufmann, and Alfred Schutz pioneering in the fields o f sociology and philosophy, enriched the level o f the economic discussions. Highly gifted econom ists o f the so-called younger school o f Austrian economics like [Friedrich] Hayek, [Gottfried] Haberler, [Fritz] Machlup, [Oskar] Morgenstem, and many others were stimulated and challenged through the speeches and discussions. Professor Mises never restrained any participant in the choice o f a topic he or she wanted to discuss. I have lived in many cities and belonged to many organizations. I am sure there does not exist a second circle where the intensity, the interest and the intellectual standard o f the discussions is as high as it was in the Mises Seminar.8

7Ludwig von Mises, Notes and Recollections. South Holland: Libertarian Press, 1978, 97-98. 8M argit von M ises, M y Years with Ludw ig von Mises. Cedar Falls: Center for Futures Education, 1984, 207.

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Fritz Machlup observed that among the many topics discussed in the seminar, “O f special interest was the year of methodological discourse, partly thanks to the affiliation of Alfred Schutz and Felix Kaufmann with the ideas of Edmund Husserl and Kaufmann’s with the Schlick Circle.”9 Indeed, the last semester of the private seminar, in spring, 1934, was entirely devoted to “methodological problems,” with papers delivered by Mises, Felix Kaufmann, Ewald Schams, Robert Walder, and Oskar Morgenstem.10 II. Austrian Economics as a Science of Human Action From its beginning in 1871, with the publication of Carl Menger’s Grundsatze der Volkswirtschaftslehre,u the members of the Austrian School were critical of any unreflective adoption of the methods of the natural sciences in the social sciences in general and in economics in particular. They began, instead, with the concept of intentionality. Consistent with this starting-point, the Austrian Economists saw the human mind as the primary source of knowledge about man, i.e., the logical relationships on the basis of which men made their choices, and from which were derived the “Laws of Economics”; these were discoverable through the use of introspection and the method of mental experiments.12 In the period between the wars, members of the Austrian School of Economics generally focused on the following types of theoretical problems:

9Ibid., 203. 10These papers were found by the present writer among the “lost papers” o f Ludwig von M ises in a formerly secret archive in Moscow, Russia. In March, 1938, the Gestapo came looking for Mises in Vienna following the annexation o f Austria by Nazi Germany. Mises was in Geneva, Switzerland at the time, but the Gestapo seized all o f his papers, documents, unpublished monographs, articles and correspondence that he stored in his Vienna apartment. At the end o f the war, Mises’ papers, along with millions o f pages o f other documents, papers and archival materials the Nazis looted in occupied countries, were captured by the Soviet Army in Czechoslovakia. Copies o f these “lost papers” o f Mises are now at Hillsdale College. The present writer is serving as the general editor for the translation and publication o f them, including these methodological papers from M ises’ private seminar. 1‘C. M enger, Principles o f Economics. New York: New York University Press, 1981. 12See, Richard Ebeling, “Austrian Subjectivism and Phenomenological Foundations,” in P.J. B oettke and M.J. Rizzo, eds., A dvances in Austrian Economics, vol. 2A. Greenwich: JAI Press, 1995, 39-53, for the relationship between the Austrian approach to theory-formation and H usserl’s phenomenological method for deriving essentialist properties o f concepts.

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1. The methodological foundations of the social sciences in general and economics in particular. 2. Formalization of the logic of human action and choice. 3. The theory of price formation and market equilibrium. 4. The problem of imperfect knowledge and the formation of expectations. 5. The theory of entrepreneurship and market coordination. 6. The theory of capital formation, the processes of production, and the rate of interest. 7. The theory of money and economic fluctuations (business cycles).13 Especially because of Mises’ influence, the focus of attention for many of the discussions among the Austrians revolved around the significance and applicability o f Max Weber’s methodology to the problems of economic theory. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Mises wrote two essays in which he discussed the possibilities and limits of the Weberian approach as a foundation for economic science.14He fundamentally accepted Weber’s idea of “action” as the foundational concept for economic theorizing. What separated the natural sciences from the social sciences was that the latter dealt with phenomena in which the subject-matter possesses purposefulness and intentionality. Man above all else is the being who acts. He imagines possibilities more to his liking, he conceives of ways of using the objects of the world as “means” to his “ends,” and he plans courses of action to bring

13For summaries and overviews o f the ideas o f the Austrian School o f Economics, see, L.M. Lachmann, “The Significance o f the Austrian School o f Economics in the History o f Ideas,” in R.M. Ebeling, ed., Austrian Economics: A Reader. Hillsdale: Hillsdale College Press, 1991, 17-39; Richard Ebeling, “The Significance o f Austrian Economics in TwentiethCentury Economic Thought,” in R.M. Ebeling, ed., Austrian Economics: Retrospect on the Past and Prospects fo r the Future. Hillsdale: Hillsdale College Press, 1991, 1-40. l4The m ost significant ones from this period are “Sociology and History” (1929), and “Conception and Understanding” (1930); they were reprinted in E pistemological Problem s o f Economics. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1960, 68-145. Hereafter referred to as EPE.

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those desired ends to fruition. The domain of all social sciences, including economics, Mises argued, was the subjective world of acting man. The meanings that men assign to their purposes and plans define objects, situations, and social relationships.15 Emphasis on the subjectivist quality of the subject-matter of economics immediately draws attention to the fact that men look out at the world and plan their actions on the basis of knowledge that is necessarily imperfect, a knowledge that is derived from their local circumstances in a social system of division of labor. The question then arises how men, mutually dependent upon each other in that system of division of labor, can successfully coordinate their activities for assurance of a balance between the multitudes of demands and supplies for various goods and services in a complex and developed market order. Since all production processes embody various periods of time for their completion, investments must be undertaken “today” if finished consumer goods are to be available at some point in the future. Hence, if future supplies are to match “tomorrows” demands, expectations must be formed by those who direct the production processes geared towards the future demands of the consuming public.16 This lead the Austrians to investigate the significance of prices as a coordinating mechanism in market relationships, as well as the role of the entrepreneur as the “undertaker” and director of production in a system of private enterprise. Friedrich Hayek, in particular, addressed the significance of prices in a market economy. He argued that prices do not merely act as incentives for productive activities, but they also serve to disseminate information about changing demand and supply conditions throughout the market; guided by the information those prices convey, each can then try to adjust his own activities as seems most appropriate, given his local situation and circumstances in his comer of that system of division o f labor.17 l5C f, EPE, 1-67; also Ludwig von Mises, Nationaldkonomie: Theorie des H andelns und Wirtschaftens. Miinchen: Philosophia Verlag, 1980 and, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Irvington-on-Hudsoo: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996. Hereafter HA. l6On some aspects o f this problem, see, Oskar M orgenstem, Wirtschaftsprognose. Wien: Julius Springer, 1928; also, “Perfect Foresight and Economic Equilibrium ,” in Andrew Schotter, e d . Selected Economic Writings o f Oskar Morgenstern. New York: New York University Press, 1976, 169-183. l7See F.A. Hayek, “Economics and Knowledge,” as well as his “The Use o f Knowledge in Society,” in Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1948, 35-56 and 77-91. For a critical evaluation o f Hayek’s writings on his them e, partly from a Schutzian point-of-view, see Richard Ebeling, “Toward a Hermeneutical Economics:

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The role of the entrepreneur as the central figure in the market process was emphasized by Joseph Schumpeter in his seminal work, The Theory o f Economic Development,18 And an equal significance was placed on the entrepreneur by Mises, especially in his treatise, Human Action}9 Since all social processes begin with the actions of individuals, there must be an agent in the market economy who imagines, organizes and directs the production processes for purposes of coordination with the prospective demands of consumers. In the social system of division of labor that role belongs to the entrepreneur. The market “rewards” successful entrepreneurship with profits and “penalizes” unsuccessful entrepreneurship with losses. The competitive openness of a free market tends to bring about a situation in which financial control over resources and the factors of production are shifted into the hands of those entrepreneurs who demonstrate their superior ability in correctly anticipating future directions of consumer demand through profits earned, and who offer desired products and services at prices and with qualities better than the next closest supply-side rivals. Those who perform this entrepreneurial role more poorly experience diminished profits or suffer actual losses; over time they lose financial control over the means of production and the direction of the production processes of the market. Hence, the competitive market is continuously shifting ownership and productive control over the factors of production into those hands that demonstrate a greater comparative advantage in the knowledge and ability of serving the consuming public. Clearly, such coordination of a vast number of interpersonal plans, in which the market actors are separated from each other in terms of both time and space, requires some mechanism through which expectations can be formed concerning the likely intentions of “others” for purposes of constructing one’s own plans. In other words, there is Weber’s problem of “social action,” in which each must in some way be able to successfully

Expectations, Prices, and the Role o f Interpretation in a Theory o f the Market Process,” in D.L. Prychitko, ed., Individuals, Institutions, Interpretations: Hermeneutics A pplied to Economics. Brookfield: Avebury Publishing, 1995, 138-153. 18J.A. Schumpeter, The Theory o f Economic Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934. l9See HA. On the differences in the conception o f the entrepreneur in Schum peter’s and M ises’ writings, see I.M. Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1973.

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“orient” himself to the actions of others, when the actions of those others have a bearing on the outcomes of one’s own designs. One attempt at explaining the process of mutually-oriented social action in economics has been “the theory of games,” first developed by the Austrian economist, Oskar Morgenstem, and the mathematician, John von Neumann.20 Another was made by Ludwig von Mises, through a adaptation of Max Weber’s concept of ideal typification.21 Yet is it a peculiar fact that economists in general and even members of the Austrian School have devoted little effort to develop a realistic theory of expectations and intersubjective fields of mutual orientation. The failure to do so for mainstream or Neo-Classical Economics is partly understandable as due to the strong Positivist influence on Neo-Classical Economists during the past 100 years. A method that emphasizes that only the quantifiable is to be considered appropriate “facts” for scientific investigation, and which rigorously strives to reduce human action to the status of a “dependent variable” in a system of interdependent mathematical equations, leaves little room for a study of “meanings” and “intentions.” As Fritz Machlup has observed, “For [the] method of imagined introspection, curves and equations are poor substitutes. Sliding down a smooth curve until it intersects another curve is a healthy mental exercise; and solving a set of simultaneous equations is too; but neither of these will ensure our understanding of the way a man makes up his mind when he ponders a business decision.”22 It is more strange that Austrian Economists have failed to try their hand at this either,23 especially since Alfred Schutz’s writings offer an analytical

20See John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstem, The Theory o f Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944. 2lFor a sum m ary and critical analysis o f M ises’ use and application o f the Weberian Ideal Type for purposes o f developing a theory o f expectations, see Richard Ebeling, “Expectations and Expectations-Formation in M ises’ Theory o f the Market Process,” in P.J. Boettke and D.L. Prychitko, eds., Individuals, Institutions, Interpretations: Hermeneutics Applied to Economics. Brookfield: A vebuiy Publishing, 1994, 83-95. 22Fritz Machlup, The Economics o f Sellers ’ Competition. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1952, 370. 23For recent expositions by Austrian Economists on economic processes o f adjustment, coordination and discovery, see, R. Cowan and M.J. Rizzo, “The Genetic-Causal Tradition and M odem Economic Theory,” Kyklos 49, no. 3 (1996): 273-317; and I.M. Kirzner, “Entrepreneurial Discovery and the Competitive Market Process: an Austrian A pproach,” Journal o f Economic Literature (March 1997): 60-85 and How M arkets Work: D isequilib­ rium, Entrepreneurship and Discovery. London: Institute o f Economic Affairs, 1997.

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framework that can serve as an important guide for doing so.24 Before suggesting how Schutz’s system of ideal typifications in a field of intersubjective meanings and relationships can assist in constructing a theory of expectations and entrepreneurial decision-making, it will be useful to contrast the Neo-Classical Economic conception of the logic of choice with Schutz’s analysis of choosing among projects of action. III. The Neo-Classical Economist’s Logic of Choice and Schutz’s Choosing Among Projects of Action At one end of the ideal typification spectrum, Schutz explains, is the anonymous other. This “other” is conceived as having only the most abstract and general qualities and characteristics that can be said to be found in any man, and therefore can be considered to be representative and true of all men.25 In this typification, man is viewed only in the context of that most universal image of a “purposeful being,” i.e., a chooser of ends, an applier of means, a performer of acts. Here man is representative of what NeoClassical economists have come to call “the logic of choice.” Given a set of ends that have been ranked in order of preference, and given a quantity of means with which those ends may be pursued, and given a set of prices at which alternatives may be traded one for the other, the chooser applies the principle of marginal decision-making to select that combination of ends that maximizes his utility or satisfactions. It also means that in this framework, human choices are open to prediction. If the preference structure of the chooser is given and known and if the actual terms of trade are “objectified”

24I have attempted to suggest how such a theory o f expectations and intersubjective market orientation can be applied using Schutz’s ideas in several writings. See, Richard Ebeling: “W hat is a Price? Explanation and Understanding,” in Don C. Lavoie, ed., Economics and Hermeneutics. New York: Routledge, 1990, 177-194; “Cooperation in Anonym ity,” in D.L. Prychitko, ed., Individuals, Institutions, Interpretations: Hermeneutics Applied to Economics. Brookfield: Avebury Publishing, 1995, 81-92; “Toward a Hermeneutic Economics,” op. cit., 138-153; I have tried to contrast the Austrian views with those o f some o f the Swedish econom ists on these themes, see, Richard Ebeling, “M oney, Economic Fluctuations, Expectations, and Period Analysis: The Austrian and Swedish Economists in the Interward Period,” in Willem Keizer, Bert Tieben, Rudy van Zijp, eds., Austrian Economics in Debate. New York: Routledge, 1997,42-72. The following section draws upon these earlier writings and extends the analysis and applications. “ Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology o f the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967, 137,245.

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in the form o f market prices, then human decisions can be reduced to the status of “reactions” to external changes in relative prices.26 Alfred Schutz was impressed with the analytical force of the economist’s schema of decision-making. But what he believed to be a fundamental shortcoming in the economist’s approach is the confusing of the “because” motive with the “in-order-to” motive. I.e., the confusing of an ex post reconstruction (by actor or analyst) of the situation in which a particular choice was made (or planned) with the ex ante process by which elements out o f which a choice may be made are constructed by the potential chooser.27 For most economists, once the order of the ends and relative means available are clearly specified, the choice-problem becomes “unproblematic.” The solution to an efficient allocation of scarce means among competing ends is purely a matter of mathematical techniques for utility maximization. For Schutz, when the ends and means are being specified and clarified by the chooser in his own mind, the “unproblematic” becomes “problematic.” Now the problem of choice confronts the actor. Why what is “unproblematic” for Neo-Classical Economics is “problem­ atic” in Schutz’s analysis is understood when the role of time is studied in the two approaches. In Neo-Classical Economics, time as real, temporally lived experience does not exist; even when “choice” involves the allocation of either resources or actions through time, it is a choice “out of time.”28 The reason for this is the “retrospective” perspective from which “choice” is evaluated by the Neo-Classical Economist. With the assumption of a prior creation and constitution of the ends, a designation of the quantities and qualities o f the means, and delimitation of the time horizons over which choice alternatives are to be compared, the analyst is confronted with a “timeless” moment in space in which he “observes” an actual or hypothetical decision. As consequence, it is a “choice” that is not a real choice. From this conceptual ex post or “because-motive” perspective, the analyst explains why, given the agent’s preferences and means-constraints, this particular

26G. Becker, “De Gustibus Non Est D isputandum,” in Accounting fo r Tastes. Cambridge: H arvard U niversity Press, 1996. 27Alfred Schutz, “Choosing Among Courses o f A ction,” Collected Papers I: The Problem s o f Social Reality. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1962, 67-97. Hereafter CACA. 28As an example o f this Neo-Classical analysis o f the allocation o f time, see G. Becker The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1976, 89130; for an Austrian critique o f the Neo-Classical conception o f time, see G.P. O ’Driscoll Jr. and M.J. Rizzo, The Economics o f Time and Ignorance. New York: Routledge, 1996, 52-70.

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“choice” was the only (and therefore the inevitably) logical one that the “chooser” had to or would have to make in the specified circumstances. In Schutz’s analysis, on the other hand, ends and means, and any resulting choices made, only emerge out of a temporal process of imagination. Out of the actor’s general field o f interests, an interest o f a particular relevance at a moment in time comes to the foreground. He concentrates on this interest by projecting in his mind a future moment in time when a state of affairs representing the fulfillment of that interest would be accomplished. The actor then mentally traces out the means and methods he believes would be required “in-order-to” bring that state of affairs to actual fruition. Other alternative states-of-affairs, and the actions believed necessary for their accomplishment, may be projected in a similar fashion in the actor’s mind. Appreciation of this mental process by which ends and means are constructed integrates the temporal dimension into an understanding of choice. This is so not merely in the sense that this process of imagination itself occurs in time, but also concerns the construction of competing or complementary plans of future states-of-affairs only potentially realizable by various actions through time. It is the futurity o f ends and means in a plan that creates its “problematic” character. For there is no present certainty concerning the results of a project undertaken over time. Furthermore, the process by which selection may be made among the alternative projections is problematic: having created the alternatives, the actor must compare them; he possibly modifies them after thinking about the others; he weighs the relative likelihood of their success; and ranks them in relative orders of importance, until one (or some) is finally chosen over the other(s). The analyst, as a result, cannot know with predictive certainty what the actor’s choice will be, ex ante, because the actor does not even know what the alternatives are or how he shall evaluate and rank them independent of the temporal “fantasizing” process out of which a choice may emerge. What is determinate and “predictable” for Neo-Classical Economics is, therefore, open-ended, “problematic,” and unpredictable in a Schutzian framework. Thus, what the Neo-Classical Economist takes as the “givens” from which he begins his analysis of the “logic of choice,” and on the basis of which he predicts how men will “act,” are not “givens” at all at a more fundamental level. The “givens” of the logic of choice are created by the actor’s themselves who do the actual, eventual choosing. It is the actors who create their own “ends” through fantasizing about possible preferred states-ofaffairs; it is the actors who design their own “means” by fantasizing about

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possible means and methods to bring those states-of-affairs into possible existence; it is the actors who construct their own trade-offs by fantasizing about what might be worth giving up to obtain something else which they decide they value more highly, and therefore what might be the maximum and minimum “prices” they would, respectively, pay or accept to do one thing rather than another. This is why creativity, innovation, and change ultimately cannot be predicted. Creativity, innovation and change arise out of modifications in people’s conduct, i.e., out of new and different choices they make and the actions they undertake. And these choices, as we have seen, emerge out of the fantasizing processes of the human mind; but those human minds do not know ahead of time what their choices and actions will be until they have run through their own projecting processes of imagined possibilities and alternatives. In this sense, our future choices are not only hidden from the social and economic analyst, but from ourselves as well. We can never really know our choices until we make them. Thus knowledge about our own choices always awaits us in our own futures, whether that future is a moment from now or decades away.29 IV. Structures of Intersubjective Orientation and Process of Market Coordination If full knowledge was possessed of the objective conditions and circum­ stances of the market by both actors and analysts, no problem of economic coordination would exist. Given the assumptions upon which they construct their models of man, it is not surprising, therefore, that Neo-Classical Economists have tended to focus their analysis on states of economic equilibrium, and found it difficult to develop theories of market processes.30 The most fully developed of the theories of market processes and coordination among the Austrian Economists has been that of Ludwig von Mises. How can the actors, and especially the entrepreneurs, anticipate the future conditions of the market? We have already seen that in the Austrian

29On the limits o f knowing and making predictions about the future in terms consistent with this analysis, see, B. de Jouvenel, The Art o f Conjecture. New York: Basic Books, 1967; also, J. Jewkes, A Return to Free M arket Economics?. London: Macmillan, 1978, 12-38. 30For a detailed critique o f the founding theories o f Neo-Classical equilibrium analysis by an Austrian Economist, see, H. Mayer, “The Cognitive Value o f Functional Theories o f Price,” in Classics o f Austrian Economics: Volume II. London: William Pickering, 1994, 55-168.

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theory of competition, it is in the rivalry of the market for consumer business that entrepreneurs either earn profits or suffer losses. How can they anticipate the future patterns o f consumer demand as the point on the horizon of tomorrow for directing their production activities today? Following Max Weber, Mises said that a primary tool for the historian is the construction of various ideal types for the stylization and conceptualiza­ tion o f the motives, ideas, and goals of the individuals and groups of individuals the historian is trying to understand. But Mises also argued that ideal types are the primary tool by which acting men anticipate the possible future actions of others with whom they may interact in the social arena. Acting man must be an “historian of the future,” who projects himself forward from the present and imagines the likely conduct of others in various settings and situations for purposes of forming expectations of the shape of social things to come. He constructs such images of possible futures on the basis of ideal types that he builds up in his mind from our “experience, acquired directly from observing our fellow men and transacting business with them or indirectly from reading and hearsay, as well as out of our special experience acquired in previous contacts with the individuals or groups concerned.” And on this basis “we try to form an opinion about their future conduct.” On the nature of ideal types, Mises said: “If an ideal type refers to people, it implies that in some respect these men are valuing and acting in a uniform or similar way. When it refers to institutions, it implies that these institutions are products of uniform and similar ways of valuing or acting, or that they influence valuing and acting in a uniform or similar way.” The difficulty in anticipating future actions by the method o f ideal types is that the “historian of the future” must construct them on the basis of: (a) an inclusion of the institutional or behavioral characteristics considered present and relevant that may influence and guide the conduct of the others he is interested in anticipating and; (b) a relative “weighting” assigned to the institutional or behavioral factors that will determine the actual outcome of future actions of others that the decision-maker is trying to anticipate.31 But no one has taken the Weberian ideas of “social action,” “mutual orientation,” and ideal typification and developed them with as much rigor and consistency as has Alfred Schutz for a theory of structures of intersubjective meaning for purposes of understanding the social world.

31Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957, 312-320.

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Schutz argued that each individual is bom into a preexisting “intersubjective world of daily life.” As we grow up, we are incorporated into this world of inter subjective meaning; through repetition or reappearance and reinforcement we come to understand the meaning of gestures and facial expressions, bodily movements, and words and sentences. The nuances of social life, about which each of us begins knowing nothing, become “objectified” as the meanings of words, movements, objects, and actions. We come to understand both ourselves and others because the medium through which we express our own intentions and comprehend those of others is against this background of learned, socially given structures of meanings. While each of the institutional structures of meaning could be reduced to an historical process through which they have evolved out of human conduct, at any moment in time they exist as a “given” into which the individual fits and orients himself. At the same time, these meanings, themselves, are evolving over time. The structures of intersubjective meaning slowly change as individuals experience new thoughts and express new ideas; these are then conveyed back to others through the shared “given” meaning structures. Thus a dynamic process of mutual dependency emerges in which the “given” meaning structures serve as points of individual and social orientation for “understanding,” while being themselves modifiable through their use for the expression of new meanings by individuals. At the opposite end of the ideal typification spectrum from the abstract and general anonymous “other” is the specific “face-to-face” relationship where individuals share a common environment of place, time and experience. They observe each other’s facial expressions; they ask and respond to questions; they grow older together. Here the individuals do not construct a composite typification of a universal “any other,” and therefore of all men; instead they create a typification of the particular other individual, on the basis of which each in the interaction forms judgments and expectations about the other’s typical attitudes (“He is a liberal”), his typical response to situations (“He is always cool under fire”), the typical interests that guide his actions (“He is only interested in sports”).32 In between the anonymous any other and the particular individual other, Schutz argued, was a range on the ideal typification spectrum made up of

32Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1974, 27-33. Hereafter referred to as CP2.

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any number of specific others whose behavior is constructed on the basis of various “courses-of-action” and “personal types.” Here the typical behavior expected is based on the type of purpose or function and role an individual takes on in a specific setting in the social world. We identify him and anticipate forms of conduct from him on the basis of the typical meanings that are taken-for-granted for actions with a particular goal in mind, or a particular form of activity associated with any “other” performing a specific function or role within the social order (CP2, 25-26). These kinds of ideal types, composed of mental pictures of others in varying degrees of anonymity and intimacy in various settings, serve as the background knowledge for “understanding” and interpreting the past actions of others, and as the anticipatory framework for the projection of possible actions in the future. Oddly enough, even though Schutz was well acquainted with the writings of the economists of his time, especially with the writings of the leading members of the Austrian School, and in spite of the fact that he spent a major part of this life in the world of business, his published writings contain few concrete applications of his ideas to economic and market processes.33 Schutz’s close friend, Fritz Machlup, on the other hand, believed that his ideas had great relevance to economic theoiy-construction and analysis.34 We have seen that what Schutz calls the “other” of total anonymity, to whom only the most general and generic properties of any human actor can be assigned, is none other than the economist’s old friend, Robinson Crusoe. The Crusoe construction enables us to deduce those attributes in human activity so broad and abstract in their nature that they would have to be found in any conscious human being undertaking the process of choice under conditions of scarcity. They represent the core principles of the logic of any and all human action. Indeed, Schutz considered the logic of action and choice guided by the principles of marginal utility as the “regulator” on

“ For an exception to this, in which Schutz discussed “The Basic Assumption o f Economic Theory for Dealing with the Problem o f Choice,” see Alfred Schutz, “Choice and the Social Sciences,” in Lester Embree, ed., Life-World and Consciousness: Essays fo r Aron Gurwitsch. Evanston: Northwestern U niversity Press, 1972, 584-588. Only recently has there been published in English four previously unavailable papers by Schutz on aspects o f the nature and application o f economic theory for understanding the social world, see Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers IV. Boston: Kluwer Academic Press, 1996, 75-105. Hereafter CP4. 34Fritz Machlup, M ethodology o f Economics and Other Social Sciences. New York: Academic Press, 1978, 211-301.

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the basis of which economists, on postulated conditions, can derive the “laws of economics” (CP4, 102). An example in economics near the other end of Schutz’s spectrum—the face-to-face relationship—is to be found in the economist’s theory of bilateral monopoly. Here two potential trading partners confront each other, and a wide range exists within which the price at which trade may occur can fall. The traders haggle; they size each other up concerning their respective bargaining skills; they form judgments as to the other’s intensity of desire for trade and how long the “other” may be willing to continue the bargaining process before breaking off discussion and foregoing any transactions. Each agent, in other words, constructs in his mind an ideal type of the other as face-to-face interaction proceeds; and this serves as the basis for the consummation of any transactions that may result. At the opposite extreme would be the case that economists often classify under the heading of “perfect competition.” Here, rather than only two particular traders confronting each other on opposite sides of the market, the theory postulates a large number of buyers and sellers; each seller contributes such a small portion to the total supply of the good in the market in which he operates, that any variation in the quantity offered by him is not large enough to influence the market price for that good, given the consumer demand for it; each seller offers a good exactly like his rivals, so each is marketing a commodity that is a perfect and interchangeable substitute for the goods offered by his competitors in his market; and there is absolute openness and ease of entry and exit from each market in the economy. Every seller is therefore assumed to be a “price taker,” who adjusts the quantity he sells to maximize his net revenue given the price he finds to be prevailing in the market, and which his individual supply-side decisions cannot influence. Numerous inconsistencies and contradictions can be found in this conception of a “perfect” market.35 But regardless of this, for the sellers to be “price takers,” it requires each of them to hold a particular set of ideal typifications of themselves and others in the market, such that each passively adjusts his quantities offered for sale at whatever price he finds offered to him; nor does he attempt to differentiate his product relative to the ones

35For a discussion o f some o f these contradictions and inconsistencies, see Richard Ebeling, “The Free Market and the Interventionist State,” in R.M. Ebeling, ed., Between Power and Liberty: Economics and the Law. Hillsdale: Hillsdale College Press, 1998, 16-21; and Hayek. “The Meaning o f Competition,” op. cit., 92-106.

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being sold by his rivals. They each must have an ideal type in their minds of the “typical” consumer in their market who will immediately stop all their buying from any one of them and purchase this good from other sellers in the market if the price he charges were raised by him even by the smallest amount. He must believe that the consumers think of his commodity as being exactly no different from the ones sold by his competitors, and therefore the consumers are indifferent as to whether they buy from him or someone else. Each seller must believe that their actual and potential rivals have the ability to adjust their production methods and activities so rapidly to any change he may try to introduce to cut costs or improve the quality of his product, that any profits that he hoped to reap from such innovation would be immediately competed away by his rivals instantaneously matching whatever he does. Only if the sellers in this “perfect” market view themselves and their rivals in this way, will they act like price takers. Regardless of the “objective” conditions, if any of the sellers think they can influence the price by modifying the quantity they bring to the market; if they think they can make consumers view their product as being different than the ones offered by their competitors; if they believe they can reap profits for some period of time by introducing cost-saving techniques, then they will act in ways inconsistent with what the “objective” conditions lead the economist to expect from them. Merely adding up the numbers of sellers in a market, merely comparing the physical characteristics of the goods sold, and merely estimating the ease with which a new cost-cutting technique could be physically introduced into all the sellers’ production facilities, tells us nothing about how sellers will act or how consumers will react to a change in any one or more sellers’ behavior. This depends upon how actors in the market have typified their own circumstances and the “courses-of-action” they think most likely to be forthcoming from buyers and rivals for sales.36 Without understanding how actors understand intersubjective relationships in the markets in which they do business, there is no way to successfully analyze and anticipate their likely courses-of-action. It is a clear example of what Schutz meant when he said that the social scientist must realize that his analytical constructs must be “constructs of the second degree, namely constructs of the constructs made by the actors on the social scene, whose behavior the scientist observes and tries to explain” (CACA, 6).

36M atchlup, The Economics o f Sellers ’ Competition, op. c it, 418-424.

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It is in the wide intermediate range of Schutz’s spectrum of ideal typification that most of the problems of economics and market coordination fall. “The Market” represents an arena in which traders neither function in atomistic Crusoe isolation nor intimately know all the “others” with whom they either cooperate or compete in the far-flung and complex system of division of labor. Yet, for such a division of labor to emerge and extend across time and space, actors must have the means to anticipate the intended actions of others both in the present and the future. When looked at through Schutzian glasses, the regularities of the market place that enables “Paris to be fed,” that opens the possibility for future demands to be gleaned from past consumption patterns as a guide for directing present production, and that allows prices to convey information to the respective actors in the processes of production, all have their basis in the interlocking structure of ideal typifications for mutual orientation. A building contractor must judge the state of the housing market to make decisions about the types, quantities, and price ranges of houses that he could construct. Any such decisions will be made on the basis of his experience, knowledge, and “feel” for the various types of consumers who might be willing to purchase the homes he could offer for sale. Unable to personally know all those who may in the future want to buy his housing output, he must be guided in his decisions by the mental constructions he implicitly creates in his mind of, e.g., the typical consumer who may desire a ranch-style home; how that ideal typical consumer will respond if the price of the house is lowered by five hundred dollars; or if the rate of interest increases by one percent. Economists often speak of human behavior guided by market prices. To the extent that actors modify their behavior in response to shifts in market prices, however, it is because prices are, themselves, serving as ideal typifications of an abstract sort. If the market price of a commodity declines, should one buy more or less of it? That decision will depend upon, among other things, whether it is believed that the price will or will not go even lower in the near future. But this judgment will be dependent upon the ideal types that potential buyers of the commodity construct concerning the potential sellers’ future pricing decisions. Market prices, by themselves, do not speak; like words on a page they must be interpreted. And the way actors make judgments concerning interpretations of market conditions is on the basis of ideal types of the patterns of other actors’ behavior (both individuals and groups under typical and atyptical circumstances).

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The competitive rivalry of the market is ultimately a clash of different interpretations of meanings in men’s actions. Entrepreneurial rivalry is based on each of those entrepreneurs having constructed an alternative set of ideal typifications of the subgroup of the consuming public towards which they are directing their productive activities. The market test of who among these entrepreneurs was more right in their earlier projected “fantasies” concerning consumer demand will only be found out when the products they have produced are offered to the market in competition with those o f their rivals. And the consumers, now confronted with the wares offered to them, will then make their choices, or decide to direct their purchases to different markets, or to abstain from some of their purchases until a future date. Another ingredient in this playing out o f the market process will be the extent to which in designing and selecting their production plans, entrepreneurs will have successfully constructed ideal typifications of their rivals’ conduct. For it will not have been enough to form expectations about the possible buying decisions of some subgroup of consumers, if their expectations do not incorporate typifications of the likely characteristics of goods to be offered by potential rivals and the prices at which they may be sold. But all of these decisions can be made only against a background of other “courses-of-action” and “personal” ideal types. Each entrepreneur must have expectations about the reliability of suppliers of raw materials and other resource inputs if production processes are to be undertaken with degrees of confidence that the supplies will be delivered on time and according to the terms o f agreement and contract. They must form expectations about whether the political order is stable, property rights are secure, that contracts will be enforced, and that war or civil war is not eminent. All such expectations are dependent on the stability and reliability of various social institutions and the conduct to be expected from those who administer the law and who protect life and property. Rarely, however, have economists paid attention to the structures of intersubjective meaning and ideal typification that are necessary for a market order to function properly, and upon which the social order of civil society ultimately rests.37 37A few o f the rare exceptions in which aspects o f this problem have analyzed include, H. Schurman, The Promises that Men Live By. New York: Random House, 1938; S.H. Frankel, M oney and Liberty. W ashington D.C.: Amercan Enterprise Institute, 1980; F. Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation o f Prosperity. New York: The Free Press, 1995. On some o f the institutions and social relationships essential for a functioning market order

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Nobel economist, Ronald Coase (a leading contributor to the theory of the economics of property rights and transaction costs), has expressed the concern that economists have imperialistically moved into neighboring social sciences, and imposed their own method of analysis on political science, sociology and anthropology. Coase does not deny that the “economic way of thinking” may have useful and indeed valuable applications in other surrounding disciplines. But he reminded his fellow economists that economics has potentially as many interesting things to learn from those other social sciences as it has to contribute to them.38 The advantage of Schutzian-type sociology as a first step in economists learning from one of their neighboring disciplines is that it draws attention to what lies behind and significantly determines the structures of the market processes: the patterns of intentional behavior of acting men through lived, historical time. Luckily, in beginning this interdisciplinary process there is one school of economists, the “Austrians,” who already construct their conception of men and markets on the basis of meaningful conduct and realize that the social order is grounded in the intersubjective world of acting men.

and how the Classical Economists o f the 18th and 19th century understood them, see, Richard Ebeling, “How Economics Became the Dismal Science,” in R.M. Ebeling, e d . Economic E ducation: What Should We Learn A bout the Free Market?. Hillsdale: Hillsdale College Press, 1994, 51-81. 38R.H. Coase, Essays on Economics and Economists. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1994, 34-46

Chapter 7

M aking Sense of Politics in Public Spaces: The Phenomenology of Political Experiences and Activities Daniel CefaT Universite de Paris-Nanterre Abstract: This chapter seeks to describe how ordinary actors define and master their political situatedness, build their political universes, decide what is relevant in various ways, reason about politics, how they are motivated, and how they act. Alfred Schutz’s theory of relevances and Erving Goffman’s theory of frames help us to understand the daily political experiences and activities of ordinary citizens. Political scientists most often orient their work around one of two lines of inquiry: (1) they focus on the public government policies, the constitutional balance of powers, the political institutions dynamics, the local resource allocation, the politicians trajectories and biographies, the party and union strategies, or the social movements organizations; or (2) they develop voting polls or survey research on values and attitudes, opinions and beliefs, with pre-established survey designs, fixed choice or open ended question­ naires, random or probability sampling, and statistical data processing methods. However, we are usually left with unanswered questions concern­ ing the way the actors define and master common and problematic situations—how people make sense of their everyday practices, how they build their political universes, how they discuss the political issues with which they come into terms, how they make their way through mass media information, popular wisdom and common sense reasoning, how they motivate themselves by feelings of injustice and of indignation, and how they involve themselves in collective actions. Diverse attempts to account for these ordinary ways of framing politics have been made over the past years. They keep on describing and explaining objective contexts, but ascribe more importance to the interpretation of processes of intersubjective definitions of situations, and of the symbolic universes and the ritual interactions shared by actors and produced by them in order to share a common world. Among these attempts in the United

L e ste r E m b re e (e d .) Schutzian Social Science, 1 3 5 -1 5 7 .© 1999 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P u b lish e rs. P rin te d in the N e th erla n d s.

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States, are the works on mass media news discourse and on social movement political consciousness.1 (1) On one hand, social researchers have stressed the dimension of meaning-reception, appropriation, and application of media messages in the listener’s or spectator’s lifeworlds. We refer to William Gamson’s studies of ordinary citizens manufacturing their political opinions at the crossroads of different stocks o f knowledge and frames of relevance: the combination of television and radio information, first hand personal experience, commonsense knowledge and shared popular wisdom provide various ways of making sense of politics.2 The apocalyptic view o f consumer masses, swallowing huge amounts of standardized cultural goods, while losing their ability to think, judge, and act, is a bit simplistic. People are not totally stupid and passive, as Paul Lazarsfeld first showed through the concept of “twostep communication flow.”3 Despite the sophistication and omnipresence of mass media, ordinary citizens remain able to metabolize television or radio messages in their everyday systems of existential co-ordinates and through their everyday processes of intersubjective communication. The colonization

'in France, the most interesting work has been done by political anthropologists. They left the exotic lands o f Africa at the end o f the 1970s in order to practice fieldwork in domestic contexts. They now apply the tools o f cultural and social anthropology to the National School o f Public Administration (Irene Bellier, “Regard d ’une ethnologue sur les enarques,” L ’Homme 121 (1992): 103-127), political campaigns in Lozere (Yves Pourcher, “Journal d ’une campagne electorate en Lozere en 1986,” Les Temps Modernes 4, 488 (1987): 98-122), networks and lignages o f notables in Yonne (Marc Abeles, Anthropologie du politique. Paris: Colin, 1997), clientelism and patronage relationships in Corsica (Gerard Lenclud, “Des idees et des homines: patronage electoral et culture politique en Corse,” Revue Frangaise de Science Politique (1988): 770-782), and environmentalist grassroot m ovem ent organizations (Pierre Lascoumes, L 'eco-pouvoir. Environnement et politique. Paris: La Decouverte, 1994). O ther researchers, such as M. W ieviorka and F. Dubet, heirs to A. T ouraine’s sociological interventionism, organize focused groups around social and political issues. Through the conflictual exchanges between participants, they uncover stereotypical prejudices concerning xenophoby and racism, connected with fears o f unemployment and insecurity (Michel Wieviorka, et. a l. La France raciste. Paris: Seuil, 1992). A last group, gathering around L. Boltanski and L. Thevenot, investigates modes o f dispute and compromise between diverse forms o f justification o f practices. They focus on the overlap o f logics o f rationality and legitimacy w hich constitute social contexts o f experience and activity (Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot, D e la justification: Les economies de la grandeur. Paris: Gallimard, 1991). 2W illiam Gamson, Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 3Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1955.

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of minds by cultural industry or political propaganda is never absolute. Public opinion is never totally manipulated by mass media. Even if they are addicted to mass culture, ordinary citizens have different ways of interpreting and transforming the configurations of meaning that are imposed on them. This problem was stated by Robert Park, John Dewey, or Herbert Blumer a long time ago. How does modem journalism become a “mechanism to control collective attention” instead of reporting events in such a way that critical discussion between divided opinions of groups and individuals is possible?4 What is the public? Is the public a myth? Is it possible to reduce a public to a mass or a crowd? Does it mean anything to speak of the “eclipse of the public”?5What sort of a being is public opinion? And to what do we refer when we take for granted the results of the “narrow operationalism” of public opinion polling?6 In Schutzian language, the question could be the following. What kind of an impact does mass media news packaging have on the structures of relevance of ordinary citizens? How do people deal with political affairs in their natural settings, and how do they legitimate actual powers and laws? Is a phenomenology of experiences and activities fruitful for improving our understanding of political life? (2) On the other hand, after having confronted the “rational choice paradigm” in the 1970s, scholars trained in the tradition of the Chicago School of sociology worked on a renewed version of the “collective behavior paradigm” in the 1980s.7 Their analyses repudiate two visions of the social world. The actors do not constitute irrational crowds when they act collectively, moved by primitive or religious feelings, victims of their loss of native communities and primary groups, fascinated by authoritarian leaders, and subjected to political propaganda. The fear of masses lead to the

4Robert Ezra Park, The C row d and the Public. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1972 (originally published 1904), 55 sq and 79 sq. 5John Dewey, The Public and its Problems. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1927, 123. '’Herbert Blumer, “Public Opinion and Public Opinion Polling,” in Sym bolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984. 7D avid Snow and Philip W. Davis, “The Chicago Approach to Collective Behavior,” in A Second Chicago School: The Development o f a Postwar American Sociology, ed. G.A. Fine. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1995, 188-220; Joseph Gusfield, “The Reflexivity o f Social Movements: Collective Behavior and Mass Society Theory R evisited,” in N ew Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity, eds. E. Larana and J. Gusfield. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994, 59-78.

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twofold theme of the loss of the public spirit and the growth of totalitarian domination, as Hannah Arendt has most brilliantly argued.8 But collective actions, like civic movements, aim at re-strenghtening public concerns and open public arenas in counterpoint with institutional politics.9 The actors, on the other hand, are not rational computers, as movement organizations theory and utilitarian modelizations of interests would have them.10 Though they may calculate costs and benefits ratios, or appreciate the profitability of material and symbolic investments, they simultaneously invent the public cultures in which they want to live, and promote the public identities to which they want to refer.11 In Schutzian language, the question could be the following. How do ordinary citizens deal with interpretive and motivational schemes in order to share definitions of situations, in order to recruit and mobilize constituents of collective action, and in order to open worlds of social and political potentialities? How do ordinary citizens enter in processes of cooperation and conflict in order to align their schemes of experience, to make them compatible in an attempt to live in a common world, to crisscross lines of interpretation, and to gear motives of action, according to the same values and aiming at the same objectives?12 Frames of relevance are neither mere resources of rational cognition and action, nor the phantasmagorical stuff of collective deliriums. They are involved in the publicization of rights and justice claims, in the configuration of culture and identities. They contribute to the institution of possible worlds and to the definition of individual and collective actors; they have a power of thematization, interpretation, and motivation in the process of setting problems on public agendas; they give its semantic structure to the operations of building political universes and

8Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. Chicago: U niversity o f Chicago Press, 1958. 9Hannah Arendt, On Violence: Crisis o f the Republic. New York: Anchor, 1970. l0A nthony Oberschall, Social Conflicts and Social Movements. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973; John D. McCarthy and M ayer N. Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” American Journal o f Sociology 82 (1977): 1212-1241. 1’Jean L. Cohen, “Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social M ovem ents,” Social Research 52, 4 (1985): 663-716. l2D avid Snow, Rochford E. Burke, S. Worden, R. Benford, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,” American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 464-481; David Snow and R. Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” in International Social M ovement Research, vol. I, eds. B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi, and S. Tarrow. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1988, 197-217.

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performing political actions, and doing so to the accomplishment of an active citizenship. Our extension of the use of the concept of frame of relevance to a conception of public spaces will avoid the two perspectives of mass society and culture, and rational choice and action theory. I. What are Frames of Relevance? A notion emerged at the end of the 1970s in order to reconcile the afore­ mentioned approaches. The concept of “framing activity” made it possible to take into account the affective and symbolic dimension of political cultures or ideologies, without reducing actors to alienated and fetishistic “political dopes”; furthermore, it recalled resource mobilization processes in environments structured by opportunities, without forcing motives into an axiomatic o f economic interest.13 Thus was surmounted the antinomy between rationalism and culturalism. Our hypothesis is that Schutz’s theory of relevances prefigured these lines of research on framing activity. What is framing? The notion of frames is borrowed from Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis'4 where it refers to schemata of interpretation that enable people to “locate, perceive, identify, and label a seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences” in the world. The term is used in psychiatry (Bateson), the cognitive sciences (Minsky) or musical studies (Cone).15 E.Goffman often refers to Schutz, though usually to criticize him. His ecological, and sometimes ethological, perspective is not compatible with what he considers to be Schutz’s intentionalism and subjectivism. It is true that Goffman’s insistence on the “concerted scenery” of social experience, which highlights the “public configurations” of meaning, is rare in Schutz’s works. And Schutz has not Goffman’s virtuosity at describing concrete situations and at showing the fragility and vulnerability of frames to tampering and gerrymandering, cheating and faking. Nevertheless, many

13Sidney Tarrow, P ow er in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics. Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1994. l4Erving Goffman, Fram e Analysis. New York: Harper, 1974. lsGregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology o f Mind. St. Albans: Paladin, 1973; Edward T. Cone, Musical Form and Performance. New York: Norton, 1968; M. Minsky, “A Framework for Presenting K nowledge,” in The Psychology o f Computer Vision, ed. P. A. Winston. New York: M cGraw Hill, 1975.

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o f Schutz’s insights in the relevance manuscript anticipate Goffman’s perspective. The function of frames is “focusing” and “punctuating.” Not only do they concentrate the “attentional rays” on a theme or a topic,16 but they also articulate an interpretive perspective and a pragmatic field around the theme. James and Husserl described the intentional-horizonal structure of this cognitive process at the beginning of the century; Gurwitsch and Schutz developed this point of view further. Every “thematic kernel” is surrounded by a horizon of aperceptive and appresentative references: aperception of margins, through the phenomenal fringes of co-presence in spatial adjacency and temporal contiguity;17appresentation of context through clusters of sign and symbol connections between actions, events, discourses, images, in diverse provinces of meaning. The world hangs together. The English or French translation of the word Sinnzusammenhang as “context” tends to veil the textured dimension of the everyday relevances.18In other words, not only what comes around the text, but the configuration of the text itself. The hanging-together of the context is a sensitive and observable quality: it is experienced through the fulfillment of background expectancies, through the confirmation of temporalizing perspectives. The interconnections between concrete typifications, prelogical classifications, practical reasonings, and prepredicative inferences give coherence to common situations of everyday life. Frames of relevance are the webs o f typifications, significations, and symbolizations that permeate the life-world. They are not tools. Rather, they are the “pivots” of the “embodiment of the mind” and of the “ideality of the sensible.”19 Frames of relevance also encompass mental representations, logical statements, abstract categorizations, and intellectual arguments. Indeed, even when the topics in question seem far from everyday concerns, the use of metaphors and analogies anchor them and make them have echoes and resonances in ordinary life-contexts. Gamson’s examples in Talking Politics of the ArabIsraeli conflict or nuclear power compared with affirmative action and troubled industry best illustrate this point.

l6Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem o f Relevance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971, 4. ,7Aron Gurwitsch, Theorie du champ de la conscience. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1957, 270 and 280. 18lb id , 93 and 99. l9M aurice M erleau-Ponty, Le visible et I'invisible. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.

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Goffman explains that the actor’s meaning-contexts depend on the kind of frame they will apply to the phenomena which surround them: the focus of attention as well as the horizon of perceptions and practices will be altered; the leaps from the world of paramount reality to the absent and abstract imaginary or theoretical provinces of meaning will not be the same. This does not mean that we only “construct social reality” or “choose the frames we use.” Constructivist and utilitarian perspectives rather insist on the active and voluntary dimension of structures of relevance; instead, most of our experiences are bound by an imposed typicality, which dictates to us what to see and what to do. Schutz shows that passive syntheses command the operations of recognition and identification, and are the substratum of framing activities. Our structures of relevance are moulded and shaped by frames, sedimented in biographical stocks of knowledge, and in a large part historically inherited and socially sanctioned. In like manner, Goffman insists on the fact that “I frame my experiences, but my experiences are framed by organizational contexts.”20 This means, in Schutz’s words, that our liberty to give sense is limited and propelled, hindered, and enhanced by the ontological structure o f the world.21 Actors are not totally free to fantasize other provinces of meaning. Collective imagination is bound by the structure of the paramount reality— Realfaktoren such as ecological and economic constraints, political rapports de force, social distributions of knowledge.22 However, it is also bound by the semantic structure of symbolism and the imaginary. The everyday world is permeated by bunches of appresentative references, which shape a grammar of power and law, which constrain our political hopes and dreams, which impose objectives to reach and means to organize, issues to discuss, and values to defend. E.g., it was difficult for the AnarchoSyndicalists of the beginning of the century whose “symbolic universes” were framed by the patterns of mass revolution against capitalism and statism, and of class struggle against managers and bourgeois, to unhook from the eschatological mythology of the end of exploitation and domina­ tion, and to accept the social-democratic version of legal and non-violent

20Goffm an, Fram e Analysis, op. cit., 247. 21A lfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. III. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1966, 123; Relevance, op. cit., 73. 22Alfred Schutz, “Equality and the Meaning Structure o f the Social W orld,” in Collected Papers, vol. II. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1964, 249.

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reformism. Re-framing politics, for them, did not merely involve applying one cognitive map in place of another. It meant, beyond considering alternative scenarios of action, a shifting of their being-in-the-world. Many of them could not, and preferred to keep their dreams, when not opting for terrorism or suicide. The others changed their political culture—i.e., their reference marks in the historical landscape, their relations to memory and project, to heroism and sacrifice, their categories for interpreting and denouncing classes, church and bureaucracy, their appreciations of democracy and law, of representation and negotiation, their existential cartographies of working at the factory and fighting for revolution. They had to learn a new language of politics to believe in its keywords. They had to give up their previous schemes of analysis and their former networks of comrades, they had to master new institutional procedures and to follow new rules of the game. Another problem in connection with the empirical study of political frames of relevance is the problem of scale.23 Their comprehension depends on whether one focuses on large-scale structures and long-term processes, and deals with macro-concepts of state, society, culture, class, organization, and so forth, or whether one tries to ground sociological concepts in samples of micro-events, micro-experiences, and micro-activities. Macro-social phenomena — “big structures” and “huge processes”— are scrutinized sometimes as resulting from aggregation and combination of interaction chains,24 sometimes as being producted by extemalizations and objectifications of intersubjective contexts25 We are not sure that micro- and macro- could be reduced one to another, and we rather think like Goffman, who refused the founding pretentions of micro-sociology; the only thing of which we are sure is that they are relative in space and time, depending on the analytical spectacles we have put on.26

23Sidney Tarrow, “Mentalities, Political Cultures, and Collective Action Frames: Construct­ ing Meanings Through A ction,” in Frontiers in Social M ovement Theory, eds. A.D. Morris and C.M. Mueller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992, 174-202. 24Randall Collins, “On the M icrofoundations o f M acrosociology,” American Journal Sociology 86 (1981): 984-1014. 25Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures o f the Life-World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. 26Erving Goffman, “M icro-sociologie et histoire,” in Le sens de I'ordinaire. H istoricite et quotidiennete, dir. Philippe Fritsch. Editions du CNRS, 1983; Aaron Cicourel, “Notes on the Integration o f Micro and M acro-Levels o f Analysis,” in Advances in Social Theory and

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On a large scale and in the long term, frame analysis concerns itself with “action repertoires” and “master frames” connected to social stratification and conflict patterns or to historical trends and cycles of protest. Action repertoires are stocks of knowledge, symbolism, and technology that the actors mobilize in order to shape their identities and claims and to display their strength and discontent in the public space. Tilly has studied the transformation over time of repertoires of contention— carnivals and charivaris, jacqueries, and machine destructions before the turning point of the Atlantic Revolutions in Europe and in America, as well as street protests and mass meetings after the emergence of labor trade-unions and political parties at the end of the nineteenth century.27 Tarrow conceived of cycles of protest—sequences of escalating collective action which spread throughout the public space, in various areas of social and political activities, and which coin master frames, generating new forms of organization and action, new styles o f culture and identity (e.g.: the post-168 gauchisme in France or terrorism in Italy).28 In contrast, a micro-perspective details subjective mental operations, faceto-face encounters, conversational tum-takings, or use of expressive signs and symbols, in the interval of a few persons, in spatial contexts of co­ presence, during a few seconds or minutes, and keeps in sight the indexical, temporal and interactional dimensions of framing experiences and activities.29 At an intermediate level, a meso-perspective explores the emergence of casts of typical characters, the building and recollecting of life histories, the small group dynamics of identification and differentiation, the interaction rituals of face-work, exchange, and negotiation and the environ­ ment located processes of recruiting and mobilizing constituents for collective actions. Schutz and Goffman’s situational analyses target these micro- and meso-sociological dimensions. The frames of topical, interpre­ tive, and pragmatic relevance co-ordinates are what the actors have to deal with if they want to have efficient and meaningful performances, and if they

Methodology, e d s , Aron Cicourel and Karin Knorr-Cetina. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 27Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, Mass.: Addison-W esley, 1978. 28Sidney Tarrow, Struggling fo r Reform: Social Movements and Policy Change during Cycles o f Protest. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983. 29Ann Rawls, “Language, Self, and Social Order: A Reformulation o f Goffman and Sacks,” Human Studies 12 (1989): 147-172; Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1967.

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aim at coordinating the latter with the other actor’s performances, they are not static. Frames do not stop temporalizing while the actors confront new events and facts in the external world, and while they involve themselves in procedures of assimilation and accomodation to new environments. The same problem applies while they engage in procedures of alignment, adjustment, and adaptation, and while they try “to tune in others”30 and to share horizons of common understandings. The basic link of this process is pragmatic intersubjectivity31through which the actor is linked to his partners, discusses problems of meaning (through conversational exchange or dialogic controversy), and resolves problems of action (by defining means and objectives, choosing values and rules, managing conflict and collaboration). The concept of triadic relevance structure32 pinpoints the dialectics between the reciprocal and asymetrical typification between co-present actors and the typification by these same actors of their common topics. E.g., during semi-routinized and ritualized sessions of negotiation around urban problems, involving the city mayor, representatives of community boards and local associations, experts appointed by the city, and ordinary citizens, the observer may note several dimensions of the ongoing process: categoriz­ ing who is who, identifying the functions of the protagonists, assuming and attributing interactional roles on the spot, agreeing on the rules of interven­ tion during the debate, deciding the hierarchy of topics to be placed on the agenda, organizing teams of allies and adversaries, of active staff and audience, and, at the same time, restating the tasks of the executive and administrative powers, mobilizing law and jurisprudence as resources or curving their meaning as schemes of intervention, assessing what would be the best combination between legal, budgetary, technical, and political constraints. A micro- and meso-perspective accounts for frames of relevance as indefinitely re-framed through contextual and interactional definitions of situations.

30Alfred Schutz, “Fragments on the Phenomenology o f Music,” in Collected Papers Volume IV, eds. Helmut Wagner, George Psathas, and Fred Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996; “M aking Music Together,” in Collected Papers, Vol. II, 159-178. 3lIlja Srubar, Kosmion. Die Genese derpragm atischen Lebenswelttheorie von Alfred Schutz und ihr anthropologischer Hintergrund. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988. 32Richard Grathoff, The Structure o f Social Inconsistencies. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970.

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II. Public Space, Citizenship and Legitimacy Let us shift our attention to what we call public spaces, the constitution of which is opened and kept open by the actor’s frames of relevance. Following Wittgenstein, Garfinkel, and Goffman’s remarks on the social organization of experience through configurations of sensitive and observable indications, we urge a different status of intentions and motives than Schutz. Instead of looking for internal and subjective reasons of externalized and objectified performances, as Schutz sometimes did, the analyst can limit himself to public accounts of actions.33 The latter are ways of configuring and deciphering meaning-contexts through arguments and expressions, narratives, and dramas. Frames of relevance are no longer states of consciousness, but mundane articulations of spaces of public relevances. This line of conceptualization intersects with Arendt’s vision of public space as a “space of appearances,” in which political experiences and activities “take place.”34 The vita activa of politics opens an area of public affairs, which is more than a Parsonian sub-system of the social system and more than a field of common and collective undertakings. It has a dramaturgical dimension, which is accountable in micro-contexts as series of events happening on political stages or in public arenas. When referring to these “spaces of public relevances,” the meaning of “public” is twofold: (1) Public space refers to a specific network of frames of relevance, whose invention and history can be related to the democratic experience.35 Its genesis spans the Athenian agora, the Roman law, the twelth century definitions of the King’s public person and the Crown’s public domain, and the eighteenth century controversies about the increasing autonomy of the civil society from the state and about the constitution of a new collective

33Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman, “Accounts,” American Sociological Review 33 (1968): 46-62. 34Lyn Lofland, “Social Life in the Public Realm,” Journal o f Contemporary Ethnography 17 (1989): 453-481; Isaac Joseph, “ L ’espace public comme lieu de Faction,” Annales de la recherche urhaine (1993): 57-58, 210-217; Isaac Joseph, “Le droit a la ville, la ville a I’ocuvre. Deux paradigmes de la recherche,” Annales de la recherche urbaine 64 (1995): 410; Isaac Joseph, “ Reprendre la rue,” in Prendre place: espaces publics et culture dramatiquc. Rccherches-Plan Urbain, 1995, 5-30. Louis Quere, “Agir dans l’espace public,” in Lex fo rm e s de Vaction, dir. Patrick Pharo and Louis Quere. Paris: Raisons Pratiques, IiHESS, 1990, 85-112; Louis Quere, “L ’espace public comme lieu de Taction collective,” Mana. Revue de sociologie el d'anthropologie, Caen 2 (1996): 235-265. 3S('luudc l.cfort, L invention democralique Paris: Fayard, 1981.

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subject, public opinion?6 This genealogical dimension implies keeping distance from the rational choice version of politics and accepting that the making of democracy requires the sedimentation of political cultures and citizen competences. Public space is not reduced to the aggregation of utilitarian conduct, each individual aiming at maximizing his profits on the market and self-limiting his will according to an hypothetical contract. Neither is public space reduced to the imposition of governing laws and powers to which individuals must submit themselves, bound by an impera­ tive duty to obey the authority of the state. Public space transcends market negotiation and state domination. It is the place for mediation between civil society and state institutions—a place for non-institutional politics and public interest, structured by diverse kinds of collective actors, who express themselves using specific “vocabularies of public life” and who are moved by specific ranges of public motives.37 (2) Public space is a dramaturgical stage, in Goffman’s sense, where actors, while respecting the ritual and legal rules of the game, play typical roles, declaim typical discourses, apply typical routines, follow typical scripts, constantly invent and improvise new scenarios. They constitute themselves as dramatis personae, define themselves as a We opposed to a They in a cast of characters, perform frontstage and backstage actions, designate an audience for which they give the show with protagonists and antagonists, and shape public problems through public interactions. They populate a theatrical world with offenders, victims, witnesses, and experts, who confront one another in diverse public arenas—political meetings and law courts, newspapers columns and television screens. In doing so, they collectively and publicly write the plot of the play. They tell stories through which they report facts, provide justifications, and “ascribe responsibili­ ties”;38 they lean on available “vocabularies of motives” in order to account for actions;39 they build narrative worlds where events are perceived as apocalyptic or unbearable; they stage living theater, die-ins and sit-ins, and

36Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation o f the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category o f Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989. 37Robert W uthnow, Vocabularies o f Public Life: Em pirical Essays in Symbolic Structure. London: Routledge, 1992. 38H.L.A. Hart, “The Ascription o f Responsibility and Rights,” in Proceedings o f the Aristotelian Society, Vol. XLIX, 1949. 39C. Wright Mills, “ Situated Actions and Vocabularies o f Motives "A m erican Sociological Review 6 (1940): 904-913.

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invite the audience to join them;40 they display symbols which compel respect or fear, admiration or indignation, and manipulate affects; they incessantly reproduce inauguration and commemoration rituals, respecting their repetitive sequences. Political life is theatrical. In democratic regimes, the twin problem of the legitimacy of laws and powers and of the formation of public opinion— i.e., the classical problem of the obligation and consent of citizens to obey the public authorities—is at the center of the constitution of public order. Challenges are struggles for the definition of social situations rather than confrontations by means of violence. And these struggles for the definition of social situations are related to their staging in spaces of public relevances. (1) These struggles are, on one hand, conflicts over prominent, if not monopolistic positions in the processes of material and symbolic resource allocation. Public space is then conceived of as a field of battling forces, or as a market of producers and consumers, in which actors try to be the strongest or the richest. The meaning of policies, actions, and events becomes a symbolic resource for the “construction of political spectacles,”41 in order to manufacture consent,42 to impose domination and to produce resignation, to frame situations of non-responsiveness and non-responsibility of the government, and to naturalize situations of inequality and injustice among governed as unavoidable, if not attractive. Some interpret this “imposition” of public relevances in terms of “ideological hegemony,” which confines the citizens in a cognitive and normative Weltanschauung through processes of “symbolic domination”43 they cannot escape. Those who control the “markets of cultural goods” or the uappareils ideologiques d'Etat" have the power to monitor people’s minds and bodies. (2) On the other hand, beyond considerations of resource allocation and the imposition of domination, these struggles should be conceived of as modes of framing stages of public relevances. Through conflicts of interest

40Joseph Gusfield, The Culture o f Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1981; R. Benford and S. Hunt, “ Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication o f Power,” in Social Movements: Critiques, Concepts, Case Studies, ed. Stanford Lyman. New York: MacMillan, 1995; D.A. Snow, L.A. Zurcher, and R. Peters, “Victory Celebrations as Theater: A Dramaturgical Approach to Crowd Behavior,” Symbolic Interaction 4(1981): 21-41. 41M urray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action. Chicago: Markham, 1971. 42Michael Burawoy, M anufacturing Consent. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1979. 43Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique. Paris: Minuit, 1980.

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and opinion, public debates are initiated about what is right and wrong, just and unjust, legal and forbidden, authorized and non-tolerated— one could speak of the search for ethical, juridical and political rationality through free communication. The respect of laws and the compliance to powers depend on the satisfactory fulfillment of the citizen’s meaning expectations. They do not want only material comfort and security. They also require moral and political coherence in their leader’s performances and decisions; they demand rights and justice, their maintenance and extension in the civil, social, and political world.44 The problem of authority and legitimacy cannot be resolved with the classical arguments of the fear of punishment and of the calculus of profit and loss. Ordinary citizens are not passive targets of political technology. Even in usual situations of interaction between the governing and the governed, obedience remains a subject to debate and protest. A politician who infringes on the rules of civility on national television and ignores the moral judg­ ments of his electors, loses favor with them. A government which constantly breaks its promises and fails to give credible justifications creates a climate of cynicism or rebellion among citizens. Power in democracies is the product of a tension between a principle of collective liberty and responsibility and a principle of sovereignty of the state, of legality of the law. Power acts through an ongoing process of concertation and deliberation; consent depends neither on free will to obey, nor on crude coercion. Authority and legitimacy are ensured by the recurrent acceptance of the constitutional frame, by implicit agreement with the system of checks and balances between institutions, and by the free unfolding of public arenas in which public opinions emerge through interactions between institutional, collective, and individual actors. From this point of view, we can put in new terms the notion of ideological misrepresentation. Why are even the worst phenomena of domination not grasped as obvious, why do people bear situations of injustice without protesting, why do they not overthrow the businessmen and politicians they condemn, why are collective conditions seen through the lens of individual­ ism? Answers other than ideological alienation are plausible, if one tries to understand life-contexts of ordinary citizens from their own perspective. These do not necessarily feel self-legitimated in giving their opinions; the

44W illiam Garrison, Bruce Fireman, and Steven Rytina, Encounters with Unjust Authority. Homewood, 111.: Dorsey Press, 1982.

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high rate of the category of “no answer” in survey research among the poorest in economic and cultural capital evidences this point. They might have neither the time nor the money to deal with politics, since they are overwhelmed by private tasks and problems and must waste their energy to sustain their daily life.45 Actions whose results are uncertain are perceived as risky or useless; quiescence and passivity are more fruitful than political struggle, from an egoistic point of view. The chances of having an impact on public policies depend on opportunities, like electoral changes or dramatic events, which augment the chances of mobilization and of innovation. These restrictions given, power and law have to be taken for granted, if they are to be obeyed. The grammar of power and law is evident in routinized and ritualized situations. Practically nobody contests the government decisions or the Parliamentary votes. Respect is due to the manifestations of the town-hall, the police, or the court. However, moral discredit, civil disobedience, passive resistance, or collective rebellion spread when authority and legitimacy break down. From a macro-perspective, the “historically transmitted, socially sanctioned and inter subjectively shared” frames of relevance, which script and stage the organization of power settings, are no longer working. From a micro-perspective, rhetorical arguments and dramaturgical scenarios, though once taken for granted, fail to convince the citizens: the latter refuse to have their minds shaped by government, corporations, or mass media propaganda, which is considered as a lying fa9ade. The meaning of citizenship can be re-stated in this perspective. The political culture of discouragement and acceptance confront tactics of resistance to the political and legal order: evasion, sabotage, false compli­ ance, and feigned ignorance are the “weapons of the weak.”46These practical bricolages are part of subcultures or countercultures and are intertwined with conducts of riot, hyperconformism, or delinquency. Beside these pragmatic devices, people can choose to be actors in public life, adopting civic matrices of experience and action. Specific ideas of right and justice, targets of indignation and bearers of responsibility, chains of causes and consequences, and visions of a potential future, because-motives and in order to-motives, articulate the frames of relevance of civic contexts. Citizenship is not only defined by formal criteria of civil, political, and social rights. It is embodied

45Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction. Paris: Minuit, 1979. 46Michel de Certeau, L 'invention du quotidien. Arts de faire. Paris: UGE, 10/18, 1980.

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in the lifeworlds of ordinary citizens who deal with public affairs. Far from being condemned to civic incapacity, ordinary citizens have their own ways of reasoning and judging, of deliberating and evaluating, of constructing arguments and expressing emotions, of building political universes. They combine experiential knowledge, popular wisdom, and media discourse.47 They extrapolate from everyday situations to social and political problems (metaphor of the family to think of the political body); they recount anecdotes about themselves or acquaintances as illustrations of broader problems (e.g., racial or sexist discrimination on work settings); they invoke common sense rules of thumb, proverbs and maxims (“it’s human nature!,” “as everybody knows . . . ”); they comment on public figures, their qualities and imperfections, as if they were intimates (popular psychology of politicians); they recollect public events which remain in the collective memory (Chernobyl or Three Mile Island as emblematic of nuclear accidents); they connect current contexts with transcendent provinces of meaning (the Reign of God, the Custom of the Ancestors, the Tribunal of Reason). Actors give meaning to their practices, using interpretive and pragmatic schemes, making citizens of themselves. These schemes are available in objectified and externalized stocks of knowledge, stores of typical resources such as rhetorical languages and organizational techniques. Democratic symbolism or nationalist mythology, protest songs or meeting ceremonials are examples of these systems of signs and symbols, these matrices of appresentative references which permeate the political world. These schemes are equally mastered as habitualized dispositions that the actors have internalized through political socialization and which generate their ways of perceiving and practicing, thinking and speaking, expressing and judging, working and communicating. Understanding a clash of party lines, choosing a representative according to her electoral campaign, criticizing the agenda of local authorities, commenting on a geopolitical conflict with no impact on one’s life, having enthusiasm for a public policy, creating a civic association, condemning a government decision—all of those require- the specific competences of the citizen. Contexts of citizenship, where such resources are mobilized and such competences actualized, are constituted as dramaturgical stages, where

47Gamson, Talking Politics, op. cit.

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public authorities are accountable to their electors for what they do, and where opinions are freely expressed within public attention. III. Framing Activity, Mass Media, and Collective Action Ordinary citizens are not dumb and passive subjects. They have perspec­ tives on public life, which are more partial and practical than the political scientist’s, which do not aim at a systematic and exhaustive knowledge, and which are not tied by constraints of objectivity and impartiality. They have their own “relatively natural views” of the social and political world, which are related to their life-plans, to their biographic situations, and to their contextual “systems of interests.” Their lifeworlds have specific domains of relevance, hierarchies of objectives, agendas of priorities, sets of convictions and opinions. The man on the street is not an expert. He orients himself, leaning on common sense stocks of knowledge, and following the landmarks and signposts of existential “maps of isohypses.” Nor is the well-informed citizen an expert. He rather tries “to look for information and form a reasonable opinion,” by experiencing a multiplicity of “possible frames of reference,” digging further than the prejudices of common sense, feeling responsibility for topics without direct concern in everyday affairs, and using his capacity for critical reflection to make sense of public affairs.48 Public space is not a homogeneous place of circulation of information. It is structured by social and political distributions of knowledge. Schutz mentions a series of mediators whose function is to shape and frame visions of the world for addressees: the eye-witness, who has first-hand knowledge of the events he has lived through; the insider, who is acquainted with contexts of experience to which I have no access; the commentator and the analyst, who collect data from various origins, perform typifications and comparisons, verifications and inferences on this material, and invent new trends of description, explanation, and interpretation; finally, the historiogra­ pher, the editorialist, the teacher, the reporter, and the propagandist are other ideal-typical figures of mediators, whose professional duty is to transmit knowledge to the public. A sociology of public space then becomes possible. It would display, on one hand, the objective institutions and circuits of knowledge production and diffusion, popularization and consumption; it

48A lfred Schutz, “The W ell-Inform ed Citizen: An Essay on the Social Distribution of K nowledge,” in Collected Papers, Vol. II, op. cit., 129-131.

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would explore, on the other hand, the constitution of public definitions of situations, configurations of discourse and action, and appreciations of laws and policies. Mass media are central institutions in this process. They organize frames of relevance through which factual and ideational elements are clustered and held together. Exemplary stories, catch phrases, visual images, ideological slogans, ironic jokes, metaphoric devices, and appeals to morality are publicized in daily TV network news, national magazine accounts, or syndicated opinion columns. More or less sophisticated narratives are plotted and staged, organizing intense emotions, shocking images, exceptional events, heroic performances, culminating in dramatic climaxes and tragic denouements. Tight constraints rule the journalist’s work. Independently of economic costs and political pressions, news is packaged into short items and displayed in ranking order, conditioned by competition with other news. To call and catch the attention of mass media, social movement leaders have to frame their actions in a certain way. They emphasize events and attenuate others, they spotlight facts and stress values, they try to make their challenge more attractive than other public problems. They concatenate information, draw out short series of themes, interpretive reasonings, and arrange practical sequences. They dramatize a supportive climate in order to strike the affectivity and imagination of the audience and to impose their claims on political authorities. What happens on the public stage of broadcast news has crucial effects on the formation of public opinion and on the constitution of public agendas. Mass media design a virtual theatrum mundi. They determine the protagonists of public affairs, distribute blame and honour, galvanize and focus sentiments, play on ranges of symbols, stabilize the reality of public events, and give existence to public actions. The whole world is watching.49 Mass media have been among the main operators of national unification; they are now the predominant vector of the globaliza­ tion of culture in the world oecumene. This dramaturgical dimension of public relevance is even more pregnant in public meetings, in encounters with “unjust authorities,” or with “counter­

49Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching. Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1980; Gaye Touchman, M aking News: A Study in the Construction o f Reality. New York: The Free Press, 1978; H erbert Gans, D eciding W hat's News: A Study o f C BS E vening News, N B C N ightly News, Newsweek, and Time. New York: Pantheon, 1979.

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movement groups.”50 Public meetings are places and moments to test the dramatic discipline and dramatic loyalty of a group.51 Participants have to preserve an image of team solidarity, avoiding the formulation of criticism on the front stage and the divulging of strategic secrets to the audience. They have to take part in the show without privatizing the roles they are playing and by that discrediting the collective face-work in the name of their personal ambitions. Public meetings, when they find the successful balance between typical and routinized formats and emotional and eventful courses, trigger dynamics o f micro-mobilization and micro-recruitment. Winners of rhetorical battles, the activists stimulate incentives for new supporters; they embarrass and discredit their opposition by publicly unveiling backstage tricks and schemes, making them lose face; they impose their analyses as the most relevant, they conquer the minds of spectators and listeners; they activate governmental control and decision levers by orienting a cone of light on neglected themes. Public meetings give opportunities to symbolic actions, whose resonance provokes unexpected effects.52 New “domains of relevance” gain public legitimacy,53 re-articulating “sets of interrelated problems” in a new key; new networks of allies and adversaries come into view, joining the cast of collective characters on the public stage. One of the problems to which social movements are confronted, despite the fact that they have the same conditions of life, suffer the same griev­ ances, and oppose the same enemies, is the fragmentation and unreceptiveness of their potential audience. The common world of ordinary citizens is shared intersubjectively and stabilized objectively, taken for granted until further notice, or until counter-evidence. Activists have to de­ naturalize this “relatively natural view” of the common world, proposing alternative versions of what is happening, making unproblematic situations problematic.54 They engage in controversies around themes and

50Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina, Encounters with Unjust Authority, op. cit. 5’Erving Goffman, The Presentation o f S e lf in Everyday Life. New Y ork: Doubleday Anchor, 1959, 212 sq; Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology o f Interaction. Indianapolis: BobbsMerril, 1961; Relations in Public: Microstudies o f the Public Order. New Y ork: Basic Books, 1971. 52Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Interaction. Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1966. 53Schutz, “Equality and the Meaning Structure o f the Social W orld,” op. cit., 235. 54Schutz, Relevance, op. cit., 22.

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counterthemes55that gather in interpretive landscapes. For instance, the main axis in political rhetoric today opposes free market and state regulation, expert decision and collective deliberation, lobbying liberalism and popular democracy, self-responsibility and social mutuality, bread-and-butter worry and public interest concern. One can encounter these pairs in international debates, electoral campaigns confrontations, public policy justifications, and local union strike proclamations. Another example of this competition between frames of relevance can be found in the public arena around affirmative action with, on one hand, the civil rights, gender, and race movement advocates and, on the other hand, the conservative govemement administration or the white ethnic revival movement. One can observe antagonistic arguments: “remedial action frame”56 (e.g., equal opportunity programs against structural collective injustice) confronts “the individual discrimination frame” (e.g., treatment of persons on the base of gender and race rather than attested qualifications). One can report on antagonistic dramatizations: “responsibilization and victimization frames” alternate, setting forth the opposite versions of black people suffering from an ancestral exploitation vs. white people penalized by an unjust law. What is at stake in this battle over semantics, parallel to the definition of social situations, is the definition of collective actors. Collective actions are adversarial. They aggregate a fictive We, which can be a social movement organization, a territorial or a corporative group, a category of class, race, or gender, and even “humanity” in the case of environmentalist or pacifist issues. This We opposes a fictive You or They,57 for instance: multinational firms producing hunger and pollution, state imperialisms generating war and underdevelopment, dominant classes prospering on poverty and ignorance, Whites against Blacks, Men against Women, Heteros against Homos, and so on (“capitalist pigs,” “male chauvinists”. . .). This typification of We, You, and They, and the typification of their mutual relationships as protagonistic and antagonistic is an important dimension of action frames. It consists in what Schutz has described as symbolic appresentation of collective actors through a self-organization and self-identification of groups by themselves

55Gamson, Talking Politics, op. cit., 85 and 135. 56W illiam Gamson and A. Modigliani, “M edia Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Pow er,” American Journal o f Sociology 95 (1989): 1-38. 57Schutz, “Equality and the Meaning Structure o f the Social W orld,” op. cit., 244.

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and through a symbolic interaction between in-groups and out-groups. This typification of We, You, and They is not only a structural determination, but a contextual one as well. The meaning of symbols, beyond their semantic articulation, depends on pragmatic variations o f circumstances: they are occasional expressions, referring to multiples realities, changing within situations of encounter and conflict. What is important is that as long as an individual feels lonely and has a private vision of Self, he will not have any reason to transcend the circle of his domestic preoccupations. The identification of an I with a We and of a Thou with a You requires the symbolization of values such as social rights, public interest, collective utility, or common humanity, as well as of subjects called the People, Workers, Civil Society, or the Progressive Party. Indeed, one of the characteristics of the new social movements that emerged in the 1970s and the 1980s, is the redefinition of eveyday ways of life and the discovery of new paths of experience, which means the invention of new cultures and the promotion of new identities. Under this aspect, the economistic and utilitarist paradigm of resource mobilization misses what is most important. Clusters of types and symbols, interpretive and pragmatic schemes, are not only tools that permit us to reach objectives or to gain profits. They are also components of frames of relevance that give access to the perception of Selves and Others, to the apprehension and appreciation of reality, to the justification of actions in terms of truth, right, and justice. The language of strategy nevertheless has its own validity. Activists have to engage in frame alignment processes in order to recruit, mobilize, unify, and identify the movement constituents.58 Various strategies have been identified: frame bridging, or “the linkage of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem”; frame amplification, or “the clarification and invigoration of an interpretive frame that bears on a particular issue, problem or set of events”; frame extension, or “the expansion of the boundaries of a movement’s primary framework so as to encompass interests or points of view that are incidental to its primary objectives, but of considerable salience to potential adherents”; frame transformation, or “the redefinition of activities, events and biographies that are already meaningful from the standpoint of some primary framework, such that they are now seen by the participants to be

58Snow, Burke, Worden, and Benford, “Frame Alignment Processes, M icromobilization, and M ovement Participation,” op. cit., 467-474.

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quite something else.” Symbolic interactionists or exchange theoreticians would speak of a continuing process of “bargaining” or “negotiation.” La metaphore est malheureuse, because it induces a confusion between the economic market and the political space lexicons. The problem lies in bringing different people to share common frames of relevance, encouraging claims and generating consenses, mobilizing energies and reinforcing identities. Inaccurate accounts can be very fruitful from this point of view: legends and myths provide themes which touch affectivity and imagination, which stimulate feelings of indignation and injustice, which idealize visions of alternative ways of life, and which connect people’s pespectives one with another. This “tuning in”59 is not necessarily a dialogic intercomprehension. The important point is to link up lifeworlds. For instance, environmentalist frames federate people around diverse interpretive and motivational themes, like love of nature, hate of progress, refusal of a police state, and defence of soft technologies. * *

*

Making sense of politics does not consist of using the social and political science tools in order to compare schemes of description, explanation, and interpretation and to assess the advantages and disadvantages of different scenarios of action. Relevance, far from being restricted to diagnosis and prognosis, deals with the imaginary and symbolic as well. Projecting new matrices of appresentative references and shaping new ways of configuring public space is equivalent to inventing a new “political society” as a cosmion.60 Schutz, quoting Voegelin, touches on a basic topic of political philosophy: “A political society comes into existence when it articulates itself and produces a representative”; it becomes itself “the representative of something beyond itself, of a transcending reality.”61 The rationalist and positivist version of politics falls short; no political society exists as an “elemental” set of objective institutions without an “existential” order of appresentative references to make it hang together, give it representation,

59Schutz, “M aking M usic Together,” op. cit., 161 sq and 173 sq. 60Alfred Schutz, “Symbol, Reality, and Society,” in Collected Papers, vol. I., op. cit., 353. 61Eric Voegelin, The New Science o f Politics: An Introduction. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1952, 41 and 54; Schutz, “Symbol, Reality, and Society,” op. cit., 355.

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and anchor it in imaginary or symbolic transcendences. The paradox is that political societies fail at founding themselves in pure immanence and transparency; their “self-interpretation” grants them a heteronomous foundation. But this is another story. Sociology and history of public spaces here reach a limit of validity, beyond which political philosophy is to be acknowledged in its own rights.

Chapter 8

Schutz on Lifeworld and C ultural Difference Yu, Chung-Chi Tamkang University, Taiwan Abstract: The relationship between the lifeworld and cultural difference according to Schutz is discussed. The concept o f “appresentation ” that Schutz adapted from Husserl is essential fo r his lifeworld theory and interpretations o f culture. Schutz’s notion o f “universal symbolism ” is brought forth at the end in order to question the account’s consistency. I. Introduction The lifeworld is a field with which ordinary people in their everyday living have direct contact. Different philosophers have offered different accounts concerning this “direct contact.” For Edmund Husserl, the initiator of this notion, it happens by means of perception. The lifeworld is accord­ ingly a world of perception.1Alfred Schutz is concerned with the foundation of the social sciences and sees it in another way. The direct contact is not by perception, but by practical action. The lifeworld is in principle a field of human actions that he names the world of working ( Wirkwelt). In addition, the lifeworld is never the world of a single person. There are always other people in the world. That is, the lifeworld is from the beginning an intersubjective social world. The existence of this concrete world of practical action and intersubjectivity is for the people who live in the so-called natural attitude never in doubt. Schutz speaks of a kind of epoche,2 which he calls the epoche of the natural attitude. The world, understood by such ordinary people, can be expressed explicitly as follows:

1 E. Husserl, Die K risis der europdischen Wissenschften und die transzendentale Phanomenologie, in Husserliana Vol. VI. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954, 136; The Crisis o f European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trs. David Carr. Evanston: Northw estern U niversity Press, 1970, 133. Also cf. B. W aldenfels, In den Netzen der Lebenswelt. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1985, 15. 2 Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers Vol. III. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1966, 229. Abbr. CP III. L ester E m b ree (ed.) Schutzian Social Science, 1 5 9 -1 7 2 .© 1999 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P ublishers. P rin ted in th e N e th erla n d s.

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1. It has many objects with specific properties; we act among these objects, they sometimes appear as objects for our actions who need to be dominated. 2. It is an intersubjective world; we always have practical interests in it. 3. The everyday lifeworld itself appears as the scene of our action, but sometimes it might appear as an object of our actions, such as when we want to modify the world just as the world has always already modified us.3 The two following parts are dedicated to the explication of the two grounding moments of the lifeworld in Schutz’s conception, the social world and the world of practical actions. II. The Social World The social world is the main concept in the earlier work The Phenomenol­ ogy o f the Social World (Der Sinnhafte Aufbau der Sozialen Welt, 1932). In this book Schutz is concerned with the problem of how the meaning of the social world is constituted, i.e., how can the social world originally be a meaningful world? Schutz sees the answer in reflection. He says: ...m eaning is a certain way o f directing one’s gaze at an item o f one’s own experience. This item is thus ‘selected out’ and rendered discrete by a reflexive act. Meaning indicates, therefore, a peculiar attitude on the part o f the Ego toward the flow o f its own duration.4

The notion of reflection is inseparable from cne consciousness of time. An action in process has no meaning for the self performing it; it gets meaning for him only as the object of reflection or anticipation, which is a kind of

3 Alfred Schutz, G liederungsentw urffar die "Strukturen der Lebensw elt" anhand der "Karteikarten, " in Alfred Schutz/Thomas Luckmann, Strukturen der Lebenswelt Vol. II. Frankfurt a. M: Suhrkamp, 1984, 367 (File Card Nr. 4061); “Project Outline for ‘Structures o f the Life-w orld’ based on the ‘File-Cards,’” in Alfred Schutz/Thomas Luckmann, The Structures o f the Life-world. Vol. II, trs. Richard J. Zaner and David M. Parent. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1983, 293 (File Card Nr. 4061). Abbr. SL II, Project. 4 Alfred Schutz, Phenomenology o f the Social World, trs. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert. Evanston, 111: Northwestern University Press, 1967, 42. Abbr. PSW.

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pre-reflection (cf. PSW, 74f.). The action in the “project” plays here an important role, because it shows itself to be the intention and therefore the meaning of the action by which the real praxis is oriented. As they under­ stand each other, the people in the social world understand in principle each other’s projects. The constituted action, i.e., the project rather than the action in the process, is what the people in their ordinary living care about.5 Schutz conceives subjective and objective meaning as follows: I can, on the one hand, attend to and interpret in themselves the phenomena o f the external world which present themselves to me as indications o f the conscious­ ness o f other people. When I do this, I say o f them that they have objective m eaning. But I can, on the other hand, look over and through these external indications into the constituting process within the living consciousness of another rational being. What I am then concerned with is subjective meaning.6

Consequently, we may say that the people in their everyday living mostly care about the objective meaning rather than the subjective meaning of the other’s actions, which means that, so long as the actions of other people respond to our expectations will we not be interested to know how other people understand their own actions. We will, for example, not be interested to know how a postman is motivated to bring the post, we care only about that he does bring the post, which is our expectation of him. The social world is a meaningful world, since the people in their everyday living can understand each other by way of grasping each others’s planned actions. The way people understand each other is in mutual interactions rather than theoretical observation. The observational attitude might happen in their ordinary living on the occasion that I, for instance, abstain from the mutual interaction and withdraw into reflective thinking. But this observa­ tion, which Schutz calls the “umweltliche Beobachtung” is still quite different from the “mitweltliche Beobachtung," which is characteristic of the ways of observation in the social sciences.7 If the meaningfulness of the social world is founded on inner timeconsciousness and the latter is quite subjective, then the meaning of mutual interaction might in the end be founded on subjective consciousness. It seems, accordingly, that the Schutzian understanding of the social world

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might not be very much different from that of the Husserlian transcendental position which lays much emphasis on subjective consciousness. But Schutz definitely wants to avoid this identification.8His goal lies in the development of a constitutive phenomenology o f the natural attitude.9The meaning of the social world cannot be exclusively founded on the subjective inner consciousness because of the bodily aspect of practical action. This means that the notion of practical action—working ( Wirken)—comes to forth after The Phenomenology o f the Social World was completed. III. The World of Working ( Wirkwelt) The notion of “working” ( Wirken) is not absent in the PSW, but it is not fully articulated there.10 In the unpublished texts of 1936 he introduces this notion explicitly. There he defines Wirken as follows: Das Wirken also.. .ist charaterisiert als Pragma mit Vorsatz und Entwurf, welches dadurch realisiert wird, daB der bewegte Leib in den Raum eingreift"

The field constituted by the practical action or working is accordingly called “the world of working” (Wirkwelt). The Wirkwelt is the most real sphere for ordinary people. Reality shows itself specifically by way of materiality. The material reality is not at all something to be explained or proved, but rather something to be encountered. On the ground that such obstacle-experience at best reveals the reality or the existence of material objects, Schutz argues that reality is constituted by Wirken}2 Due to these realities I am not able to do just anything as I wish; for instance, I cannot jump over a mountain like a bird flies over it. In imagination this is not impossible, but not in reality. As a normal person one must always

8 Ibid., 230. 9 Ib id , 56. 10 For example, he speaks o f “Fremdwirken" (PSW, 147), “soziales Wirken" (PSW , 148) and “ Wirkensbeziehung” (PSW, 154). In addition, he makes use of the terminology “ Wirken” not seldom in quite a lot o f passages. But the relationship between “Wirken," “Verhalten,” and “H andeln” is not at all made clear. 11 “Thus, working is characterized as a pragm a with Vorsatz and project through which it becomes realized that the moving body is grasped in space.” (my own translation) in Alfred Schutz, "Das Problem der Personalitat in der Sozialwelt" (1936), unpublished, 73 (6)/7164. 12 Ib id , 74(7)/7165.

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presuppose such “knowledge” before he takes real actions. The “obstacles” which wait to be conquered calls Schutz “the ontological structure of the world” (die ontologische Struktur der Welt).n Certainly materiality does not alone constitute the obstacles to our actions, for not all physically possible things are permitted in the social world. This can be easily realized if we see that there exist moral and legal rules in all human societies. Both nature and society constitute the basic frames of our activities in the lifeworld.14 One must take them into consideration, or else we will act like Don Quixote.15 Since the 1936 writings Wirkwelt has become a central notion for Schutz. He always refers to it talking about the everyday lifeworld (Alltagswelt) and lifeworld (Lebenswelt) itself. He sometimes equates Wirkwelt, Alltagswelt, and Lebenswelt, although in later writings he did recognize the differences between them.16 According to the above explication, the notion of the social world and the notion of the world of practical action constitute the basic characteristics of the Schutzian notion of lifeworld. Now we might ask: Whence comes the problem of cultural difference? How is the notion of cultural difference be related to lifeworld? How does Schutz understand “cultural difference”? In order to answer these questions it might be useful to see how Schutz deals with “cultural objects,” first in PSW and then in his later writings. IV. Schutz on “Cultural Objects” In PSW Schutz talks about the cultural object using the notion of Mitwelt. In the relationship which is not face-to-face, we can characterize the objects only with typifications. In this way the objects do not show themselves in

13 SL II, Project, 181 (File Card Nr. 1017). 14 Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers Vol. I. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, 330. Abbr.

CPI. 15 Schutz refers to Don Quixote in many passages, particularly in dealing with the “multiple realities” theory. Through the sharp contrast between Don Quixote, who indulges in the world o f imagination, and his servant Sancho Pansa, who embodies the common-sense thinking, Schutz wants to reveal the indubitable consequences o f failing to take the comm on-sense w orld, i.e., the everyday lifeworld, as the param ount reality. Cf. Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers Vol.II. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1964, 135f. Abbr. CP II; also cf. CP I, 236f. 16 Basically, the everyday lifeworld, which is based on the Wirkwelt, constitutes the core o f Lifeworld, which contains many “sub-universes” or “finite provinces o f m eaning,” such as the w orld o f im agination, dream, science, religion, etc. in accordance with his “multiple realities” theory (Cf. CP I, 208f.).

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their vivid particularity. This particularity is nothing but an individuation of a certain type. A typified other person is in fact something which is projected by a subject; it can never be fully realized in the real world. Such projection is indispensable because it embodies some functions that are necessary in everyday living. There are for example postmen who deliver letters, bus drivers who transport passengers, or officials who work for the government. Now in the Mitwelt there exist not only alter egos, but also cultural objects. They include more abstract objects like state, art, language, etc., and more concrete objects like vehicles, utensils, paintings, etc. What differentiates them from the alter egos is that they can never be embodied with a consciousness. The alter egos are taken to possess the “subjektiver Sinnzusammenhang,” whereas the cultural objects possess only the “objektiver Sinnzusammenhang." That means that the cultural objects cannot be thought to behave like individual persons.17 In his later writings, Schutz himself does not deal with “cultural objects” explicitly as he does in the PSW. Yet in the paper “Symbol, Society and Reality” he reveals some of his ideas. In order to inquire into his viewpoints, the methodological ground of this paper, i.e., the concept of “appresentation,” should be first clarified. 1. Husserl on Appresentation The concept of appresentation originates in Husserl. He uses it to explicate the experience of the other, i.e., the alter ego {Fremderfahrung). For him it is a mediate intentionality (Mittelbarkeit der Intentionalitat), i.e., it is a kind of making co-present through association with the direct experience.18 Husserl deals with Fremderfahrung by asking the question: What takes me from my pure primordial sphere (primordiale Sphare) to the other subject? The pure primordial sphere is arrived at, according to Husserl, through the second epoche (the first is the transcendental phenomenological reduction). It is a sphere of pure consciousness without any reference to an other ego.

17 Schutz talks about the personification o f a state, as for example, “[t]he political cartoonist shows us Uncle Sam conversing with John Bull and M arianne” (CP 1, 353). But he objects to such high-order personalities, as he emphasizes that every “action” o f the state can be reduced to the actions o f its functionaries. Thus for Schutz cultural objects have higher degree o f anonymity. (Cf. PSW, 198f.) 18 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trs. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1973, 109. Abbr. CM.

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In this sphere egos do not appear as selves with psychological contents. They are just bodies (Korper). Then, through the similarities of his body with mine, which Husserl names “pairing,” the body of alter ego is recognized as like mine, that is, it possesses also the meaning of animate organism (LeibSinn). The other ego’s body becomes, namely, also a body with a waltendes Ich with many psychological properties.19 All these “inner parts” cannot be directly experienced, hence a mediate intentionality, i.e., appresentation, becomes indispensable. Husserl emphasizes that the appresentation never occurs alone, but is always accompanied by the direct presentation. Here it should be noticed that appresentation is not equivalent for Husserl to the pairing association, because it has nothing to do with the relation between two data at all. Rather it is a way of appearing, as we have just mentioned, which could at best be applied to the appearing of an alter ego, since the alter ego is understood by Husserl as the “accessibility o f what is not originally accessible” {die Zuganglichkeit des unzuganglichen).20 He can only be indirectly experienced. The relationship between direct and indirect appearing is quite similar to that of the pairing association, but Husserl never calls it pairing. Pairing refers for him always to my body and that of the alter ego. 2. Schutz on Appresentation What differentiates Schutz from Husserl concerning appresentation is that Schutz understands this concept as a pairing between two data in conscious­ ness. Appresentation is therefore for him the pairing association between appresenting and appresented data.21 He takes this pairing association to be a common phenomenon among the psychological and transcendental spheres of consciousness. Accordingly, the appresentation could be applied not only to the Fremderfahrung, but also to any experience of transcendence, i.e., any experience of things that do not directly appear here and now, for example, things in memories and expectations, in scientific models, and, in religious

19 Cf. ibid. 119. 20 Ibid. 114. 21 Schutz interprets the Husserlian notion o f appresentation as such, but a careful study reveals that this conception o f appresentation is quite his own, hence it is reasonable to treat this as his own conception. Cf. CP I, 294f.

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beliefs. Also the inner world of the alter ego and the self-illuminations of cultural objects o f other cultures belong to it.22 Moreover, what is new in the Schutzian notion of appresentation is a relation between two orders or realms, not just two data. His idea is founded on the awareness that no experience occurs without a horizon. Each side of the appresentational relation must rely on its background or order.23 For example, one side may belong to the physical world, the other to the cultural world. Schutz explicates his viewpoint using a flag as an example. If we see a flag as representing something, such as a state, a land, an institution, a team, or anything else, then there appears in the flag an appresentational relationship between the physical and the ideal spiritual world. On the occasion that we do not recognize the flag as a “flag,” but just as a material thing, then this appresentational relation is broken. The same flag continues to belong to the physical world, but no longer representing something else, or in the terminology of Schutz, no experience of transcen­ dence is possible through it. In this situation we perceive the flag as a flag, something belonging only to the physical world, that is to say, only the apperceptional scheme is functioning, not the appresentational scheme.24 Certainly we may also make use of the appresentational scheme to perceive something in the same way in the physical world. We may, for example, “see” the fire by just perceiving the smoke. Both smoke and fire belong to the same order, namely the physical world. Likewise two things in the realm o f mind, for example, the unicorn— a product of imagina­ tion— and chastity as an abstract idea may also have the appresentational relation. Schutz objects definitely to the conception that the appresenting side of the appresentational relation must belong to the physical world. What he denies is that the pure experience in the lifeworld in the Husserlian sense is the fundamental experience.25 The problem of pure experience will be discussed again later. On the ground of appresentation, Schutz explains phenomena like mark, indication, sign, and symbol which he calls the appresentational references. All of them are the means to overcome the above mentioned different experiences of transcendence. Schutz regards the appresentational references

22 Cf. CP I, 306. 23 Ib id , 297. 24 Ib id , 299. 25 Ib id , 297; SL II, Project, 269 (File Card Nr. 30880-

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to be essentially useful for the everyday living of the ordinary people in the lifeworld. He says: “the reality of everyday life.. as a sociocultural world, is permeated by appresentational references.”26 3. Schutz on Culture and Society We have mentioned above that Schutz does not deal with “cultural objects” explicitly in his later writings. One can only read his conceptions between the lines. Due to this vagueness he might not be correctly under­ stood. His close acquaintance Aron Gurwitsch, for example, comments after reading the symbol-paper as follows: [I]n various places you say that a “thing” is transformed into a cultural object by appresentation. I am not so sure about that, although it is good Husserl. . . . Behind all o f these theories is H usserl’s idea o f a level o f “pure experience” within the life-world, a level which is taken to be the basis on which other levels are built up. I have always had my doubts about this theory. If I take socialcultural objects, I understand how they can become “bodies” by means of unbuilding [Abbau] or some similar process; but if I begin with bodies as the fundamental level, there are difficulties in getting to the cultural objects.27

Gurwitsch does not mention the way a thing (ein Ding) becomes a cultural object by means o f appresentation. But one can obviously see what he refers to. They are examples like the place where Jacob dreams of God becoming God’s house and an oven is more that just a fireplace etc.,28 Gurwitsch wonders if such a conception of cultural objects might not remind us of that of Husserl? That is, does there exist at first the level of pure experience in the lifeworld and then the Aufbau of the cultural object? The relationship between “a thing” and a cultural object is accordingly to be understood as a relationship between the founding and the founded. In the eyes of Gurwitsch this is the way Husserl understands culture. For Husserl the pure experience in the lifeworld is the perceptual experience of nature which is valid for all cultures. For example, the fact that marble is hard cannot be denied by

26 CP I, 347. 27 Richard G rathoff (ed.), Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence o f A lfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitch, 1939-/9 59, trs. J. Claude Evans. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989, 232. Abbr. Correspondence. 28 Cf. CP I, 337; 353.

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whatever cultural interpretations. Such facts in perception are what Husserl calls the fundamental level of pure experience which is the foundation of all different cultural experiences. Is Schutz’s conception of culture the same? Is there no difference between Schutz and Husserl, as Gurwitsch suggests? Since Gurwitsch is in doubt about the validity of the Husserlian notion of culture, he has doubts about Schutz’s notion. For Gurwitch the so-called fundamental level is not at all fundamental, rather it is the result of abstraction; only through Abbau from the cultural object might we see the founding level. Schutz in his reply agrees with his colleague about this point. Nor will he accept Husserl’s idea that there exists in the first place the pure experience and then the stage of culture. But he would not follow Gurwitsch when the latter tries to explain cultural phenomena with notions like Aufbau and Abbau. On the contrary he sees the crucial point, in the social conditions within which a thing “becomes” a cultural object. With the examples of witchdoctors in primitive societies and apparatus in the modem science he explains: “the contents of the bag of a primitive witch doctor or a cyclotron is only considered to be a cultural object by the ‘expert.’”29 Whether a thing could be treated as a cultural object depends essentially on the social conditions. Only the members of the ‘in-group”— be it a nation, a social level or just an interest-club— will be able to recognize the cultural value of something. They are the experts in this field, if we use “expert” in the broadest sense. Schutz says: “ ...each of us has precise and distinct knowledge only about that particular field in which he is an expert. Among experts a certain technical knowledge is taken for granted, but exactly this technical knowledge is inaccessible to the layman.”30 For the people who do not belong to this group these things have no cultural meaning at all. If they want to understand it, then they have no other way than just learning, especially by a process of acculturation.31 Schutz offers an example of Arabian calligraphy: A c a llig ra p h ic o rn a m e n t (fo r e x am p le, a P e rsia n m a n u s c rip t o f a v e rse fro m th e K o ra n ) is, fo r th o se o f u s w h o c a n ’t re a d P e rsia n , a p p e rc e p tu a lly a n d o n ly

29 Correspondence, 237. 50 CP I, 350. 31 Schutz says: “ . . . I have to learn the typical distribution o f knowledge prevailing in this group, and this involves knowledge o f the appresentational, referential and interpretative schem es. . . w hich each o f the subgroups takes for granted and applies to its respective appresentational reference.” (CP 1, 351)

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apperceptually perceived as a pattern o f this and that ornamental configuration, perhaps in addition as the stylized letter o f a language unknown to us, perhaps in addition as the belonging to Arabic. But no pairing to an “appresentational” or “referential scheme” has occurred.32

In other words, the configurations in the calligraphy do not have appresentational references at all for the people who do not understand Arabic—the laymen who do not speak and read Arabic at all. In order to let these cultural meanings (the appresentational references) appear, the “outsider” just has to learn. According to Schutz the problem of cultural objects is therefore relative to cultural differences between social groups. Any cultural object has certainly also material components, and hence can be conceived as a “normal object.” Is a holy stone not just a physical object, a church or a temple just a building? These things consist of something transcendent. In the conception of them the appresentational scheme is always functioning. The cultural elements of these things might originally be inventions of someone, yet as long as they are commonly accepted, they would seem to be as natural as their physical components, or might even be more natural! These cultural components that constitute the cultural characteristics of a social group might seem bizarre in the eyes of the “outsider.” These cultural values might seem to be only relative, yet the relativity results only in the “outsider-viewpoint,” i.e., only if one refrains from recognizing these values. For the “insider” these meanings might seem absolutely valuable. Anyone who does not share such valuations— voluntarily or not— is to be treated as a stranger.33 The problem of pure experience that Gurwitsch mentions should be located in the context of the cultural difference between in-group and out­ group in the conception of Schutz . That is, it is a problem of sociocultural reality. Because Gurwitsch does not see this point, is he unable to understand Schutz properly. Surely Schutz himself is responsible for this misunder­ standing, since he has not expressed his ideas explicitly in the symbol paper. As a matter of fact, the pure experience of lifeworld in the sense of Husserl is not impossible at all from Schutz’s viewpoint. When people do not

32 C orrespondence, 236. 33 Even the people w ho leave their homeland for all too long may also become strangers to the society in which they lived (Cf. CP II, 106 f.).

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understand the cultural meaning o f a thing, the pure experience of the lifeworld emerges automatically. For example, a layman in art might wonder about what is expressed in an abstract painting and conclude that there appear nothing but certain lines, colors, and figures. The appresentational scheme does not function on this occasion at all. For Schutz, we have to get acquainted with the necessary background if we wish to be able to appreciate works of art; acculturation is hereby obviously required. In sum, cultural objects have no cultural meanings at all for people who do not understand them. In this conception a cultural object has nothing to do with Aufbau or Abbau, as Gurwitsch argues; what matters here is basically the cultural difference between social groups. In addition, when we say equivalently that cultural objects have a social background, we might say that the appresentational references rest on intersubjectivity. This means that they are not only valid for a single person, but for the whole social group. The cultural meanings or the appresentational references are thus objectified meanings (Sinnobjektivationen).34 As long as they are commonly accepted, they are, in the natural, unreflective attitude of the insiders, taken to be absolutely valid, as we have stated above. The insiders have their own interpretations concerning these cultural objects, which have counterparts in the interpretations by the outsiders.35 Through these self-interpretations of cultural objects there arise the standards that function as guiding principles for cognition and behaving. And they are relevant to how to define situations and solve problems. Relevant is also the “socially approved knowledge” which is inherited from generation to generation. It is taken for granted by the respective social group. And this knowledge does not need to be scientifically true. What is important is that it is commonly accepted and constitutive for their notion of reality. Schutz explains: “All elements of such knowledge, including appresentational references of any kind, if believed to be true, are real components of the ‘definition of the situation’ by the members o f the group”36 Here he refers to the so-called “Thomas Theorem”: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”37 This theorem, in terms of appresentation, would mean: “if an appresentational relationships

34 Ilja Srubar, Kosmion. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988, 242. 35 This is specifically obvious concerning symbolic appresentations. 36 CP I, 348. 37 Ibid., 348.

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is socially approved, then the appresented object, fact, or event is believed beyond question to be in its typicality an element of the world taken for granted.”38 Schutz accentuates this point by saying: “The world of everyday life is thus permeated by appresentational references which are simply taken for granted and among which I carry on my practical activities....39 Socially approved examples of knowledge modify cultural specifications and social realities. Ordinary people live in these realities without putting them in doubt at all, just as they are not at all in doubt about physical realities. Now such social groups are also political groups. Schutz, following Eric Voegelin, speaks of cosmion,40 The political symbol is particularly important for the internal structure of a cosmion. Schutz cites Voegelin: “The self-illumination of society through symbols is an integral part of social reality, and one may even say, its essential part.”41 The social world thus understood is at the same time a cultural world. On account of this inner relationship, “sociocultural reality” is a common usage in the later works. And we may conclude that cultural difference is essential for the Schutzian notion of lifeworld. V. Universal Symbolism and Reflections on the Schutzian Conception of Lifeworld We have seen that the lifeworld according to Schutz in addition to being a field of practical actions and intersubjectivity is a cultural reality. Because of cultural differences there are different lifeworlds. In the essay “Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World” expresses this conception Schutz most obviously. He says: Man is bom into a world that existed before his birth, and this world is from the outset not merely a physical but also a sociocultural one. The latter is a preconstituted and preorganized world whose particular structure is the result of an historical progress and is therefore different for each culture and society.42

38 Ibid., 349. 39 Ibid., 328; see also ibid., 347. 40 Ibid., 355. 41 Ibid., 336. 42 C P U , 229.

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Yet Schutz seems to have the idea that there exists a universal cultural ground in all human societies despite the cultural differences. This is the idea of universal symbolism. He argues that certain features are common to all social worlds because “they are rooted in the human condition.” Everywhere we find sex groups and age groups, and some division o f labor conditioned by them; and more or less rigid kinship organizations that arrange the social world into zones o f varying social distance, from intimate familiarity to strangeness. Everywhere we also find hierarchies o f superordination and subordination, o f leader and follower, o f those in command and those in subm ission.. . . There are everywhere, moreover, cultural objects, such as tools needed for the domination o f the outer world, playthings for children, articles for adornment, musical instruments o f some kind, objects serving as symbols for w o rsh ip .. .43

Philosophical anthropology alone can work out the basic and universal dimensions of the human condition,44 and in the essay “Symbol, Reality, and Society” Schutz tries to fulfill such a task with the notion of “universal symbol,” which he introduces with the Chinese Yin-Yang conception.45 It is bewildering to read texts like this in Schutz. If cultural difference is a consequent interpretation of lifeworld, then how is the universal symbol­ ism integrated into his lifeworld notion? Are they compatible? Does Schutz want to argue that there exists the grounding lifeworld, rather than many concrete lifeworlds? The idea of universal symbolism and consequently the idea of the grounding lifeworld reminds us of Husserl’s lifeworld notion. Although Schutz definitely rejects the pure experience of perception to be the essential lifeworld experience, he does seem to share with Husserl the idea of grounding (Grundlegungsidee).46 Thus interpreted, should we say that Schutz is inconsistent in his lifeworld notion or the lifeworld no­ tion—whatever the conception of it—involves inevitable ambiguity?47

43 Ib id , 229. 44 Ib id , 230. 45 CP I, 334. 46 Cf. B. Waldenfels, In den Netzen der Lebenswelt. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1985, 15f. 47 So far as the am biguity o f the lifeworld concept is concerned, see Ulrich Claesges, “Zweideutigkeiten in Husserls Lebenswelt-Begriff,” in Ulrich Claesges and Klaus Held (Hrsg.), Perspektiven transzendental-phanomenologischer Forschung. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972, 82f; N icklas Luhmann, Lebenswelt— nach Rucksprache mit den Phdnomenologen, in A rc h iv fu r Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie, 72 J g , 1986, 176f.

Chapter 9

The Phenom enological Foundation of the Social Sciences Tom Nenon The University of Memphis Abstract: After discussing the need o f all empirical sciences fo r a foundation in a non-empirical science outside o f themselves, I argue that the social sciences need such a foundation fo r “practical" and theoretical reasons. I argue that phenomenological philosophy is well suited to provide it by setting the assumptions made by the social sciences within a broaderframework ofsystematically examined beliefs, but philosophical reflection cannot replace the empirical research specific to the social sciences. Introduction The title of this chapter reflects the structure of the following essay. In Part I, I will ask whether the social sciences really need a phenomenological foundation. The central question will concern the specific need (or lack of it) of social versus natural sciences of a foundation outside of themselves. In Part II, I ask whether phenomenology is the proper philosophical method for such a foundation. What can or must any non-empirical science in general and phenomenology in particular provide that could serve as a foundation for the social sciences? In Part III, I turn to the very question of foundation itself and ask about the proper role and limits of a philosophical foundation such as phenomenology in the social sciences. Of particular interest will be the question of the nature and use of ideal types in social science. This paper thus rehearses in a systematic way some o f the issues that are addressed by Schutz in his major early work, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt,1 where he attempts to bring together the approach to social sciences inaugurated by Max Weber with the philosophical insights of

'Alfred Schutz, D er sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp: 1974 (first edition Vienna: Springer 1932). Quotations will be taken from the easily accessible Suhrkamp Taschenbuch edition. Lester Embree (ed.) Schutzian Social Science, 173-186. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Husserlian phenomenology. It examines the assertion by Schutz in his introductory investigations that Weber’s general approach to the social sciences is correct,2 but that it needs a foundation that can be provided by philosophical analyses inspired by Husserl phenomenological philosophy and Bergson’s analyses of the temporal structure of human consciousness.3 This claim is fairly well known, at least in its general outlines, but it is still worth revisiting this claim and asking once again in just what sense, if at all, the social sciences need a phenomenological foundation. I. Why do the Social Sciences Require a Foundation? Let us take as our starting point the observation that as Weber says, “a social science is an “empirische Wirklichkeitswissenschaft,’* i.e. an empirical science of reality. This is hardly a distinguishing mark of the social sciences over against the natural sciences, of course. It does however distinguish them from the sciences of mere possibility such as transcendental philosophy (and perhaps mathematics). Hence to the extent it could be established that any empirical science requires a foundation, and perhaps even a phenomenological foundation outside itself, then the social sciences just as all other empirical sciences will indeed turn out to need such a foundation. The general direction of the case

2“Das vorliegende Buch geht au f ene vieljahrige intensive Befassung mit den wissenschaftstheoretischen Schriften Max Webers zurhck. Im Verlaufe dieser Studien hatte sich in mir die Uberzeugung gefestigt, dal3 Max Webers Fragestellung zwar den Ansatzpunkt jeder echten Theorie der Sozialwissenschaften endgultig bestimmt hat, dal3 aber seine Analysen noch nicht in die Tiefenschicht gefuhrt sind, von der allein aus viele wichtigen, aus dem Verfahren der Geisteswissenschaften selbst erwachstenen Aufgaben bewaltigt werden konnen.” {Ibid., p. 9) 3“G rundlegend sind hierfur die Untersuchungen, welche Bergson und Husserl iiber den inneren Zeitsinn angestellt haben. Erst die Arbeiten dieser Forscher, vor allem Husserls transzendentale Phanomenologie, haben jene Schichten philosophischen Denken erschlossen, in denen eine wirklich Begriindung des Sinnproblems angestrebt werden kann.” (Ibid., pp. 9-10) 4Max Weber, “’Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy," in The Methodology o f the Social Sciences. New York: The Free Press 1949, p. 72 (abridged version o f the same essay reprinted in: Fred Dallmayr and Thomas McCarthy, Understanding and Social Inquiry. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press 1977, p. 24). This statement is consistent with the position Weber describes in more detail in his introductory chapter to Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (translated into English by G uenther Roth and Claus Wittich as Econom y and Society. Berkeley: University o f C alifornia Press 1968), which is the work that Schutz studied most closely.

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for such a need on the part of any empirical science is fairly obvious and in its basic direction should be familiar to anyone in the phenomenological tradition. Unless one happens to believe that the foundations of an empirical science can themselves be empirical, then any empirical science will require a foundation outside of itself in another science, and ultimately in one that is non-empirical. Thus even if one believed that sociology could be reduced to or founded in psychology, for example, then the question of the founda­ tion for psychology itself as an empirical discipline would arise. The only way to avoid an infinite regress is to posit a non-empirical science or set of sciences that can serve as the ultimate non-empirical foundation for the empirical sciences—be they natural or social sciences. If there were a non-empirical science capable of founding itself, then at least the formal requirements for the foundation of an empirical science could be fulfilled. And this is precisely the claim that Husserl advanced for his eidetic phenomenology. This claim is one that can also be expressed in the Latinate Kantian terminology as the distinction between an aposteriori and an apriori science, or—to use Husserlian terms—between a Tatsachenwissenschaft and a Wesenswissenschaft. The larger claim, then, of which Schutz’ specific claim is merely a part, is that all factual sciences ultimately require a foundation in a phenomenological Wesenswissenschaft—an apriori or eidetic science. To return to our earlier question, however, just why do all empirical sciences require any foundation at all? I would argue that they require a further foundation for two very different kinds of reason, namely for both practical and theoretical reasons. It is not obvious that they require any foundation at all. One could argue that both the natural sciences and in many cases the social sciences proceed quite satisfactorily even when their practitioners do not have a very good understanding or any understanding at all of their philosophical foundations. In fact, we all know that in the philosophy of science there is very little agreement about the correct philosophical or non-empirical foundation of science (or whether the very idea of a non-empirical foundation makes any sense at all). Yet scientists still perform their experiments, develop new theories and new technologies, obtain their grants, and make what is generally recognized as “progress” in a number of areas. Even if we do not even know what the foundation is, almost everyone can agree on what physics is and most physicists agree on some things. Thus, it seems that one can well ask whether physics or any other similar discipline really needs a

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philosophical foundation, be it phenomenological or otherwise. Perhaps, one might argue, the situation is somewhat different in the social sciences. In them, there does not seem to be as much agreement about the nature of the disciplines, their basic methods, or what would count as progress in them. So here at least there seems to be a greater practical need for philosophical or other non-empirical methodological reflection in the hopes of attaining some of the agreement that is perceived to be lacking for them. On the other hand, even if one assumes that the basic assumptions of the social sciences are forms of doxa rather then epistane, that does not by itself make them false. They might well be forms of eudoxa, correct opinions, rather than mistakes or lies. But it does mean that we have no commonly accepted means of sorting the correct assertions from the mistakes, the welljustified from the unjustified beliefs. Absent such a commonly accepted means o f resolution, the search for any consensus will take the form of an argument about the proper foundation upon which the basic concepts and methods of a social science should be based. This debate will have as its topic the social sciences. However, it cannot be based upon them for two reasons. First of all, the very deficit they need to solve, namely the need to determine the legitimacy and limits of empirical research, prevents them as empirical sciences from solving it on their own. Secondly, the normative questions at the heart of this debate cannot be resolved by the empirical means available to the social sciences as sciences of fact. Thus, from a practical standpoint alone, it appears that the greater lack of agreement about methods and procedures in the social sciences compared to the natural sciences calls for the kind of reflection associated with finding a non-empirical foundation for these sciences.5 In fact, however, this very contrast between the agreement found in the natural sciences and the lack of it in the social sciences has led many to assume that the solution for the social sciences is not to be found through philosophical reflections— whether

5T his seem s to be part o f Schutz’ concern. Cf. Aufbau, pp. 16-17: “Aber die unkritische U bemahme derartiger Vorstellungen des taglichen Lebens in den Begriffsapparat einer W issenschaft muB sich rachen, sei es, daB sich umbemerkt in ihre Grundbegriffe Aquivokationen einschleichen, die sich im Fortgang der Untersuchungen storend auswirken, sei es, dafi wesentlich zusammengehorige Phanomene als voneinaner vollig verschieden angesehen werden, weil ihre in einer tieferen Schicht gelegenenen gemeinsamen Wurzeln nicht bloGgelegt werden. Gilt das soeben Gesagte ganz allgemein fhr jede W issenschaft, so bringt die ungeprhfte Hinnahme des im taglichen Leben ‘Selbstverstandlichen’ gerade fur die Soziologie eine eminente Gefahr mit sich.”

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phenomenological or not—but rather in the adoption of the methods and procedures of the natural sciences. On the other hand, it is just this assump­ tion that has been the source of much of the controversy within the social sciences. Much of the impetus of the tradition of theories of the social sciences that includes both Weber and Schutz comes from the insight that the topics of the social sciences, namely human actions and interactions, are of a fundamentally different kind than the natural events and objects studied by the natural sciences. Hence, this tradition argues, the conceptualizations and methods of the natural sciences cannot serve as the most appropriate model for the social sciences. This tradition sees the influence of the natural scientific model as a corruption, a corruption that undermines our everyday insights into the realm of social and personal reality in which we all participate, but which proponents of the natural scientific model disparag­ ingly term “folk psychology.” From this perspective, then, one practical achievement of appropriate philosophical theories is that they counteract the effects o f bad theories and thereby help us restore the healthy insights of everyday life. Phenomenology and philosophy in general would then represent less a departure from everyday life and our everyday concepts about social reality than a means of restoring them by defending them against the improper devaluation that is produced by bad theories that equate science and scientific method with natural science and its methods. Here it may be helpful to recall Kant’s views about the proper role for philosophical theory. In general, and perhaps contrary to the standard lore about Kant, I think that his overall project can be described as an attempt to restore our common sense beliefs about things by adopting philosophical views that at first glance may appear to contradict common sense.6 To defend this claim for the realm of theoretical philosophy in Kant, where it is more controversial, would require more time than I want to take today. But at least within the realm of practical philosophy, Kant’s views on this issue are fairly clear. In response to the criticism that his philosophy does not really present anything new, but rather is just a more complicated version of the traditional morality expressed in the Golden Rule, Kant responds in effect that nothing else should be expected. Indeed, it would seem a bit odd to expect that a philosopher should claim not only to have discovered and

6I have attempted to describe K ant’s overall strategy in more detail in “Progressive and Regressive Arguments in K ant’s Critique o f Judgm ent,” in: Akten des VII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses 1990. Bonn: Bouvier 1991, pp. 143-54.

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defended the proper theory of morality, but to have invented a new morality —as if it were not obvious folly to claim that in the year 1785, morality had been discovered for the very first time.7 Accordingly, it would perhaps be too much to expect that philosophy should have to invent or discover for the first time the ideas of action, human interaction, society, social institutions, and the state that are the objects of various social sciences. One thing that an appropriate philosophical theory can do is ward off the corruptive influence of bad theories or inappropriate models that undermine these everyday insights just as Kantian moral theory sees itself as an antidote against eudaimonistic theories that justify selfishness and can thereby undermine common moral awareness. So too can a proper philosophical foundation for the social sciences help to fend off the illicit hegemony of the natural scientific model. II. Foundations of Phenomenology If we accept this account of at least one important role for philosophical theory with regard to the social sciences, then a phenomenological approach is well suited to the task. For, phenomenology proceeds from the assumption that the starting point for philosophy lies not in philosophical constructions, but rather in intuitions that are at least in principle accessible to every human being. Phenomenology asserts that the eidetic intuitions that are its proper domain are insights that anyone who reflects seriously and systematically should be able to accept and even share. What phenomenology does is build upon our everyday insights, think them through systematically, and organize them. The scientific attitude generally and phenomenological philosophy in particular are very different from our everyday attitudes. However, phenomenology does not seek to replace or eliminate everyday insights. It sorts them out, reflects upon them, attempts to reconstruct their origins, and consider their justification or lack of it, but it does not invent the basic insights governing everyday life. The phenomenological reduction seeks to remove certain tendencies in thinking to misinterpret what we already know, to naturalize consciousness and its insights, to conflate questions of empirical fact for essential truths, but it cannot replace the insights of everyday life completely. Rather it builds upon eidetic intuitions that

7See Kant’s discussion with Garve in Immanuel Kant, Kants gesammelte Schriften. Akademie Textausgabe. Bd. VIII, pp. 286 ff.

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permeate and guide our everyday existence—even if we are tempted to explain them away as matters o f historical convention or empirical fact. Moreover, this is an ability that all rational persons share and exercise, perhaps unsystematically and unreflectively, but they do exercise it nonetheless, say for instance in the pre-phenomenological awareness of the differences between those objects in the world that do not possess selfconsciousness and those that do, between natural and cultural objects as different kinds of things subject to different categories, and between physiological and motivational explanations of behavior. As opposed to the theoretical interest governing phenomenological philosophy, the everyday world is guided by practical purposes. Ontological distinctions in daily life are not primarily theoretical distinctions, but distinctions about how to deal with things. The ontological distinctions implicit in daily life are generally not thematic and may be confused, but fundamental distinctions arise in daily life that can be the object of empirical study in the social sciences or o f philosophical reflections that can provide a foundation for the social sciences in the senses outlined above. These distinctions did not have to be invented by phenomenology, but phenomenology builds upon then, sharpens them, explains them, and counteracts the tendency to confuse the two sides of the opposition or to eliminate one side by reducing it to the other. So it appears that a phenom­ enological foundation helps prevent some of the confusions and reductionistic tendencies of the modem age that threaten to undermine or corrupt the basic insights guiding social interactions, social understanding, and much social science. It can thereby help secure the domains of social science as legitimate and independent fields of investigation. Phenomenol­ ogy distinguishes clearly between one ontological region and another and it can make explicit and precise the fundamental categories that govern them. It can combat the illegitimate tendency to conflate regions or to try to reduce one to the other. In this regard, phenomenology enjoys a priority even over other eidetic disciplines such as mathematics, logic, or eidetic psychology. Phenomenol­ ogy not only claims to be able to identify certain eidetic truths, but as a transcendental investigation into the ultimate origins of knowledge and the forms of objectivity that correspond to various kinds of knowledge, it also claims to be able to show how various regions of knowledge and various regions of objects are essentially related to each other. It can show which ones are distinct, which ones can be reduced to others, and which ones

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depend upon others without being reducible to them. It can thus sort out exactly the sorts of problems that have often led to confusions about the nature o f non-natural sciences in general and the social sciences in particular. I think that this view about the importance of non-philosophical intuitions and phenomenological philosophy is not as far from Schutz’ position as it might seem at first glance. Admittedly, Schutz is very concerned to distinguish between living and thinking, so one could easily conclude that he would want to emphasize the distance between everyday living and wissen-schaftliche philosophy, or even between everyday conceptions and the concepts guiding the social sciences. However, a closer consideration of the beginning of the Third Part of Der sinnhafte Aufbau, for instance, reveals that he recognizes how reflection emerges within daily life itself, for example in the awareness of one’s own experience for oneself. Schutz’s analyses show that one does not need science, and certainly not a theory of science to perform reflective acts. Phenomenological reflection and philosophical reflection generally, are extensions and clarifications of possibilities latent but as yet undeveloped in everyday life. It is the systematic cataloguing and ordering of insights that are at work in our lives. In philosophical reflection these insights find their ultimate justification and expression. Hence, in spite of his emphasis upon the differences between life and thinking, Schutz nonetheless shows how the reflection that ultimately issues in philosophy is rooted in and grows out of the lifeworld itself. One contribution of phenomenology as a foundation for the social sciences is then of a practical kind. It helps clear up confusions and secures their independent status from the natural sciences by fending off the bad theories that lead to improper approaches toward social realities. It takes prephilosophical insights, examines them, sorts out the legitimate from the illegitimate and finally relates and organizes them in a systematic manner. The last mentioned function is closely related to the notion of “theory.” For over two millennia theory has been associated with stepping back, not waiting for a specific occasion or practical obstacle, and examining one’s beliefs and their appropriateness not just for one set of circumstances or another, but as universally valid principles. A phenomenological philosophy of the social science would then not only ward off confusions and separate valid from merely purported insights, but it would also organize the validated insights into a hierarchical arrangement of foundation, in which the most general principles would be identified as the preconditions, i.e., the

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foundation of the less general and more specific ones. The most basic principles, those presupposed by the others in such an arrangement, are taken as the systematic starting points. For instance, at the most basic level there might be insights into the essential properties of all objects in general, then below those (or built upon them — depending on the metaphor one chooses) would be the insights into the essential properties of real as opposed to ideal objects, and then perhaps built upon those would be the insights into the region of social beings and their interrelationships.8 Here it is important to be clear about just what we mean by the term “foundation.” It is indeed an ambiguous and complicated notion. I have argued elsewhere9 that, for example, in Husserl’s Logical Investigations there are at least two significant senses in which he uses the term—one for the way that nonindependent parts (moments) can be said to be “founded in” the larger wholes of which they are parts, and another for the way that a complex unit can be said to be “founded in” or “founded upon” the simpler elements out of which it is composed. But both of them fit under the one general definition he provides there. One thing, he says, can be said to be “founded” in another if and only if the former cannot exist without the latter, but the converse does not hold. And for Husserl especially, one further trait of foundational relationships should also be stressed. Even though one thing may be said to be founded in another, that does not mean that it is necessar­ ily reducible to it. One thing may presuppose another, yet not be reducible to it or be able to be subsumed under it. Schutz too seems well aware of this truth, which is quite consistent with his descriptions of relationships of foundational dependency. So, for instance, social reality is said to be founded in the basic temporal structures

8Schutz’ project o f showing how social phenomena can all ultimately be traced back to the temporal structure o f human consciousness is consistent with this aim: “Es wird vielmehr die im hochkomplexen Sinngefuge der Sozialwelt sichtbar werdenden Phanomene nur dann deutlich erfassen konnen, wenn er sie aus urspriinglichen und allgemeinen W esensgesetzen des BewuBtseinslebens azuleiten vermag. Erst die grol3en philosophischen Entdeckungen Bergsons und vor allem Husserls haben den Zugang zu diesen Tiefenschichten philosphischer Reflexion erschlossen. N ur mit Hilfe einer allgemeinen Theorie des BewuBtseins, wie Bergsons Philosophie der Dauer oder Husserls transzendentaler Phanomenologie, kann die Losung der Ratsel gefunden werden, mit denen, die Problematik der Sinnsetzungs- und Sinndeutungsphanom ene umlagert ist.” (Aufbau, pp. 20-21) 9“Two M odels o f Foundation in H usserl’s Logical Investigations,” in Burt Hopkins (ed.), H usserl in the Contemporary Context: Prospects and Projects fo r Transcendental Phenomenology, Dorecht: Kluwer 1997, pp. 159-77.

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of consciousness, but not reducible to them. For inner temporality to yield social awareness, there are additional elements required that cannot be derived directly from the general temporal structures of human conscious­ ness. A phenomenological philosophy of the social sciences can then be foundational for them in the sense that it can exhibit general structures that underly the specific social structures, relationships, and institutions it studies. It can anchor the empirical results in more general structures that can ultimately be traced back to a basic phenomenon such as the awareness of duration. This aspect of foundation is closely related to the specifically modem conception of a theory as a broader framework within which specific phenomena find their place. Yet one might ask whether the connection between the notion of foundation and this conception of theory does not also bear within itself a danger that can arise for social scientific research out of the project of seeking phenomenological foundation for them. Phenomeno­ logical reflection can identify structures that are necessary but not in themselves sufficient preconditions for social life. It might even be able to show how some specific social phenomena depend upon certain basic structural features of sociality in general. If this is true, then we would have a theory in the stronger, modem sense in which a more general proposition is identified under which more specific propositions can be organized. Precisely, here, however, lies a different danger for the social sciences from the one posed by naturalism alone. This mathematical model suggests an axiomatic model of a theory, in which specific theorems can be directly derived from the basic axioms according to the operational rules that together make up that theory. In modem physics, explanation just is the subsumption of a specific phenomenon under the general law or theory that establishes the broader pattern of which the phenomenon is a particular instance. These models suggest that once one has a foundation in the general sense of such a theory, then one should be able to derive the specific truths of the relevant scientific domain. If the foundation consisted of general eidetic truths, this would mean that one should be able to derive social scientific findings from apriori phenomenological reflection apart from the messy business of empirical research. There is the danger of consciously or unconsciously trying to substitute ideation for gathering data, crunching numbers, and searching for correlations that could prove or disprove social scientific hypotheses. When seen as possibly supplanting rather than merely

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complementing the empirical work that actually constitutes social science, even phenomenological philosophy has overstepped its bounds. III. Deductive Models of Foundation In the preceding sections, I have attempted to establish that finding an appropriate philosophical foundation can be of eminent practical importance for the social sciences, and I have suggested that phenomenology is especially well suited to serve as the philosophical approach through which this foundation can be established. To this we can add a third thesis concerning the function of a phenomenological foundation as a theoretical framework for the concrete work undertaken in the empirical social sciences. Phenomenological philosophy along the lines that Schutz describes fulfills a need of reason itself. To refer once again to a Kantian theme, it is a demand of rationality itself that knowledge be more than a mere aggregation of scattered bits of knowledge, that it be arranged into a united whole within which every area of knowledge has its place and the specific results of scientific research (or pre-scientific inquiry, for that matter) can be integrated. In this respect, empirical science has not genuinely fulfilled the demands of reason upon science itself until its presuppositions and basic concepts have been anchored in a broader non-empirical framework. This is the second kind of need for a phenomenological foundation that 1 mentioned above. It is a theoretical demand of reason itself. However, the mathematical model of foundation that has accompanied this ideal of systematic unity in the modem age can also undermine the independence of empirical sciences from philosophy. For the social sciences this becomes relevant especially with regard to the debate about the source, justification, and use of ideal types. This is part of the debate between Schutz and Weber in the Aufbau. Schutz’ emphasis in the Aufbau upon the invariance of ideal types10 and his reliance upon Husserl's phenomenology can easily lead one to the assumption that he conceives of them along the lines of the essential concepts, the eide that Husserl believes can be

l0Sec, for instance, pp. 256 ff. Schut/ also uses the empirical/eidetic distinction as a parallel to the difference between the individual and the idealtypical in descriptions within the social sciences: “Diese Deskription kann cine empirische odor eidctische sein. sie kann lndividucllcs odcr Typischcn zum Gegenstand nehmen. sie k a n n a n koiikieten Situationcn der nuindanen Sozialitat odcr in cinem hohcn Allgcmeinheitsgrad durehgefuhrt." (p. 348)

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recognized through philosophical reflection. The question then arises how best to think of ideal types? Are ideal types eide or are they ultimately empirical concepts? Do we derive them from philosophical reflection or empirical observations? Are they to be judged according to a standard of “truth” or merely according to usefulness for specific purposes?" I would like to argue that to conceive of an ideal type as an eidos is misguided. The social sciences do indeed need a phenomenological foundation, but not in order to provide them with ideal types that can serve as orientation points for their research. Research in sociology and political science, to use Weber’s examples, but also in history, economics, and literature is guided in important ways by ideal types. Some are very abstract ones such as the notion of a rational agent, other are more specific such as the enlightened consumer, yet others are much more specific still such as Christianity or communism or genres such as the sonata or novel. To use one example, we can well imagine several different but useful conceptions of Christianity that could serve as helpful ideal types for historical, literary, or political analyses. Moreover, different ones might be more helpful for different purposes. However, it is still difficult to decide about the eidos of Christianity or even the eidos of religion in general. Or take the notion of a poem. Is there even one feature of a poem except one that is so general that it applies to most other literary genres that all of the things that have legitimately counted as a poem in all contexts and in all eras share? Or to use another more mundane example that Schutz himself

" in later essays, it becomes even clearer that ideal types arise not first through philosophical reflection upon invariant and universal essences, but as a sedimentation o f experiences within the everyday life-world. See for instance Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. I, pp. 7 ff. He states explicitly, “We have, however, to keep in mind that the common-sense constructs used for the typification o f the Other and o f m yself are to a considerable extent socially derived and socially approved ... Even more,_the pattern o f typical constructs is frequently institutional­ ized as a standard o f behavior, warranted by traditional and habitual mores and sometimes by specific means of so-called social constrol, such as the legal order.” (p. 19) In his essay “Type and Eidos in H usserl’s Late Philosophy,” (Collected Papers Vol. III. The Hague: N ijhoff 1966, pp. 92 ff), he identifies the tendency towards universal knowledge that guides H usserl’s philosophy and shows how it is different from the generic judgem ents governing everyday life. He show both how H usserl’s eidos arises from the tendency towards typification that permeates everyday practical existence and how it is different from the types that govern everyday life.

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mentions in the Aufbau'2 and in later essays,13 what about postal workers? Think of the changes from age to age and country to country, the differences between an Italian postal worker and an old-fashioned German Beamten. Must their job be connected to mail delivery in one way or another? In Germany, they used to be in charge of telephones also. Do postal workers have to work for a government organization? That would leave out Federal Express employees as non-postal workers, which most people in the United States would be inclined to do, but also the employees in the primarily private operations that called themselves postal services all over the Europe in the 18th Century, to which they and most contemporary Europeans would have objected. If we include FedEx workers, does this extend only to people who are connected directly with packages and letters or should it also include the pilots and software designers. Do the employees of America OnLine or our universities’s computer services count as postal employees since they help us deliver our email? This is not to say that there might not be a useful concept of postal worker. But it suggests that many of the types that make sense to us in our daily lives and can be helpful in scholarly research can nonetheless better be seen as historical phenomena that evolve over time than as invariant essences. There may some stages when there are clear and well-defined boundaries for a concept that can serve as a convenient orientation point for defining variations from it as predecessors, deviations, or successors.14But what they are will hardly be a matter to be decided by philosophical thinking—be it phenomenological or otherwise. That is why the need for a phenomenologi­ cal foundation should not lead us to believe that thinking can substitute in any way for empirical work within the social sciences. One fact alone that should give us pause is the way it so often turns out that the purported apriori analyses yield purportedly essential structures that look remarkably similar to the specific phenomenon most familiar to the author o f the analysis. Reinach’s phenomenological outline of the civil law code turns out to look very similar to the late 19th Century German civil law code and seems to suggest that it is the epitome of civil law codes since it

X2Aufbau, pp. 269 and 277 ff.. 13“Type and Eidos” {op. cit.), p. 17. 14In the Aufbau, Schutz handles these phenomena as different ideal types, each derived from a different set o f experiences. In reality these would be different ideal types, each resulting from different experiences or succeeding its predecessor based on additional experience. See e.g., pp. 268 ff.

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rootedness in necessary structures has been philosophically established. Likewise, religion often ends up looking most like European religion. If Reinach had been an American, then one wonders whether the American common law code might not have suggested itself to him as the ideal type for a civil code. It is easy to take to limits of my own or our collective imaginations for the limits of conceivability in general. Once we assume that for all of the major phenomena that are the subject of the social sciences, there must be an eidos, an invariant structure, then it can easily lead us to overlook their cultural and historical mutability. We must be careful not to take the genuine need for a phenomenological foundation for the social sciences along the lines that Schutz describes as an absolution from the duty for careful and thorough empirical research. We must be careful to avoid the temptation to take our own limited empirical concepts and elevate them to the level of philosophi­ cal eide seemingly making them immune from empirical refutation. For Schutz himself such mutability should come as no surprise since the original source of the ideal types originally derives from the attempts of each individual to make sense of his or her own experiences in coming to terms with every social life.15 Even classical phenomenology itself in the Husserlian tradition teaches us to observe most strictly the boundaries between matters of fact and essential truths. Phenomenological reflection can thereby not only help prevent essential truths from being infected by naturalistic assumptions, but can also help us remain aware of the difference between eidetic insights and empirical facts. Philosophical reflection itself can keep us mindful of the need to distinguish carefully between the legitimate and illegitimate uses of phenomenology as a foundation for the social sciences.

Chapter 10

The Purely Possible Political Philosophy of Alfred Schutz Fred Kersten Green Bay, Wisconsin Abstract: This essay explores a possible political philosophy o f Alfred Schutz— "possible” because it is derived from Schutz’s critical understanding o f other political thinkers but always based on common assumptions and ideas he shared with them. Preface Beginning with Die sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt of 1932, Alfred Schutz produced some social theory and worked out in some detail an appropriate methodology. So far as we know, he produced no political philosophy although at times he briefly discussed political economy and occasionally expressed political views. And in some cases he developed ideas having a bearing on political philosophy and science, such as those of equality, citizenship, and tolerance. But whether those ideas or those political views are or were intended as part of a political philosophy in any other than a general sense is an open question, even though they may have been derived from his social theory. Two publications, however, do directly concern political philosophy and science in a technical sense. But these are each book reviews of someone else’s political philosophy: the first is of George Santanyana’s Dominations and Powers (published by Scribners the year of Santayana’s death, 1951), printed in Social Research in 1952, based on a paper read at the Graduate Faculty General Seminar in 1952.1 The second is of Tomoo Otaka’s Foundation o f Social Organization [Grundlegung der Lehre vom sozialen Verband], published in 1932; Schutz’s review was published in 1937.

'R eprinted again in Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, Volume II, ed. Arvid Broderson. The Hague: M artinus N ijhoff, 1964, 201-225. Hereafter cited as CP II. L. Embree (ed ), Schutzian Social Science, 187-211. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Through the optics of Otaka and Santayana can we construct at least a purely possible phenomenological political philosophy and science of Alfred Schutz? Still more particularly, can we do so consistent with the socialscientific methodology and social theory Schutz explicitly developed over a period of about 25 years? My strategy for answering these questions will be by tracing a line of political-philosophical thought in Schutz’s review of Otaka. There Schutz thinks out the essence of social organization as an independent, ideal object of philosophic-scientific cognition about which valid judgments of a certain kind can be made.2 The occasion, however, of this attempt to construct Schutz’s poltical philosophy is Santayana. Why Santayana? Ostensibly to pay homage to a great thinker whose thought was important to Schutz on many occa­ sions— Santayana’s discussions and criticisms of James and Bergson were expecially important for him and he frequently referred to them in class. Still, why Santayana as a means of expression of Schutz’s political philosophy? Publication of Santayana’s last, and most important, book, may have been more than just an occasion for Schutz’s careful study of it. I. Common Philosophical Ground of Husserl, Otaka, and Schutz §1. What Otaka and Schutz Take For Granted in Phenomenological Philosophy. Both Otaka and Schutz have in common the view developed by Husserl in the second edition of the Logical Investigations and in Ideas, Book I, that (1) there is an a priori of consciousness; that (2) therefore a non-formal or “material” eidetic science of consciousness is possible and can be progres­ sively realized; that (3) the definite conditions of the ideal possibility and compossibility of acts of consciousness can be formulated in universally valid and necessary laws; and that, (4) the only assumption required to

2“The Foundations o f the Theory o f Social Organization,” Collected Papers, V olume IV, eds. Helmut Wagner, George Psathas, and Fred Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, 210. Hereafter cited as CP IV. Toomo Otaka, Grundlehre vom Sozialen Verband. Vienna: Julius Springer Verlag, 1932, 65ff.

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legitimize 1-3 is that one’s own consciousness is a possible instance or exemplification of the Eidos, Consciousness. Both Otaka and Schutz follow the Introduction to Ideas where Husserl holds that the transcendental eidetic reduction can only be accomplished after carrying out across the board the transcendental reduction to “fact.”3 As a consequence, the necessary conditions for the ideal possibility and compossibility of specific acts of consciousness prove to be necessary conditions for the ideal possibility and compossibility of objects experienced and constituted in consciousness of them. The eidetic conditions are, therefore, universally conditions for the possibility and compossibility of any objects you please. Moreover, the propositions and judgments of and about the universe of the ideal possibility and compossibility o f any objects you please are independent of factual matters. The positing of factual matters in no way validates or invalidates propositions and judgments of an eidetic science. Eidetic propositions and judgments exclusively concern ideal possibilities and compossibilities. They do not concern factual matters per se. §2. The Subject Matter of Eidetic Sciences. Eidetic sciences are concerned with “universals,” with ideal possibilties and compossibilities, the extension of which is not limited to factual matters or factual existence. Examples of such eidetic sciences are not only mathemati­ cal ones, such as geometry, but also “material” or “non-formal” sciences coordinate with the eidetic science of consciousness. Examples are the socalled human or cultural sciences, which would include the social sciences and political philosophy. More specifically, eidetic sciences study structures and relations of ideal possibilities and compossibilities which are independent o f positing factual matters and existence, yet always defined over against fact—thus they have no metaphysical meaning. But this independence does not obtain for the factual matters themselves with respect to eidetic affairs. Every factual matter or occurence is always presented with some content or other, with some determinate and further determinable description, with some properties

3See Fred Kersten, Phenom enological M ethod: Theory and Practice. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989, §§7-8, and p. 355, note 19. >

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and attibutes or other—whether a utensil, an artwork, a perceptual or a sensory datum, or even social or political actions and relations. Thus every factual matter or occurence in actual experience refers to a certain material or non-formal region which contains it. An eidetic science, then, has the further task of fashioning true propositions stating what is essentially possible, impossible, compossible, non-compossible or necessary in a given material region. An eidetic science is made up of strictly universal propositions, open to no possible exception, and thus, in a strict sense, contains no inductive generalizations or hypotheses.4 §3. The Lynchpin of Eidetic Sciences: The Eidetic Science of Consciousness. In so far as the eidetic science o f consciousness is concerned, that means that the “reality” (Otaka: “existence”) of things of whatever sort you please point back to their experiencing and positing by consciousness in which they are made present in genuine ways peculiar to the very specific consciousness of them. For every sort of object or thing, there is a corresponding way of genuine or original intending to, meaning and positing, “experiencing,” of it.5The set of such objects is to be called a “region,” and what the things or objects in question have “in common” as essential to them is called, accordingly, a "category" or “fundamental regional concept” (a specific, in contrast to a generic, idea in Husserl’s technical sense of “idea” (Idee). Because such categories comprise the structure of being peculiar to things or objects, Husserl called them “regional ontologies." Regional ontologies state what must belong to things in unconditional universality and necessity, so that they can be the subject matters o f sciences, which are then said to be (transcendental-phenomenological) eidetic sciences in contrast to so-called experiential or matters-of-fact sciences, which depend solely on the positing peculiar to the natural attitude. Formal ontology may then be briefly defined as that eidetic science which cuts across all regional ontologies by disregarding, through a process of formalization, all regional differences among objects of things; it therefore

'S ee Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book, trs. Fred Kersten. The Hague: M artinus Niihoff, 1982, §§2-7, 15ff. ?C P IY .211.

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considers Anything Whatever of consciousness. There is but one formal ontology in contrast to many regional ontologies which, when viewed with respect to the one formal ontology, are called “material ontologies." Social science in general, and political philosophy in particular, are concerned with “material ontologies.”6 §4. Eidetic Phenomenological Social Sciences (Cultural Sciences). Any such material region is defined by a regional Eidos. With respect to the material region of concern to Otaka and Schutz, the regional Eidos is Social Organization. In turn, such a regional Eidos is constituted in and through conciousness of highest genera—here law, religion, economy, and what we may call polity (Die Staat). The regional Eidos is the foundation, the Grundlegung, of basic truths concerning this region, Social Organization. These truths serve as axioms which define the categories pertaining to the region, Social Organization. Examples of such categories for the region, Social Organization, are, among others, social actions, communalization ( Vergemeinschaftung), socialization ( Vergesellschaftung), and hierarchies of subordination and superordination.1 The systematic development of all truths holding for a given region is the goal o f a regional, or material, ontology.8 Sociology as well as political philosophy would then be chapters in what Otaka calls “systematic cultural <eidetic-material> sciences.”9 A complimentary discipline is that of the “historical cultural sciences.” Every material region, moreover, is characterized by a fundamental structure supporting structural relationships. The structural relationship may be characterized by the regional categories—e.g., social relations and actions, communalization, socialization, hierarchies of sub- and superordina­ tion —from which structural results or consequences are derived. Otaka, as does Schutz, largely relies on the work of Dilthey to develop these structural relations and consequences.10

6See CP IV, 214; Otaka, 113ff. 7CP IV, 215; Otaka, 135-142. 8CP IV, 219; Otaka, §26. 9Otaka, Chapter 5. '°Ibid. See below, §15.

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We are concerned with what is founded upon or derived from, directly or indirectly, a regional Eidos, but not with factual matters except in a very special sense to be described shortly." All eidetic structures and relations must be realized (Otaka: “actualized”) in every object, such as Social Organization, so that the object be an object of that region (so that a social action be a social action, a utensil, and so forth). II. Phenomenological Political Philosophy: Eidetic and Empirical §5. Polity and Law. “Polity” (the “State,” the “Body Politic,” Die Staat), is such an object, a highest genus of the region, Social Organization. The Polity is, finally, “nothing else but that complexly arranged organization [organizierte Verband] which, as complusory or coercive ordering, stands with systemati­ cally articulate law [Recht] in the structural nexus and administers the enforcement of law through its own governmental and administrative apparatus. But because the set of laws as compulsory or coercive order is called Gesetz [statute, constitution], one can also say that the Polity is an organization assembled by Gesetz [constitution] and that, in contrast, Gesetz is Law as compulsory or coercive ordering systematized [i.e., codified] by the polity.”12 According to Otaka, Law exhibits types appropriate both to communalization and socialization. In the former, Law establishes the eidetic parameters of a harmonious social order; in the latter, Law establishes the compulsory or coercive ordering which can restore and maintain lost social ordering. As harmonizing social ordering, as appropriate to Communalization, Law is primarily normative of particular social behaviors subsumed under it; as instrumental-rational, i.e., as appropriate to Socialization, Law is compulsory or coercive ordering of the behaviors of the social whole especially with respect to its means of actualization in codes, courts, prisons. In short, Law includes both legal and social norms, prescribing in universality how one

"S ee below, §§11, 13. l2Otaka, 235; my translation, slightly altered from what appears in Schutz, CP IV, 219.

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should behave in certain ways.13 Value Theory would then be a discipline coordinate with Law. We must immediately note two things concerning Law and Polity. First, the two genera, Law and Polity, stand together in a structural nexus. They are both genera, both indeed sui genera, but structurally related in the way, I would suggest, that the genera Color and Extension are related: there is no Color without Extension, no Extension without Color. We shall clarify this structural relation shortly.14 Second, the defining determination of the regional genus, Polity, is Gesetz. The term, as Otaka (and others) use it, is difficult to translate with one word in English. But were I Otaka writing in English, I would probably use the term, “constitution,” in the double meaning of the 18th century: On the one hand, constitution is a socially organized act of Polity according to, i.e., limited by, a codified set of laws. On the other hand, constitution is a communally organized act (on the part of the “people”) by which a Polity is established. Thus the Polity is established by constitution, and the constitution codified, i.e., authorized, by the Polity is Law. §6. Political Philosophy. In older political terms, such as those employed by Santayana, the double meaning of Gesetz, “constitution,” corresponds to what Santayana, drawing on Aquinas, going back at least to Aristotle,15 calls “dominations” and “powers:”16 Dominations refers to the authority to establish order, and Powers to the authority to manage order (with its three-fold structure of generative, militant, and rational order). Despite Santayana’s “naturalism” and “materialism,” it nevertheless makes sense, even in Santayana’s terms and doctrine of “essences,” to read him in terms of eidetic phenomenol­ ogy—although Schutz prefers to refer to Scheler in this connection rather than to Husserl.17 We shall return to this shortly (§12) because both the reference to Scheler (“real factors” as the “sluicegate” of “ideal factors” which develop independently of real factors) and to Santayana him­

n Ibid., 230ff.; CP IV, 218f. '"Below, §17. l5E .g , Aristotle, The Politics o f Aristotle, trs. with Notes by Ernest Barker. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948, III, 1. l6See Schutz, “Santayana on Society and Government,” CP II, 204, 206, 208ff. "Ibid., 208.

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self—who provides further specification of the genus, Polity. One of its structures, the generative, Schutz will identify with “paramount social reality.”18 Eidetic political philosophy, then is a regional or material ontology with at least two branches, Law and Polity, standing together in a structural nexus (“constitution”) with respect to the Eidos, Social Organization. §7. Power and Authority. Two eidetic determinations of the regional category, Social Relation, are promise-keeping and contracting (the former belonging to communalization, the latter to socialization). In a way to be explained in a moment (§17), they mutually found each other, and their unity comprises Gesetz, constitution.19 Presumably (and I presume this from Schutz’s essay on “equality”and Otaka’s very broad use of the term, “Law”), Gesetz also includes moral and legal claims and rights. When standing in a structural nexus with Law, we have a Polity of one or another form of compulsory or coercive order, that is, o f authority and power. Power is that compulsory ordering peculiar to communalization, egalitarian persuasion, for instance; Authority that peculiar to socialization, hierarchical persuasion, for instance.20 Both are expressed in the double meaning of Gesetz (“constitution”). These identifications are admittedly simplistic without further and more detailed qualification. They will have to suffice for the moment, however, with the caveat that legitimate power is not equivalent to violence. Nor is authority, basically what makes people obey, equivalent to violence, force. Authority is rather that consciousness of a superordination or a subordination or some sort of coordination”21—i.e., not because of any “common reason” or because of anyone who commands. (Only by gratuitously collapsing or confusing the eidetic determination, Communalization, into or with the eidetic determination, Socialization, are authority and power regarded as the “same.”)

'*lbid.. 224f. l9Thus we can speak o f Gesetz and Sittengesetz', see Herbert Spiegelberg, Gesetz und Sittengesetz. Zurich und Leipzig: Max Niehans Verlag, 1935. 20CP IV, 217. 2,CP IV, 215.

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In Cicero’s words: “Cum potestas in populo auctoritas in senatu sit."22 Thus the more Power is authorized (i.e., socialized), the more it is rational­ ized. As Schutz himself notes, the structural relationship between commu­ nalization and socialization is a tricky one.23 This leads to a whole set of problems concerning power and value (is the greater social good or evil to be found in Society or in the Community?), and its distribution into the basic types of Social Organization seen in its actualization (society, community, and corporate body). §8. The “Actual Being” of Polity. The whole view developed by Otaka and presented by Schutz in his review is not so unfamiliar as one might think. One only has to keep in mind Aristotle and Rousseau to see where it is heading. In a word, the “actual being” of Polity (and of Social Organization) lies in going from community to society by means of a “social contract,” of a pacta sunt servanda, which is not an historical event, but which can only be recovered in awareness of a political act which has not taken place. The “actual being” of the polity lies in its very “ideality” in the political bond among citizens in whom power resides in the first place. The founding act of the Polity is through and through political, not economic. The political bond is, as Rousseau said, a form of association which is coercive in defending and protecting the person of each associate who, however, remains as free as before. Eidetic sciences are a priori not only because they are independent of factual matters, but also because their propositions prescribe the necessary conditions for ideal possibility and compossibility of objects to be objects of a given region (above, §5).24 Sciences concerned with factual matters, empirical sciences, are therefore not independent of eidetic sciences but

22Cicero, De Legibus, 3, 12, 38. (“ As power resides in the people, so authority resides in the senate.”) 23CP IV, 217; cf. 219. In this connection, see the important discussion o f Tonnies and Schmallenbach by Gurwitsch, Human Encounters in the Social World, ed. and introduced by Alexandre Metraux. Trs. Fred Kersten. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1979, 126ff. In addtion, see Gerda W alther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” Jahrbuch fiir Philosophie undphanom enologische Forschung 6 (1923): 1-158, esp. Parts C, D; Hermann Schmalenbach, “Die soziologische Kategorien des Bundes,” Dioskuren I (1922): 40ff. 24Husserl, Ideas, I, §§8f.

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refer to and are founded in regional ontologies prescribing the very possibility of their objects. In that respect, sciences of factual matters state what certainty or probability is, or was, or will be, in the case of some actual, factually existing domain. The task of such empirical sciences—one of which Otaka identifies as “historical-cultural <social> science” (above, §4)—is to state which essential or eidetic possibilities of the Eidos, for instance, Social Organization, are certain or probable actualities, past, present, or future. Empirical sciences are thus also always “historical” sciences. Here we may note that political philosophy, and in Otaka’s terms, pure social science, is both eidetic and empirical. However, the propositions and judgments of the latter have a special character not found in those of other eidetic sciences. As a consequence, we need a brief survey of eidetic propositions and judgments, presupposed by both Otaka and Schutz, and, so far as I can discern, Schutz never repudiated and only refined in later publications.25 While based on §22 of Ideas, I, hence the second edition of the Sixth Logical Investigation, it is, roughly, consistent with Formal and Transcendental Logic. §9. Perceptual Intuition and Eidetic Intuition. With Husserl, we can speak of the “intuiting,” such as the perceiving of real individual things as well as the intuiting of ideal things, a conclusion he reaches not only on the basis of an examination of consciousness of objects or things showing up in our ordinary experience but also in his various criticisms of realism, idealism, and skepticism. As Schutz himself expresses it:26 The thesis that ideality accrues to all sorts o f objectivities must be correctly understood.. .as the thesis that all intentional unities exhibit a universal ideality in contrast to the multiplicities constituting them.

And he agrees with Otaka’s expression of Husserl,27

25See, e.g., “Type and Eidos in H usserl’s Late Philosophy;” cf. Fred Kersten, “Phenom enol­ ogy, H istory and M yth,” in Maurice Natanson, ed., Phenomenology and Social Reality. Essays in M em ory o f Alfred Schutz. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1970, 261 ff. 26CP IV, 211. 27Cited by Schutz, ibid.; Otaka, 74.

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...the real object itself, whose sensuous perceivability is outside o f doubt beforehand, nonetheless ultimately contains something ideal in its ontic core without which it could not show itself as an “identical object” in itself.

Husserl’s view of the matter in Ideas, I—taken over by Otaka28— is that (1) intuiting an essence, an ideal object, is founded on actual or imagined perceptual intuitings of individual exemplifications of the essence (or even on recollecting an actual perceiving of an individual exemplification); (2) there is however no analogue between perceptual intuitings of real individu­ als and intuiting of essences—thus there is no “empirical” science of essences or ideal objects; (3) what is perceptually intuited is something individually real in space and time, but space and time are utterly unimpor­ tant for intuiting essences; (4) nor is there any difference between serious and imaginational intuiting of essences, whereas there is in the case of intuitional perceivings—even so, they are both intuitings, sensible in the one case, eidetic in the other; (5) moreover, the modes of being of the objects of sensible and eidetic intuitings, real individual things and ideal things, have no analogue; (6) the real individual is always (for analytic as well as constitutive reasons29) prior to essence—in other words, intuiting of essences is always founded on perceptual intuiting of real individuals, thus intuiting of essences presupposes serious or feigned perceptual intuiting of real individuals, but perceptual intuiting of real individuals does not presuppose intuiting of essences.30 §10. Kinds of Eidetic Intuition. Otaka’s book is a study of the “foundation” of Social Organization, an ideal object or objectivity, we may also say. Of the subject matter of an eidetic science, a science of essences, judgments are made which comprise, at least in part, scientific knowledge of Social Organization in general, and Sociology in particular. “Judgment” as used by Otaka in his book, and by Schutz in discussing it, has a very specific meaning given it by Husserl, a characteristic example being found in Chapter Two of Ideas (§§20ffi).

28Otaka, 70ff.; cf. CP IV, 21 Off 29In this connection, see Fred Kersten, Phenomenological Method: Theory and Practice, § § 3 1 f, 91. 30CP IV, 209.

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Eidetic judgments at issue are not judgments about essences but instead those judgments and propositions expressing them which judge about objective affairs in an undetermined way as single or particular cases of essences. And the eidetic seeing involved in such judgments is, correspond­ ingly, not the eidetic intuition (Wesensanschauung) as that consciousness in which an essence is seized upon as something objective. The seeing is, instead, that particular eidetic intuition which such judgments require to be made evident. In §5 Husserl identifies the judgments he has in mind, and which are precisely the sort which Otaka seeks to make: But let us start with judgments. Stated more precisely, it is a matter o f the difference between judgments about essences and judgm ents that, in an indeterminately universal manner and without admixture o f positings o f the individual, nevertheless judge, in the mode Any, about the individual, though

purely as a single particular <exemplijying> essences. In other words, the eidetic judgments which comprise our eidetic science of the ideal objectivity, Social Organization, are judgments which combine the positing of individuals with eidetic judgments about individuals. Thus in §6 Husserl says that Likewise very important is the combination o f an eidetic judging about any individual whatever with a positing o f the factual existence o f something individual.

Note that Husserl, and with him Otaka and Schutz, deny the view that all judgments comprising a science posit something real and individual, and that because there are no real, individual essences, there are therefore no judgments in which they are posited. Judgments instead also posit something ideal as well, essences. There is no justification for the restriction of “judgment” to the positing of just real individuals. Such restriction of course avoids the problem of how ideal objects are actually existent in the social world, something Otaka, for example, criticizes Gierke and Kelsen with not considering precisely because they do not realize the very nature of eidetic judgments at issue.31

3,CP IV, 204; Otaka, Chapter 1.

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§11. Eidetic Intuition in the Cultural Sciences. Now, as we have noted (§9, no. 6), intuiting of essences is founded on intuiting of exemplifications of essences, of possible exemplifications. Thus the judgments, and the propositions expressing them, comprising the eidetic science in question combine positing of ideal objects (universal and individual) with positing real factual objects (individual). Ideality and actuality are therefore not incompatible.32 And this is what is signified by the locution, “ideal formation produced by the mind,” or an ideal object as a “mental object.” In other words, such locutions signify a very specific case of that consciousness in which certain ideal objects such as essences are made evident, in which the eidetic intuiting wherein an ideal object or essence is seized upon as it, itself, is made an evidential eidetic intuiting combined with the positing of factual matters. We shall note Otaka’s special use of this case of intuition below, §13. Although we cannot develop it further here, it must be noted that the “essences” in question are, like all cultural affairs, eidetic singularities, as Husserl calls them—essences, ideal objects, which are singular yet which behave like universals.33 They are then to be contrasted with real individuals, on the one hand, and ideal universals on the other hand. This is contrasted by Otaka and Schutz to objects of Nature, a “formation produced by Nature;” that is to say, that judgment which makes evident only what is seized upon in perceptual intuiting. Thus Social Organization is an eidetic or ideal actuality, rather than a real actuality which, however, is a purely possible exemplification of an ideal actuality. Social Organization, the ideal object, viewed in its exemplification by a purely possible real actuality is called by Otaka the “actualization” o f that ideal object.34 This “historicalsocial actuality” of purely possible real actuality must not be confused with history in the sense of “fluctuating de facto vital events of social life.” If we use the term, “historicality,” for the first, and “history,” for the second, then

52C P IV , 204. 33See Dorion Caim s, “The Ideality o f Verbal Expressions,” in Continuation and Criticism. Essays in M em ory o f Dorion Cairns, ed. Fred Kersten and Richard Zaner. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1973, 247f., 249f. 34Cf. ibid., 204f.

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we can say that even though distinct, there is a relationship between them: the second, history, is the basis for the first, historicality.35 Otaka provides various examples ranging from the Polity or State to utensiles and a woodcut of Utamaro.36 This means that whatever may be the scientific method employed here, it must begin by regarding the factually existing real objects, the “fluctuating de facto vital events of social life,” as purely possible examples, which of course does not eliminate their status as factually existing. In other words, eidetic ideation is a chapter, indeed, the first chapter, of scientific method, be it natural-scientific or culturalscientific, and involves the turn of regard “from the founding multiplicities to the founded unity and identity of the ideal object of a higher order.”37 Thus we can speak, of course, of the factual history of exemplifications, but we can also speak of the history of the exemplifying itself, the “actualiza­ tion” of the ideal object, and the two may indeed be different (just as the meaning of a word remains the same, even though the spelling differs over time, or pronunciation differs, in the one case, or in the other case, and this is what is relevant for our discussion of ideal objects, when the meaning becomes archaic. When Otaka speaks of the “historicality” of ideal objects, he is speaking of the history of the exemplifications as purely possible examples of the ideal object in question, not of the factual history those examples. All of this has important ramifications for scientific method as much as for the subject of political philosophy, the Polity. §12. The Method of Ideation. The method of ideation involves a technique called “free variation.” We begin, as we are free to do, with an object of whatever sort pertaining to any class we please.38 We feign modifications of the object, vary it arbitrarily,

35See below, 14, 16. Ultimately, the distinction derives from setting, as Husserl indicates, the eidetic reduction w ithin the transcendental reduction to “fact;” see above, 183. 36 Ibid., 212; Otaka, 87ff. 11 Ibid., 213; Otaka, 92. 58For Alfred Schutz this first step would seem to constitute the first step o f methodology, see CP IV, 143f., for instance, where he states that one begins as a “disinterested observer” who, upon replacing personal interests for scientific ones, replacing one’s personal sitution in the world with a scientific situation, selects the specific problems to be considered, formulates the problem as clearly as possible, e tc , which may be any problem we please dealing with

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creating a manifold o f variants. Whether they are the products of feigning, however, or correspond to actual experience is irrelevant here. So long as certain structures remain invariant, all of the manifold of objects, feigned or otherwise, are conceivable as possible examples of the class of object chosen. From the attempt to contrive an object not exhibiting the structure in question, the impossibility of an object to be of that class, to exist, becomes evident. The structures prove to be invariant (Otaka calls it the “identitypole”)39 by defining the limits within which variation of objects occurs so that possible examples o f the class results. These invariants define the Eidos and its highest regional genera. The genera, such as Polity and Law, thus have an autonomy and self-identity and are themselves self-sufficient totalities.40 Because the invariant structures and their interrelations define the necessary conditions for the possibility of a certain class of objects (utensiles, art works, social relations...), the process of variation must not be confined to such varieties as are realized or exemplified in factual matters and actual experience. That the variations may begin with a factual matter— e.g., the Polity in Hellenic Greece—is irrelevant. The factually existent case is considered only with respect to being a possible or compossible exemplification of the eidetic genus, Polity, as a mere possibility incidentally actual at a certain time and place. The antique, factually existing Polity of Athens of the 6th century B.C. as well as Plato’s Republic count no more or less than More’s Utopia or Campanella’s City of the Sun or Johnson’s Great Society. In other words, because every factual existent of any description is also possible it may, therefore, be regarded as a possible or compossible exemplification of a region of objects. It also follows, then, that conditions of the possibility of a certain region of objects are therefore valid for every factual matter, for what Otaka calls, as we said, the “historicality” of the object.41 If there exist objects falling

objects in any region we please. 39CP IV, 217. 40In this connection, see Paul Ricoeur, “The Political Paradox,” in H istory and Truth, trs. Charles A. Kelbley. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965, 2 5 If. Ricoeur identifies this autonomy and self-identity, itself an ideal objectivity, as the very political bond itself in contradistinction to the economic and, presumably, religious bond. 41CP IV, 21 Of.; Otaka, 74ff.

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under a certain region, then of necessity they conform with the conditions of the possiblity of such objects, i.e., with certain invariant structures, e.g., of Social Relations and Actions. Or, to express the same thing in a different way, we may speak o f the “empirical extension” of an Eidos, such as Social Organization. Granted the invariant structures and their relations of a given region, e.g., of Law and Polity, then the actually existing objects must be considered as purely possible exemplifications which happen to exist. O f necessity, what happens to exist is then of such and such a nature, something which Husserl calls the “contingent a priori.” The correlative of factual existence, of contingency, is not becoming but instead necessity. Now, it is the establishing of how what factually exists as purely possible exemplification of the region belonging to Social Organization, e.g., Social Relation and Action, which allows of construction of ideal types.42 §13. Senseful (Eidetic) Intuition. As we noted above (§11), Husserl distinguishes various sorts of propositions expressing eidetic intuitions, some of which are judgings, from those propositions which express judgings about essences or ideal possibilities. Among the former he takes note of those not only based on eidetic intuitings in which ideal objects are presented and seized upon but also those in which they are presented as they, themselves, i.e., evidential eidetic intuitings, under which single particulars are subsumed. More particularly, Husserl distinguishes those propositions which express eidetic judgings which combine eidetic positings with positings of the factually existent individual. That is to say, positing of those possible exemplifications which happen to be actualized in factual existence, or which may probably be actualized in factual existence. Such eidetic judgings are based upon an eidetic intuition which Otaka calls “senseful intuition” (sinnhafte Anschauung).4i Schutz identifies it with what Husserl calls “categorial intuition.” However, Otaka is at pains to distinguish it from categorial intuition; rather, he says, it is concomitant of

42For a brief account by Schutz o f this methodological step, the second step o f his method, see CP IV, 142f., and 144ff. 43Schutz him self coins a similar locution in the title o f his book Der sinnhafte Aufbau der Sozialen Welt.

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categorial intuition.44 Although the eidetic positing does not entail the real positing combined with it in the intuiting and judging, nonetheless if social relations and actions have certain factual properties (e.g., communalized, socialized, sub- or superordinated), then the judgings are true judgings. However, there is no necessity that such examples be actualized. The possible exemplifications which happen to be factual matters Otaka calls the “actualization” of Social Organization. This “historical-social actuality” o f purely possible exemplifications which happen to be factual must not be confused with “history” in the sense of the “fluctuating de facto vital events o f social life.” If we use the term, “historicality,” for the former sense of history, and the term, “history,” for the latter sense, then we can say that even though distinct, there is a relationship between them: the latter, history, is the basis for the form, historicality.45 §14. Senseful Construction of the Social World. Ideal types o f social relations and actions are constructed out o f the historicality, not the history, of exemplifications of Social Organization.46 This signifies that to construct, e.g., an ideal type o f bureaucrat, I have to regard a de facto factually existing example as a purely possible exemplifica­ tion o f one category o f Social Organization—which, of course, does not eliminate the status of factual existence of the example or exclude its possible exemplification of other categories. Thus we have a criterion, a measure, to guarantee that the ideal types, say, of the political philosopher, are clear and distinct, relevant to the scientific problem at issue, compatible with the common-sense interpretations and self-interpretations which the factually existing actors and the factually existing social scene bestow on the social political world, and all as purely possible exemplifications of the evidentially eidetically intuited Eidos, Social Organization. Guaranteed, too, is the further methodological step of applying the analysis of ideal types to

44Otaka, v. “ Ibid., 204ff.; see above, 1 2 f, 14. 46In this connection, see Schutz’s summary o f the method o f constructing ideal types, ( I* IV, 144f.

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factually existing events.47 Depending on the scientific problems at hand, these constructions of ideal types can be repeated at any level of abstraction. But no matter what the level of abstraction at which we operate, there is always exhibited a dual founding:48 W hat is ideal founds. . .the factual object ‘sensefully,’ but its “actual being” <what is ideal> is conversely founded by the The ideal sense o f the concrete mental formation signifies what founds it in “senseful founding;” it signifies in contrast what is founded in the “actuality founding.”

Shortly (§17) we shall reformulate the dual founding in more structural terms. For the moment we can restate Otaka in the following way: The “senseful founding” he refers to is that pertaining to “senseful intuiting,” the judgings about which combine positing of Social Organization exemplified in purely possible examples which happen to to factually exist, with positing of factually existing matters as purely possible exemplifica­ tions of Social Organization. Accordingly, the method of the social, like the natural, sciences is empirical in the only genuine meaning. Empirical and factual historical data are always oriented in their typificational constructions toward the Eidos implicit in any positing of the factual. The method of ideal-typical constructs based on the eidetic judgments and propositions expressing them which combine the “ideal” and “real” positings, thus of the exemplifyings, the actualizations. The assertion that a phenomenological social science is “essentialist” is a false assertion.49 It’s methodology is no more or less empirical than any branch of the natural sciences. §15. Eidetic Social-Scientific Methodology. Alfred Schutz laid out his methodology of the social sciences in a variety of places. He formulated what may be regarded as basically a four-part theory.

47See ibid., 145 for examples. 48Otaka, 97. 49Cf. Carl J. Friedrich, “Phenomenology and Political Science,” in Phenomenology and the Social Sciences. Volume Two, ed. M. Natanson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973, 185ff.

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(a) One begins, he tells us, as a “disinterested” observer of the social scene, thus the social world no longer perceived as a field of action, by no longer taking for granted what the actors on the social scene take for granted. It is rather a world of observation. Scientific interests replace practical ones in the world. Based on eidetic (transcendental) phenomenological analysis, constructs and typifications are fashioned relevant to the scientific problems and their solutions. (b) Testing and measuring of the scientific typifications and constructs by the ideal of clarity, distinctness, adequacy, and so forth, then expressed in lawful formulations subject to further formulations in hypotheses and theories validated by “empirical verification” (of what that consists, below, §17)— although despite that, the interpretations of the social scientist never quite coincide with those of common-sense.50 (c) Application of the theoretical findings of the second phase of method to the factually existing social world of the actors and their actions. (d) We noted before Otaka’s division of the social sciences into the “historical cultural sciences” and the “systematic cultural sciences.” Both deal with eidetic structures and their exemplifications, to be sure, but the former deals with the “causal nexus” among the structures, the latter with a purely “structural nexus” (which we specify, below §§17f). In his memorial lecture on Alfred Schutz, published in Social Research in 1962, Aron Gurwitch veiy nicely sums up Schutz’s method of constructing ideal types: The construction o f ideal types is subject to the condition (among others) that understandable relations obtain between what is sttributed to the homunculus and the actual conduct o f the corresponding actor on the scene o f social reality. That is to say, the actor must recognize him self in the homunculus and see in it an idealization o f himself. The construction o f homunculi is...an idealization o f those typifications and self-typifications that are continually practiced in daily life.

Thus the true propositions making up social science and political philosophy are those expressing the combination of positing of idealities and actualities or realities. And the orientation is always to the eidetic not just on the part of the social scientist, but must take into account how the actor on the social

50See Schutz, CP IV, 144, and 149.

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scene sees his own behavior or conduct as purely possible exemplification of an idealization of certain typifications (e.g., how I see myself as a “good congressman”). The eidetic judgments based on senseful intuition then are as much characteristic o f daily non-scientific life as o f scientific life.5' §16. The Paradox of the Cultural Sciences. But no matter how far we develop Schutz’s methodology, and do so, as Gurwitsch insists, with respect to Dilthey, there is an unresolved problem as much in the natural as in the social sciences, no matter how we cut them: . . .a scientist turns back from his theoretical attitude to the natural one in order to communicate as a human being with his fellow human beings. This is a highly paradoxical situation: the full display o f theorizing activities becomes possible only after dropping the pure, theoretical attitude in the world o f everyday life that, on its part, remains unaccessible to the direct approach o f theorizing. Yet it is exactly this paradoxical situation which prevents theorizing from a strange solipcism by which any thinking self would remain secluded in its own private and fictitious world. Only o f this paradox, originating in the dialectical situation does science become again included in the life-world.52

The disinterested observer paradoxically is ipso facto an interested one. The eidetic sphere cannot escape the one real world with which it is always concrete. And, as Schutz’s colleague, Hans Jonas admirably demonstrated in a famous lecture at the Graduate Faculty in 1959 celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Graduate Faculty, there is theory, there is application of theory, but no theory o f the application o f theory P §17. Eidetic Founding-Foundedness.

51For more on the requirements o f scientific method in the cultural sciences, see Fred Kersten, “The Constancy Hypothesis in the Social Sciences,” in Lifeworld and Consciousness.- Essays fo r Aron Gurwitsch, ed. Lester E. Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, 524 f, 550ff. (which deals with the political philosophies o f Arnold Brecht and Leo Strauss in the light o f Alfred Schutz). 52CP IV, 50. 53For the consequences and the dangers, see Alfred Cobban, “The Decline o f Political Theory,” in European Intellectual History Since Darwin and Marx, ed. W. W arren Wagar. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966, 186ff.

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Only if we make the distinctions among eidetic judgings, and heed the specific kind at issue, can we make sense out of the component of social methodology concerned with the construction of ideal types of social relations and actions. And it is in terms of senseful intuition that Schutz and Otaka disagree.54Other than alluding to his own book, published in the same year as Otaka’s, Schutz does not provide us with more information about the disagreement. I mentioned before that Otaka and Schutz, perhaps under the heady influences of Husserl and Dilthey, are more interested in the structural than the causal nexus of social relations and actions. There are two kinds of variation and structure at stake. Otaka draws chiefly on the 3rd and 4th Logical Investigations of Husserl, but the second edition in which Husserl converts what he says about real individuals to hold for ideal objects.55 Recall our example of Law and Polity and the analogy with Color and Extension. In terms of the Logical Investigations, Polity and Law, or Color and Extension, are said to mutually “found” each other (above, §14); we may also say with Husserl and Otaka that they are mutually dependent— a defining facet of the structural nexus obtaining between Law and Polity. Following Husserl, Otaka explores this nexus by means of the method of “free variation.” That a Polity within a certain “complexly arranged organization” (or “content”) is yet independent of, and separable from, that organization does not mean that the Polity can be actually separated, or abstracted from any organization or content and represented in isolation. All that is meant is that the organization remains unaltered while the Polity undergoes—up to a limit— free variations, some of which may be actually existent but always to be regarded as purely possible examples. An “independent” or self-sufficient content imposes no limitations upon the free variations of concomitant contents of which it is independent; the content, e.g., Social Organization remains unaltered. However, in the case of Color and Extension, for example, no such entirely free variability of one moment prevails while the other remains unaltered. If we feign a colored surface to shrink, finally vanish, we cn no longer feign color.56 So with Law and Polity according to Schutz and Otaka: If we feign a lawless Polity, we

' V P IV , 213, note 0.

"S ee Fred Kcrstcn, “The Originality o f G urwitsch’s Theory o f Intentionality,” Research in I'liciioiiicnology V (Spring 1975): 20ff. S*//W ., 21

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can no longer feign a Polity. And conversely if we feign Law with a shrinking Polity until the Polity vanishes, we can no longer feign Law (so Thucydides). They are non-selfsufficient, or dependent, variables rather than self-sufficient or independent ones. (Thus the statement that the natural right theory of the social contract is a highly hypothetical presupposition in the extreme.57) Law and Polity, unlike Religion and Economics, are mutually founding non-selfsufficient moments of the whole of Social Organization. And in the case of the regional categories, Socialization and Communalization, they too are non-selfsufficient mutually founding parts of the Social Whole (above, §11). But this signifies that, of necessity, power is made more and more rational, until it is no longer a good-evil institutionalized in bureaucracy and the military, for instance, as Santayana suggests.58 Nor can we feign a Social Organization without the three kinds of Social Relations, or any one of them without the others. The structural relations are necessary and universal owing to the very eidetic laws grounded in the nature of the contents themselves. The study of the vast array of structural relations in their historicality is the primary task of systematic cultural science. Some of the subtleties of the founding relationships are suggested by the further distinction introduced by Otaka between “homogeneous” and “heterogeneous” founding.59 Accordingly, there are two non-selfsufficient genera, Polity and Law, and two self-sufficient genera, Religion and Economy. (It would seem, likewise, that the various regional categories are also non-selfsufficient moments of the social whole, Social Organization.) §18. The Significance of Santayana for Schutz’s Purely Possible Political Philosophy. I have already indicated where some of the discussion of Santayana would fit into the review of Otaka’s book (above, §6). First of all, Santanyana is no stranger to the domain of the ideal, of “essences,” which he finds in their concretion everywhere. Secondly, Santayana’s “materialism” and “naturalism,” while often indicating an emphasis on the factual matters of biological and social life, nonetheless cannot operate without seizing upon

57CP IV, 216 58See Schutz’s review, CP II, 212f., 216f., 221f. S9Otaka, 65ff.; CP IV, 210.

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them clothed in their eidetic garbs. What, thirdly, Santayana introduces into Otaka’s account, by extension Schutz’s, is the “genetic” facet of the constituting of Polity and Law, thus the need to reformulate the structural nexus of Polity in “genetic” and “developmental” terms, and, indeed, this “generative order of society,” of the Eidos, Social Organization, for Schutz proves to be “the paramount social reality upon which all other orders are founded.”60 In other words, what Schutz learns from Santayana is that there is an internal organizing principle of the structural nexus peculiar to the regional ontology of the Social. III. Eidetic Phenomenology in the Cultural Sciences §19. The Purely Possible Political Philosophy of Alfred Schutz Through the Optics of Husserl, Otaka, and Santayana. There is of course much more to be said. I believe that I have provided a sketch of what “political theory” or “political science” would look like for Alfred Schutz. With Schutz’s own life-long insistence on Husserl as a starting point, what I have sketched should be no surprise. The immediate task at hand would involve spelling out the various relations among the highest genera o f the Eidos, Social Organization, the different regional categories, all with respect to the “founding” relations and the historicality of their actualizations, as well as the causal relationships obtaining among those purely possible examples which also happen to be factual matters within the framework of the contingent apriori of eidetic laws. Political philosophy is then a chapter in Social Philosophy and Theory in so far as it is set into phenomenological philosophy. The chapter on political philosophy is, however, the central chapter in social philosophy because it explores the paramount social reality, the archontic political bond, as that ‘‘reality ” in and on which all other "orders o f reality ” are founded. It is in this light, I believe, that Schutz’s methodology of the Social Sciences must be read and understood, practiced, and it is in this light, more importantly, that we can identify the precise nature of the different kinds of

60CP II, 224f.

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eidetic judgments and propositions which make up his social theory—judgments we must make with him, and verify, if we are to understand him at all and appropriate his insights into the nature of human life. I realize that all that I have said probably runs counter to, and is of little or no interest to those who read Schutz today. It does seem outrageous, after all, to suggest that, no matter how “traditional” it may appear, for Schutz political philosophy is at the center o f his social theory and method. How this is so, and a possible argument for such a view, consistent with Schutz, we shall sketch in a moment (§20). To be sure, “Schutz’s” political philosophy, as viewed darkly through the optics of Otaka, Santayana and Husserl, does not seem to differ greatly from what we have, in the West, inherited from Aristotle, Cicero, Locke and Rousseau.61 Personally, I have no objection to this, despite my preference for Bakunin and my location on the political spectrum somewhere to the left of Jesse Jackson. Perhaps, because of its careful attention to structural relationships and powerful combination of eidetic and empirical science, such a political philosophy can even address many thomy questions about law, government, religion, and economics. But will those answers provide campaign reform? Downsize government? Balance the budget? Improve import/export ratios, define liberalism and conservatism, conduct wars, shape foreign policy? Revise the Federal Code? Define the limits of States’ Rights? Straighten out public policy and decision making?62 Eliminate the paper work of public administration? §20. Phenomenological Political Philosophy. We can perhaps best express the nature of a political philosophy consistent with Schutz (and Otaka and Husserl) in the following “argument” (see above, §§6f.): The ccntral theme of phenomenological political philosophy is the paramount social reality. This means that Polity bestows on Social Orgamza-

'''II' nothing else, Ihc very movement o f his thought, following Husserl and Otaka, is Aristotelian and Ciceronian: from the Eidos, Social Organization, to the Polity (or State) to the regional categories o f social relations, communalization and socialization, sub- and superordination, i.e., “citizenship,” to civic life. '’’In this connection, sec John l-'orcstcr, ( rilical Theory, Public Policy and Planning Practice. Ithaca: State University o f New York Press, 1997.

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tion its character and therefore the specific way of life o f society and ways of being in society. And the way of life and ways of being, as Schutz’s New School colleagues, Leo Strauss and Kurt Rietzler insisted, depend on the predominance of human beings, human consciousnesses, of a certain type. Thus Polity (or: regime) means the form o f life of society, its paramount reality— “paramount” in the sense of style of life, moral taste and sentiment form o f government, and the spirit o f laws, its power and authority. The gist of the argument is this: Life is an activity directed toward a goal, and social life is a life directed to such a goal as can only be pursued by society. But to pursue such a goal society must be organized, ordered, constructed, thus an exemplification of Social Organization. The internal principle of organization of Social Reality and its parts is not just Polity, but the “best Polity” (or: regime). But what is the “best Polity?” This is a conventional, and Classical, question, and one would suppose that Schutz’s answer would be equally conventional, that is the case where the good of the citizen and of the Polity would coincide. Would the good of the citizen, the “well-informed” citizen, be “virtue” in the sense of Aristotle or in some other sense? Or would it be participation in some higher human destiny?—so that the idealism of his political philosophy would also be “idealistic”? Perhaps the answer is to be found in a letter of Alfred Schutz to Aron Gurwitsch of 26 April, 1941:63 Are you still enough o f an optimist to believe that phenomenology will save itself out o f the ruins o f this world— as philosophia aere perennis ? I simply don’t believe that anymore. The bushmen will surely first have to become acquainted with the National Socialist store o f ideas. That doesn’t stop us from wanting to die as we have lived, and therefore we have to try to create in our world that order which we have to do without in our world. The whole conflict— lies hidden in the shift o f emphasis.

63Alfred Schutz, Philosophers in Exile. The Correspondence o f Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939-1959, ed. Richard Grathoff, trs. J. Claude Evans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, 37.

Chapter 11

Values as C ritique and the C ritique of Values: Voegelin and Schutz on Theory in the Social Sciences Michael Barber Saint Louis University Abstract: After briefly presenting Eric Voegelin’s general theoretical framework, this paper highlights the differences between Voegelin and Schutz in regard to three issues in their correspondence: 1) the place o f epistemology in theory 2) the role o f general theory with relation to values, and 3) the interpretation o f Husserl's Crisis. The article concludes that a value-oriented theory, such as Voegelin’s, and a value-neutral theory, such as Schutz’s, converge on certain ethical concerns about the role o f theory. Ever since Max Weber insisted on the need for value-free social science, a debate has ensued over the linkage between values and theory in the social sciences, and the Schutz/Voegelin correspondence is one nodal point in this debate. In this paper, I will briefly present Eric Voegelin’s general theoreti­ cal framework (presuming that the reader of a volume on Schutzian Social Science would already be familiar with his viewpoint) and then contrast in general terms the differences between Voegelin and Schutz over three issues in their correspondence: (1) the place of epistemology in theory, (2) the role of general theory with relation to values, and (3) the interpretation of Edmund Husserl’s Crisis. My hope, as my title suggests, is to show that value oriented theory, such a Voegelin’s, and a value-neutral theory, such as Schutz’s, converge on certain ethical concerns about the role of theory. The term “value” must be taken in a general sense that gives a prominent place to ethical values and principles, and hopefully the meaning of terms such as “theory,” and “value-freedom” will become clear in the course of the paper. I. Eric Voegelin: The Basis of Theory Voegelin lays a foundation for his political theory by attending to the concrete, existential consciousness of the theorist, which, according to Voegelin, participates in reality by expanding, ordering, articulating, and L ester E m b ree (e d .) Schutzian Social Science , 2 13 -2 33 . © 1999 K luw er A c ad e m ic P ub lish ers. P rinted in the N e th erla n d s.

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correcting itself, permanently struggling to be open to the appeal of reality and refraining from conceiving that reality as an object external to itself to be mastered by the form of a system. This consciousness discovers its “specific humanity as that of the questioner for the where-from and the where-to, for the ground and the sense of existence.” Human consciousness thus experiences itself within Plato’s metaxy, between the divine and the human poles, between the eternal and the temporal, with the temporal pole opening in a loving and hopeful urge toward the divine eternity and the pole of the eternal being experienced as a call and irruption of grace. Within this conscious experience of a tension toward the ground of human existence, toward an order beyond itself, the eternal being does not become intelligible as an object in time, nor is the experiencing soul transfigured into an eternal being; in other words, the poles are “non-objective.” Voegelin insists that this experience is not accessible to the observer whose concepts establish distinct objects in the external world, but rather to the first person participant in experience. Furthermore, this experience of the process of reality precedes any mythic or noetic presentation since myth and philosophy emerge, subsequently, from a prior experience.1 O f course, Voegelin’s own presentation of this experience as an In-Between presupposes that consciousness has already differentiated itself noetically-philosophically, since Voegelin conceives himself as repeating what he takes to be Plato’s philosophical description of human experience. This philosophical form of symbolizing the foundational experience grew out of earlier, more “compact” (less differentiated) mythic forms of symbolization. Voegelin, unwilling to discard or discredit traditional myth, observes that “Compact symbolisms, in sum, may become obsolete in the light of new insights, but the reality they express does not cease to be real for that reason.” Since philosophy as well as myth gives expression to the experience of reality, including its religious dimensions, theophanies can

'Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis, trans., ed. Gerhart Niemeyer. C olum bia and London: University o f M issouri Press, 1978, 4, 92, 126. Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss, Faith and Political Philosophy, The Correspondence Between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934-1964, trans., eds. Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993, 142, 214, 153; Eric Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, vol. 4 o f Order and History. Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1974, 224, 237, 315; Eric Voegelin, In Search o f Order, vol. 5 o f O rder and History. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State U niversity Press, 1987, 103.

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 215 occur within the noetic order of philosophy, as well as within the pneumatic order of the non-philosopher, and philosophy itself can be “revelatory,” later distinctions between “revelation and reason” notwithstanding. In drawing the distinction between experiences and their mythical or philosophical symbolization, Voegelin is quick to assert, on the one hand, that there is not first o f all a movement o f the In-Between and then its symbolization since the language-symbols expressing the movement are not invented by an observer but are, instead, engendered in the event o f participation. On the other hand, it is quite possible for symbols, detached from the experience from which they emerge, to become opaque, to be misunderstood as mere propositions referring to things as objects of sense perception, and hence, to use a religious example, to deteriorate into lifeless dogmas far removed from the vital religious experiences that may have generated them in the first place. In addition, it is possible at a noetic level for a rational destruction of myths to occur and for reason to develop in a way that is at odds with the underlying experience of participation. Hence, Herodotus’s rational destruction of myth, that is, “the development of the dispassionate co-ordination of means and ends as a standard of right action, inevitably in opposition to the Homeric participation in the order of Zeus and Themis as the standard,” left him incapable of understanding why the Trojans would rather engage in war than surrender Helen.2 This explanation of the foundational experience and its symbolization in myth and philosophy makes possible Voegelin’s analysis o f the growth of gnosticism beginning with Joachim of Flora. Although the experience of Christian living replicates Plato’s metaxy through the uncertainty of “openness toward God, the waiting, the periods of aridity and dullness, guilty and despondency, contrition and repentance, forsakenness and hope against hope, the silent stirrings of love and grace,” it proves too heavy a burden for the gnostic who “lusts for massively possessive experience.” Gnostic speculation, far removed from the experience of the uncertain metaxy, appropriates the transcendent, eschatological symbols that once symbolized history’s incompleteness and immanentizes them. On the basis

2The Ecumenic Age, 71-72, 177, 185, 236, 241, 252; Faith and Political Philosophy, 58, 153-154, 172, 177-180, 197-198, 202, 215, 284, 306, 357; Anamnesis, 154, 176-177; In Search o f Order, 58-59. Leo Strauss, it should be pointed out, disputed V oegelin’s reading o f Plato as religious (cf. Faith and Political Philosophy, 332-33 in essay by Thomas L. Pangle, “Platonic Political Science in Strauss and Voegelin.”)

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of this eschaton, now immanent within the civilizational course of Western humanity, various Gnostic groups, whether it be the Joachites or their secularized counterparts, the Nazis or Soviet communists, develop interpre­ tations of history that present themselves as the vanguard bringing this immanent eschaton to its fulfillment. Voegelin’s distinction between symbols and experience thus permits a reading of modem political movements as gnostic in character, pressing symbols into the service of causes contradictory to the experience that generated these symbols in the first place. Likewise, his view that underlying experiences can be obscured by an overlay of symbolism, far removed from those original experiences and even at odds with them, calls to mind phenomenological attempts to recover the things themselves buried beneath unreflectively assumed categories.3 For Voegelin, the origins of philosophy and reason itself in the classical era produced a kind of differentiation in which a critical consciousness developed concerning the order of existence in the metaxy, from which philosophy and reason emerged. Hence, Voegelin understands his own work as a form of anamnesis, restoring the practically forgotten experiential context, on which the meaning of reason depends, in order to understand the modem psychopathology of alienation and aspernatio rationis. Thus, for instance, modem rationality, by isolating humanity from its existential context within the metaxy of being, has reduced the human being to “a thing-in-being in a world construed as wholly immanent, and his relation to the order o f being is no longer one of partnership but rather reduced to the subject of cognition.” Similarly, the social sciences have sought to secure for themselves an objectivity, a “value-freedom,” analogous to that of the sciences o f nature, which are peripheral to the person, even though these

3Eric Voegelin, The New Science o f Politics, An Introduction. Chicago and London: The University o f Chicago Press, 1952, 122, 129, cf. 107-132; Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch both see in Voegelin’s N ew Science o f Politics an example o f phenomenology insofar as it treats how historical structures and societies have interpreted themselves (Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwistch, Philosophers in Exile, The Correspondence o f Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939-1959, ed. Richard Grathoff, trans. J. Claude Evans. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989, 183, 195). For a list o f the kinds o f dissatisfactions within the metaxy o f the present that might lead one to become impatient, to escape into the Beyond or to attempt to force the order o f the Beyond into reality, see In Search o f Order, 36-37. See also Faith and Political Philosophy, 159; Eric Voegelin, Israel and Revelation, vol. 1 o f O rder and History. Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1956, 142.

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 217 “sciences of man” have their origin in the tension toward the divine ground of being. In Voegelin’s opinion, modem reason, detached from its existen­ tial, ontological, and ethical setting, culminates in the isolated Archimedean observer outside the movement of Being, the res cogitans of Descartes, the moi of Sartre, “the monster of Hegel’s Consciousness which has brought forth a God, man, and history of its own.”4 Although Voegelin’s reactions to modernity might appear somewhat “violent,” as Thomas J.J. Altizer has observed, there are elements in his own value-oriented thought that work against the intolerance he at times displays. Indeed, since every symbolism arises out of the uncertain metaxy, whose poles are experienced as non-objective, “any expectations of an ultimate symbolism, however, will again be disappointed.” Symbols, in fact, are essentially inadequate to express fully the reality of knowing participation. As Voegelin puts it, “Symbolism is no more than the last word of each historical religion; the reality of faith through conversio lies beyond the symbols.” Indeed, symbol-systems, isolated from the underlying uncertainty of the metaxy, are prone to become dogmatic and gnostic. In addition to de-absolutizing symbol systems, this distinction between experience and symbols makes it possible that diverse symbol systems can convey a common underlying experience; hence the philosophy of Plato and the myths of various religions can symbolize the experience of the metaxy and of an unknown God. Philosophy for Voegelin can be a place of revelation, and diverse religions can symbolize the divine economy in various ways. In a critical comment on St. Paul’s mistaken attack on Judaism, Voegelin observes: Nevertheless, every order has its own present under God, as we formulated the principle; and this present is not abolished when it becomes a past in retrospect from a differentiated experience of order. Hence, the resistance to representative advances o f truth about order, and the continued existence o f more compactly ordered societies by the side o f more differentiated orders, is intimately a part o f the m ystery o f the mankind that unfolds in history. This mystery must not be destroyed by progressivist slogans about “backward” peoples, or by inflicting on

iAnamnesis, 80, 112-113; Faith and Political Philosophy, 18-19, 64, 142-143; Eric Voegelin, “The German University and the Order o f German Society: A Reconsideration o f the Nazi Era,” in The Collected Works o f Eric Voegelin, Vol. 12: Published Essays 1966-1985, ed. Ellis Sandoz. Baton Rouge and London: Lousiana State University Press, 1990, 25.

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th e su rv iv al o f Ju d aism the p seu d o -scien tific ep ith et o f “ fo ssiliz a tio n .” It m u s t be tre a te d w ith th e u tm o st c a u tio n a n d re s p e c t in c ritic a l p h ilo so p h y o f h is to ry .5

This comment and Voegelin’s assertion that “History is Christ writ large” reflect both the limits of his own Christian symbol-system as well as the belief that God is present and hidden throughout all human history and inadequately symbolized through any symbol system. This later belief helps mitigate many o f the dangers that could result from Voegelin’s so firmly held value-commitments.6 II. Voegelin and Schutz on epistemology, theory, and Husserl In an early exchange of letters with Schutz regarding Husserl’s Crisis, Voegelin praises it “as the most significant epistemological performance of our time,” and then immediately registers his disappointment because, even though epistemology is an eminently important theme of philosophy, “it does not exhaust the area of the philosophical” and cannot provide the foundation of philosophy itself. Because of his opposition to an excessive reliance on epistemology, Voegelin is delighted with Schutz’s essay “On Multiple Realities,” in which he sees Schutz “break with the restriction of philosophy to epistemology”; take up the realms of daily life, phantasms, and dreams, often neglected by philosophical systems; and “overcome the unpleasant Husserlian problem of phenomenological solipsism” by rooting the multiplicity of forms of constitution in the encompassing existence (Gesamtexistenz) of human beings. In fact, Voegelin wishes that Schutz had gone further in discussing dimensions of bodiliness, childhood, and tool-usage beneath the epistemological level.7 Years later, in response to Schutz’s reactions to his own treatment of character and scepticism, Voegelin again finds Schutz not having gone as far as he would like in breaking with an epistemologically oriented philosophy. Voegelin points out how Schutz proceeds from a typology of truths and

5Eric Voegelin, The World o f the Polls, vol. 2 o f Order and History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957, 12-13. 6Thom as J.J. Altizer, “The Theological Conflict Between Schutz and Voegelin,” Faith and Political Philosophy, 201, 273, 275, 311, In Search o f Order, 105; Anamnesis, 197. 7Voegelin to Schutz, September 17, 1943, in Faith and Political Philosophy, 20; Voegelin to Schutz, October 6, 1945, 1-2. Copies o f letters not assigned to any text are to be found in the Helmut W agner Archive, University o f Memphis.

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 219 knowledge-forms, as Scheler did in his distinction between knowledge aimed at control, personal development, and salvation. But rather than separate science from knowledge for salvation as did Scheler, Voegelin prefers to situate the rise of epistemology with reference to its historical and religious origins in Aeschylus’s Eumenides or Plato’s Timaeus. Each of these works sought to replace the production of order through power and fear with an order to be achieved by persuasive appeal to the spirit of the other person, in the hopes of achieving a social order in conjunction with an ordering toward salvation within the cosmic order.8 In other parts of the correspondence, Voegelin further criticizes Schutz’s approach to theory by returning to Max Weber who established rational behavior as the model for all the other behaviors (value-rational or irrational) that derive from it instead of beginning with the sentiments and proceeding to rational activity as did Pareto. Understanding Theorie as “the explanation of experiences of transcendence in language-symbols” and insisting that theory support itself in an a priori ontology, Voegelin stresses the limitations of Weber, who, following in the path of the French Revolution, is more interested in distinguishing reason from tradition and who develops types such a “goal-rational” and “value-rational” action, which leave out significant amounts of scientifically interesting material that will not fit these types. Indeed, Voegelin prefers not even to speak of “values” at all since this concept does not fit the concepts of “good” and “virtue” prevalent in the classical and Christian eras.9 As far as questions of epistemology and philosophical theory are concerned, Schutz is able to concur with Voegelin that any typology within a general theory of relevances must be founded in a philosophical anthropol­ ogy, and he is further open to Voegelin’s development o f the diverse motivations to be found in a culture’s passage from rituals to myths to symbols. However, in contrast to Voegelin, Schutz believes that Husserl did address fundamental problems in philosophy beyond epistemology, as is illustrated by his discovery of the prepredicative sphere; his opening up the problem of intersubjectivity; his rooting of logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences in the lifeworld; and his analysis of the constitution of space and inner time-consciousness—whether one calls all these discussions “epistemological” or not.

8Voegelin to Schutz, N ovember 7 ,1 9 4 9 , 1-2. ’Voegelin to Schutz, September 28, 1943, 2-3; Voegelin to Schutz, April 30, 1951, 2-3.

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In addition, Schutz also believes that whatever types of motivationcategories lie at the basis of prescientific, everyday action and however one may hierarchize such motivations, there are certain common, formal structures at play. An explanation of the formal structures of relevances is susceptible to a philosophical/theoretical investigation without presenting a doctrine of goods, virtues, or concrete problems of order. Indeed, Schutz argues that Voegelin himself in his studies of representation as such, of its relation to articulation, and of gnostic types of self-understanding makes use of such formal analyses. Schutz agrees with Voegelin that the classical differentiation between doxa and episteme has disappeared and that present-day social science has replaced the concept of doxa with ideology. However, Schutz believes that one still can describe the structure of doxa through a structural examination of the relative-natural attitude, without employing a concept of ideology. Schutz asserts in the end that such a theory is possible, without recurring to concepts like “wisdom, beauty, or goodness,” even though it is not theory in the sense to which Voegelin aspires or in Aristotle’s sense.10 Voegelin is not satisfied, though, since he finds Schutz continually stopping short of the value-laden basis of theory out of which theory itself emerges: As regards your own systematic analysis o f action, choice, etc., we would soon come to the point to which we arrived in our conversation in New York. I can heartily affirm your analyses, I find them excellent, and wonderfully lucid in their exposition— but why should one stop at the point where you break off? Why should a theory o f action exclude the most important aspect o f action, the theory o f goods and virtues? Why should ethics be mutilated and reduced to a insubstantial theory o f goal-rational action? W hen a positivist imposes such limitations, because he or she holds the problems o f ethics and metaphysics for “pseudo-problems,” I can understand that, even if I cannot approve. But why do you do this? Your recourse to the argument that every one has his or her interests is not satisfactory to me since this argument is not rational, that .is, not defined by the prescientific problem-structure; and in the prescientific problematic o f every society (even our miserable, demoralized society) there are action-goals and their relative valuation which are o f decisive significance for every person (see what

10Schutz to Voegelin, November 11,1952, 2, 5, 13; Schutz to Voegelin, N ovem ber 11, 1943, p. 2.

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 221 comes out o f the prescientific type o f the representation o f happiness in A ristotle’s society that Aristotle developed in his Nichomachean Ethics)."

In an extensive letter dated November 1952, two months after he would have received the questions posed in the previous paragraph, Schutz explains why his analyses are delimited, and his motives have nothing to do with positivism or a lack of appreciation for metaphysics or ethics. Admitting the importance of Voegelin’s values, Schutz defends the possibility of simply trying to understand the self-understanding of a society. I know also that is it much more important to recognize that societal and political existence has to do with the ordering o f the soul and that next to the anthropologi­ cal principle there is a theological one. Still I ask m yself whether or not it is unavoidable for philosophy o f history and also for a theoretical social science to go into the self-interpretation o f this order according to the concrete society itself and according to the external societies and their representatives.'2

In fact, for Schutz, there are dangers if one does not prescind from one’s own value-scheme in order to understand the varied self-interpretations that might compete with one’s own lived self-interpretation. Hence, for instance, he finds himself uncomfortable with Voegelin’s “grandiose cyclical theory of historical development,” and prefers instead D em pfs self-critical philosophical position, which establishes as a ground-axiom the “side-by-side existence” o f diverse self-interpretations in their historical development and in their yet-to-be-perfected metaphysical positions. Throughout his long letter of November 1952, Schutz wonders about the narrowness o f Voegelin’s own categories, i.e., he wonders whether the Christian eschaton is not itself a hypostasis, whether soteriological explanations render Plato’s or Aristotle’s theories invalid, whether any great metaphysician would be able to escape Voegelin’s classification of “gnostic,” whether the Koranic character of scriptures and taboos are not general features of all societies and not merely gnostic features, whether the rejection o f Christian eschatology should be the only explanation of “closing the soul,” and whether a metaphysics could not preserve its openness of the soul even without Christian eschatology. Even though Schutz’s criticisms may not grasp fully the symbolic nature of Voegelin’s use o f Christian

" V o e g e lin to S c h u tz , S e p te m b e r 15, 1952, 2. l2S c h u tz to V o e g e lin , N o v e m b e r 1 9 5 2 , 13.

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symbolism with reference to experiences that exist beyond the boundaries of Christianity itself, Schutz does make a salient point. He shows that values themselves, too narrowly clung to, continually require critique from those who prescind at least temporarily from the values to which they are committed in order to take account of the values of others.13 In response to Schutz’s justification of a formal-structural analysis of relevances and his characterization of history as a conflict between counterpositions, Voegelin inquires whether one can take the process of generalization too far, i.e., to the extent that the problems of the concrete historical positions disappear and that one ends up in historical relativism. “Formally Socrates is in conflict with Athens . . . and here one must arrive at a decision: Socrates was right and Athens wrong.” What Voegelin discerns correctly here is that Schutz’s move to a theory that would grasp the formal structures underlying differing self-interpretations of individuals and groups involves a certain refraining from taking a stand toward on the very issues on which these individuals or groups have decided themselves. While Voegelin, beginning with the values he lives and approaching opponents in their light, risks misunderstanding those opponents’s self-interpretation, Schutz, in moving to a formal level that accommodates diverse self-interpretations never seriously engages and leaves undecided the value-questions to which those self-interpretations are committed. Under­ graduates, who, exposed to a little anthropology, wind up convinced relativists, prove more than that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; they exhibit Voegelin’s insight that the very move to a formal-theoretical level surveying underlying diverse exemplars exempts itself from engaging those exemplars and harbors within itself the spirit o f relativism.14 But not only does Schutz not engage such value questions, he is also left without any capacity to criticize the very value-stances or relevance-systems whose formal features he articulates. Voegelin, in an earlier letter, refers to the example of Aristotle, who asked in the first two books of the Nichomachean Ethics whether one must remain with a mere classification of relevance types or whether it would be possible to rank relevances and to found this ranking critically in a philosophical anthropology. Aristotle, of course, thought that such a scientific doctrine of the good was possible and produced it. Voegelin notes that if such a ranking were not possible, then

l3Ibid., 1 ,3 ,8 , 18-26, 28. 14Voegelin to Schutz, January 10, 1953, 4.

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 223 Aristotle’s “scientific” ethics would be only one more example of the relevance-orderings considered by Schutz’s general theory. If the Aristote­ lian project would be possible, then his ethic (omitting for the time being its defects) would not be one more example, but the relevance-theory based upon philosophical anthropology.15 Similarly, Voegelin, opposed to privileging epistemology, challenges one of Schutz’s claims cited by Voegelin from an unavailable letter that “It is before all a thing of personal evaluation, whether one will deny that an ‘epistemological achievement’ . . . is to be ranked as philosophy”: When you de-absolutize the idea of relevance in such a way that regarding some relevances belonging to A or B it is not permitted to raise a question, then you destroy the community o f philosophizing. Obviously any person philosophizing must hold something for relevant, otherwise he or she would never have come to philosophize at all. But can he or she not err? Can he or she not hold something for relevant which in fact, objectively, is not relevant? Is there no rule o f choice? Is a relevance scheme an irrational fact, which cannot be rationally criticized or discussed? Is every one who philosophizes a relevance-monad? . . . Is there no hierarchy o f philosophical problems? Is the problem o f such a hierarchy not discussible in rational arguments? W ould it not be basically thinkable that epistemological problems are certainly philosophical problems, but philosophically secondary problems when viewed in the light o f the catalogue o f problems in Scheler’s M an's P lace in N ature ? 16

Voegelin also reacts to what he sees to be a relativism also lurking in an applied sociological writing such as “The Homecomer.” Hopefully you will not take it badly, when it seems like the points that most strike me may be o f less significance for you, as for example the problem that we in our tim e have special adaptation difficulties for the Homecomer . . . because the commercial and public apparatus o f reality falsification (movies, radio, press, etc.) has barraged us with illusions, which must be broken through in order to reach the unavoidable and normal difficulties. The pervasive, social- psychologi­ cal categorization o f “adjustment,’’“adaptation,” etc., seems to me not only theoretically insufficient but also a kind o f perfidious immorality, which proceeds from the supposition that the “environment” is something to which one must adapt, and the question is never permitted whether the “environment” is not

15V o e g e lin to S c h u tz , O c to b e r 19, 1 952, 1-2. " V o e g e lin to S c h u tz , D e c e m b e r 2 8 , 1943, 6.

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something basically in need o f revolution and whether the homecomers might do better to adapt the “environment” to themselves, etc.17

Voegelin’s critique of the emphasis on adjustment in “The Homecomer” is reminiscent of Gurwitsch’s reaction to Schutz’s “The Stranger,” which Gurwitsch takes to be a piece of “formal” sociology that fails, however, to criticize the “Evangelium of universal ‘adjustment.’” Both Gurwitsch and Voegelin grasp quite clearly that the move to a formal “value-free” analysis of the structures that inform all value commitments entails a turning away from any engagement with those commitments, heads in the direction of a value relativism, and deprives itself of any basis for criticizing such commitments. The values that Voegelin and Gurwitsch hold continually pose critical questions of the seeming “positionlessness” that can characterize Schutz’s “value-free” analysis of the formal structures underlying assorted value-schemes.18 It is in their diverse readings of Husserl that the differences between Voegelin and Schutz crystallize, and one can begin with their attack on Husserl’s constitution of intersubjectivity. Even when they both agree that Husserl’s (and Descartes’s) starting point in the monadic consciousness made it impossible to resolve the problem of intersubjectivity, a problem that had not even been a problem for Plato and Aristotle, Voegelin, relying on his theory of gnosticism, amplifies his critique of Husserl. After reading Schutz’s essay on transcendental intersubjectivity, Voegelin wonders why Husserl held on with such obstinacy for decades to his erroneous position and repeatedly returned to it with new attempts at construction. Voegelin locates Husserl’s motive in his longing for “the nihilation of the world and its new creation from the ‘solitude’ of the meditating philosopher, in any event within a meditating sect-community.” Voegelin concludes that “this is indeed gnosis.”19 In 1943, Schutz and Voegelin exchanged lengthy letters over Husserl’s Crisis. In an opening letter, Voegelin argues that Husserl presents a Victorian view of history that neglects the middle ages and the rest of humanity (outside of Europe) in favor of an oversimplified history whose

l7Voegelin to Schutz, April 21, 1945, 3. ‘“Gurwitsch to Schutz, July 16,1944, in Philosophers in Exile, 69-72, especially 72. l9V oegelin to Schutz, October 19, 1952, 2; Schutz to Voegelin, N ovem ber 11, 1952, 5-6; Voegelin to Schutz, May 31, 1957, 1.

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 225 phases pass from the Greeks to Descartes to Husserl. The reason for this distorted, reductionist philosophy of history lies ultimately, in Voegelin’s view, in the fact that Husserl conceives history as progressing toward a telos, as did Kant; but Husserl locates the telos in his own absolutized position and ends up misusing “the material of history as historical supports for his own position.” Husserl’s philosophy of history, pervaded by the gnosticism of messianism and sectarianism, disregards any empirical counter-evidence to itself, after the pattern of Marx, Hitler, or Mussolini. Furthermore, Husserl’s Averroistic embrace of the world soul and his view of society as itself a real person participates in the collectivist disregard of the individual. In fact, it is precisely this ethical disregard that Voegelin finds most offensive. Unlike Kant, who felt uneasy “that the generations before the final reign should be only points of transition for reason,’’“without absolute value in themselves,” Husserl is not at all alarmed that “the Greeks and modem philosophy since Descartes are only the historical manure for the soil from which the flower of the Husserlian final foundation blooms.” Voegelin denounces Husserl for “the apparent inhumanity in the humiliation of his predecessors.” According to Voegelin’s view of how history is to be written, by contrast, the philosopher of history must “penetrate every historical spiritual position to its own point of rest, i.e., to where it is deeply rooted in the experiences of transcendence of the thinker in question,” paying heed to the “self-testimonies” of the thinker, as does Voegelin himself when, for instance, he refuses to privilege noetic views over mythic ones or Christian­ ity over Judaism. As an example of penetrating a historical spiritual position to its experiences of transcendence, Voegelin concludes by recovering Descartes from Husserl’s clutches. Voegelin explores the meditative character of Descartes’s thought in which Descartes discovers transcendence in the midst of experiences of doubt and finitude— aspects of Descartes’s thought that Husserl totally disregards.20 Schutz’s response, in a letter dated November 11, 1943, is simply to argue that Voegelin fails to understand Husserl and that it is not right for the reader “to object to the author that the author is interested in another problem than the reader and to make the author pay for the reader’s disillusion since the author has not seen the world with the reader’s eyes and has not taken the same things as relevant” as the reader. According to Schutz, in the Crisis Husserl is writing neither a cosmopolitan philosophy of history like Kant’s,

“ V o e g e lin to S c h u tz , S e p te m b e r 17, 1 9 43, 2 1 , 2 5 -3 2 , 34.

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which conforms to an ideal of progress, nor an empirical history that must square itself with all the empirical facts, nor a fully developed philosophy of history. Rather Husserl, as a active, self-reflective philosopher, who is no mere passive recipient of the tradition of philosophy he inherits, attempts both to assure himself of the motives leading him to philosophy via a process of anamnesis and to develop his own responsible stand regarding the origin and end of philosophy. As Schutz puts it, As standing within the tradition, which motivates him and determines his plans, Husserl chooses only those elements out the content o f history that he feels are effectively alive in his own thinking, and he interprets the mode o f their transmission not according to the meaning structures in which these philosophemes stand for their producers but according to those in which they stand for him. It is unclear whether Husserl does so because these philosophemes have come down to him in so many broken and preformed interpretations or whether he, from the context o f his own sphere of work, has determined their special meaning.21

In addition, Schutz strives to offset Voegelin’s reading of Husserl as dogmatically self-satisfied with himself as the apex of history by interpreting Husserl’s view of history more in line with Husserl’s conception of consciousness as temporal, incomplete, and continually self-correcting. Thus Schutz emphasizes that philosophers always understand their problems incompletely, within open horizons and in a meaning-context of unclarified, anticipated implications that are essentially not susceptible o f insight at that time. It is the task of successors to fill in these empty horizons and to draw out implications that could not have been foreseen. While Husserl felt that he had arrived at an apodictic starting point (Anfang), in so far as all further researches would have to unfold within the field of transcendental con­ sciousness, Schutz claims that there is no place in which Husserl claims that the phenomenology he has uncovered is itself the final foundation of an entelechistic movement. Rather, this ideal of a final elaborated philosophical foundation functions as a regulative principle. Hence, Husserl claimed that “he had to lower the ideal of his philosophical striving practically to that of being a good beginner, but at least for himself in old age he had come to complete certainty that he could only describe himself as an actual

2lS c h u tz to V o e g e lin , N o v e m b e r 11, 1 943, 9 , se e also 4 , 5 , 12, 14.

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 227 beginner.” Schutz queries, “Is this a Victorian image o f history?” Finally, Schutz argues that the Fifth Cartesian Meditation itself gives the lie to any averroistic reading o f Husserl, and he admits that he himself and even Husserl himself would probably concur with Voegelin’s fuller interpretation of Descartes, however much the theological aspects of Descartes might not have been of relevance to Husserl.22 Voegelin’s final letter in this sequence blames Husserl for misleading the readers who misinterpret him; praises Schutz because he, unlike Husserl, provides for a “philosophical outlook in which open communication between those philosophizing is possible”; and rejects the “obscene” (saftige) thesis “that through the understanding of the Husserlian self the ‘life-crisis of European humanity’ can be presented.” While many of these.criticisms of Husserl do not hit the mark, what is interesting here is the argumentative strategy to which Voegelin resorts. He repeatedly attacks Husserl for speaking in the name o f others, when in fact, he only describes the history “in which he stands but not the history in which we stand.”23 In Voegelin’s opinion, by speaking of the “consciously tradition-bound standpoint” of a philosopher, Schutz too overlooks the plurality of traditions. In the end, Voegelin objects that “the tradition which defines the situation of Husserl and many others, is not my tradition.” One might like to respond to Voegelin that different (and arguable) relevance schemes, determining a selection of different problems, could still belong to the same tradition. However, what is interesting here is that Voegelin, who repeatedly criticizes Schutz for assuming a highly general position above the fray and emphasizing the “subjective interpretation of meaning” in such a way that it becomes evident that there are a variety of positions, here criticizes Schutz and Husserl with the same tack that Schutz had repeatedly used against Voegelin. At least, though, Voegelin concludes this entire discussion with the playful postscript that it was not pretty (schon) o f Schutz to compare Husserl’s self-interpretation with Voegelin’s method of anamnesis.24 In this entire discussion of Husserl, it seems that Voegelin precisely imposes the category of gnosticism so key to his own value-oriented viewpoint upon Husserl and thereby misreads the Crisis. Schutz, consistently willing to distance himself from such value commitments, in my opinion,

22Ibid., 9-11, 15-16. 23And one wonders if Voegelin can use this “w e” to cover him self and Schutz. 24Voegelin to Schutz, December 28, 1943, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11.

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interprets the subjective meaning of Husserl in his writing of the Crisis better than Voegelin. When Voegelin accuses Husserl of misreading the history of philosophy as progressing toward the telos of himself, of being unethical in humiliating his predecessors by reducing them to points of transition without absolute value in themselves, as mere manure for the soil of his final foundation, one wonders whether Voegelin is not reading Husserl the very way he claims Husserl reads others, that is, distorting them for his own purposes. Thus Voegelin in his reading of Husserl falls short of his own ethical ideal of interpretation, namely that one “penetrate every historical spiritual position” and consult the “self-testimonies” of the thinker, as Schutz has done with Husserl. Although Voegelin rightly insists that one embrace the tentativeness, fallibility, and deabsolutization of the metaxy as part o f an ethical refusal to inflict violence upon others in the seemingly ethical pursuit of one’s own immanent eschaton, one could wonder whether Voegelin is not being something of a gnostic, inflicting interpretive violence on Husserl, in an attempt to stamp out Husserl’s gnosticism. It is certainly the case that values need critique by a “value-neutral” effort such as Schutz’s in order to understand the subjective meaning of the other, and yet a value-scheme such as Voegelin’s at least in intent aims at protecting the other from gnostic violence. Could it be that a common ethical bond unites the proponent of the lived values that criticize value freedom and the proponent of the value freedom that criticizes lived values, however different their epistemic or metaphysical commitments may be? Conclusion The discussion of values in relation to social science ultimately condenses into a discussion about relevances. In distancing oneself from a lived value scheme in order to describe accurately the subjective interpretation of another or in order to analyze the formal structure of relevances that underlies any value scheme, one inevitably replaces one’s personal biographical situation with the scientific situation, as Schutz has said. One, in effect, detaches oneself from value patterns governing the behavior of the actors on the social scene, and in so doing prescinds from engaging in debate with interlocutors whose personal biographical situation prompts them to espouse values that may be at odds with those of one’s own biographical situation. Viewed from the value stance of such interlocutors, the move to a formal, detached interpretive perspective would inevitably appear as a

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 229 refusal to take a position in regard to their value scheme, a kind of relativization. For Voegelin, who presents a value scheme not merely as an outgrowth of his personal biographical situation, but as the matrix out of which all theory itself is generated, Schutz’s move to a theoretical standpoint must have seemed all the more noncommittal, even though Voegelin at one point recognizes that Schutz is legitimately working at the level of a general theory o f relevances, whereas he himself concentrates particularly on a theory of politics. In like fashion, at one point Schutz himself also recognizes the surpassing importance of the relevances dealing with the ordering of the soul and society, even though he still believes it is permitted to focus one’s attention due to a different set of relevances, at least temporarily, on other questions, namely those of more general theory, without detriment to those weightier relevances. It seems evident that diverse relevance schemes determine the different projects of Schutz and Voegelin as well as their different understandings of each other, although for Voegelin this concilia­ tory portrayal of himself and Schutz, as differing in relevances, might have appeared as just one more move to a level above it all— a species of Schutzian noncommitalism and relativism.25 Just as it is possible that relevances direct one to one problem area without in any way impugning the value of another domain, so it is also possible that one can be so focused on specific theoretical problems at hand that it is not at the time relevant to undertake a self-reflection on the position one occupies in treating such problems. Thus, while Schutz’s move to a formal level or his adoption of a project to understand alternative perspectives without judging their validity might seem to Voegelin to entail a certain relativizing of claims confronting Schutz at a pre-formal level, Schutz’s own theoretical position is by no means relativistic. For in the very process of spelling out the formal structures of all relevances, Schutz himself is taking a definite position about how those formal structures ought to be described within the domain of the social sciences, and Schutz, no doubt, would have been prepared to defend his account of relevance to other social scientific interlocutors. However, one set of relevances is involved in articulating the formal structures of relevances— and with reference to concrete relevance schemes such an articulation process seems, at least to Voegelin, noncom-

“ Alfred Schutz, The Problem o f Social Reality, ed. M aurice N atanson, Vol. 1 o f Collected Papers. The Hague, Boston, London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, 63; Voegelin to Schutz, October 19, 1952, 1 and January 1, 1953, 1.

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mittal and even relativistic. But a different set of relevances would be involved (and Voegelin does not see these) were Schutz to refrain from concentrating on spelling out the general structure of relevances and instead to reflect upon the status of his own claims articulating that structure. At that point, Schutz would have seen his own general theory of relevances as actually raising definite claims to validity, not relativistic but very committed—claims that would be addressed to social-scientific interlocutors to whom Schutz was prepared to defend himself. Theoretical claims explaining empirical relativities can appear relativistic as long as it is not relevant to self-reflect on those claims themselves and make focal, instead of leaving horizonal, their own intentionality toward validity. Similarly, it is possible that one can be so focused on the contents of a discourse—what Emmanuel Levinas calls “the said”—that a shift in attention is required to recognize that an ethical “saying” relationship subtends the discourse in which an interlocutor asks a response and an “I” strives to provide him or her with that service. The word that bears on the Other as a theme seems to contain the Other. But already it is said to the Other who, as interlocutor, has quite the theme that encompassed him, and upsurges inevitably behind the said ... The knowledge that absorbs the Other is forthwith situated within the discourse I address to him . . . In discourse the divergence that inevitably opens between the Other as my theme and the Other as my interlocutor, emancipated from the theme that seemed a moment to hold him, forthwith contests the meaning I ascribe to my interlocutor. The formal structure o f language thereby announces the ethical inviolability o f the Other and, without any odor o f the “num inous,” his “holiness.”26

This ethical moment subtending discourse, experienced rather than theorized about, and irreducible to any statement of universal norms, ought not be located on the same plane as the moral conventions of any society or any version o f ethical or metaethical theory. Any discussion within a society about its conventions or across societies or between representatives of diverse ethical or meta-ethical standpoints would presuppose this ethical moment that is part of the formal structure of language. The structure of relevances explains why epistemic and ethical dimensions of truth claims are often not seen. Thus an epistemic self-reflection on the

“ Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, An Essay on Exteriority, tr. Alfonso Lingis. The Hague, Boston, London: M artinus N ijhoff Publishers, 1979, 195.

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 231 statements presenting Schutz’s theory of the formal structures o f relevance would show that, far from being relativistic, these statements issue to an interlocutor truth claims that Schutz expects will either be accepted or objected to, with counter-evidence being brought forth in defense of any objections. Likewise, ethical dimensions lie on the fringe of such truth-claims insofar as the very giving of an account recognizes that the interlocutor is worthy of being responded to and insofar as this account itself, responsible to and responsive to the interlocutor, can be conceived as a form of ethical service. Indeed, the care and thoroughness with which Voegelin and Schutz each responds to the other in their correspondence illustrates an ethical as well as a professional responsibility of one person to another. O f course, at the time of developing, articulating, or presenting claims, it might not be of relevance to the claimant to focus on the epistemic status or ethicality of such claims. It is precisely in terms of this ethical dimension that Voegelin and Schutz converge. In Voegelin’s intepretation of Husserl as a gnostic, particularly on the basis of the Crisis, one comes to understand more clearly what it is about gnosticism that Voegelin finds so repulsive and dangerous. Although Voegelin misunderstands Husserl, the Husserl he thinks he understands and the wrath that this Husserl elicits from him reveals some of his own deepest ethical commitments. For Voegelin is opposed to neglecting arbitrarily important eras (e.g., the medievals) or the broad expanse of humanity, to pushing forward a political agenda without regard for trampled individuals, and to viewing others as mere stepping stones to oneself, “without absolute value in themselves.” Positively, Voegelin requires that a philosopher “penetrate every historical-spiritual position to its point of rest” and pay attention to an author’s “self-testimony.” Totalitarian like Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin are but the most brutal and obvious expression of that disregard for persons often typical of those intent on bringing to fruition on earth an immanent eschatology. Although Voegelin envisions the tentativeness, contingency, and humility characteris­ tic of those who embrace the Platonic metaxy as springing from a divine pole that never surrenders itself to the course of history, the Other described by Levinas induces these same features in an interlocutor. The flight from discourse and authentic engagement with the Other that characterize totalitarians, whether political or theoretical, indicates that they in some way already recognize that, as Levinas puts it, “discourse is therefore not the unfolding of a prefabricated internal logic” and that “the relationship of

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language implies transcendence, radical separation, the strangeness of interlocutors, the revelation of the other to me,” “a traumatism o f astonish­ ment.”27 Likewise, there is an implicit ethic in Schutz’s writings that converges on Voegelin’s. Just as Schutz’s epistemic standpoint, viewed not from the vantage-point o f Voegelin’s engaged value scheme but self-reflexively, is not relativist but advances truth claims on a formal plane, so Schutz’s efforts to respond carefully and critically, above all responsibly to his interlocutors, including Voegelin, are not devoid of ethical aspects. Further, in addition to Schutz’s explicit acknowledgments of ethical convictions in the memoran­ dum “In Search of the Middle Ground” connected with “Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World,” the very tenor of his phenomeno­ logical description of the task of the social scientist carries ethical connota­ tions. Hence, while it is “up to the natural scientist and him alone to define . . . his observational field,” the social scientist must make room for and take account of another person’s interpretation of the world. Schutz expresses this idea in another place with strong ethical overtones, “Everyone, to become a social scientist, must make up his mind to put somebody else instead of himself as the center of his world, namely, the observed person.” The behaviorist, who conflates the natural and social sciences and who hopes to gain knowledge of the actions of people in the same way that he or she can know the atomic constitution of water on the basis of the physical and chemical behavior of a substance, risks being the only one defining the observational field, imposing his or her viewpoint on the other, and thus failing to follow Voegelin’s ethical mandates to penetrate the other person’s historical-spiritual position and to take sufficient account o f the other’s self-testimony. Indeed, one cannot read essays like “The Stranger” or “The Homecomer” or observe the repeated injunction in the essay on equality to take seriously the subjective interpretation of often ignored AfricanAmericans without experiencing a kind of ethical stirring, an ethical “joy” over the fact that an easily overlooked and misunderstood perspective has finally been understood.28

11Ibid., 73. 28Alfred Schutz, “Equality and the Meaning Structure o f the Social W orld,” in Studies in S ocial Theory, ed. Arvid Brodersen, vol. 2 o f Collected Papers. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1964, 253, 256, 260-261; “In Search o f the Middle Ground,” Collected Papers, vol. 4, ed. Helmut W agner and George Psathas in collaboration with Fred Kersten. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, 148-151; “Concept and Theory

VALUES AT CRITIQUE AND THE CRITIQUE OF VALUES 233 One can speculate about the relevances prompting Schutz to refrain from explicitly identifying the ethical character of his phenomenology of the social sciences and his applied studies. Perhaps he mistrusted the ethnocentrism of conventional ethical schemes and the central myths by which cosmions so often justify their in-group practices and block insight into the subjective interpretation of out-groups. Perhaps he recognized the dangers of misinterpretation possible whenever one interprets another on the basis of a value-scheme that is insufficiently constrained by the demands of interpretive evidence, as the case of Voegelin’s reading of Husserl illus­ trates. Perhaps Schutz believed, paradoxically, that the best way to realize the ethical project of understanding the other is by bracketing the ethical dimensions of a social scientific investigation, by refraining from ethics, as it were, for the sake of ethics. In this conclusion, I have attempted to refocus the reader’s relevance schemes a bit in order to make more prominent the ethical aspects of Schutz’s thought that usually lie on the horizon of the relevances shaping his philosophy and social-scientific thought. I have also suggested some ethical relevances—in particular concerns to do interpretive justice to the Other—more or less common to Eric Voegelin and Alfred Schutz that might emerge out of the ashes of their at times contentious correspondence.

Form ation in the Social Sciences,” The Problem o f Social Reality, 59; “The Problem of Rationality in the Social W orld,” Studies in Social Theory, 81

Chapter 12

The Ethical-Political Side of Schutz: His C ontributions at the 1956 Institute on Ethics concerned with B arriers to Equality of O pportunity Lester Embree Florida Atlantic University Abstract: Four previously unpublished texts authored or co-authored by Alfred Schutz are edited and introduced with an explication o f contexts and significance that also incorporates thirty-three unpublished interven­ tions by him during the general discussions at a 1956 ethics institute. A summary sketch o f his ethical-political position there is then ventured.

Introduction On May 1, 1956, Alfred Schutz (1899 -1959) wrote as follows to his friend Aron Gurwitsch. I have been invited by [Louis] Finkelstein to participate in a seminar o f his “Institute on Ethics” which will meet throughout June: topic, “Equality of Opportunity in Education” . . . . It is a group o f 15 persons, including Robert M aclver, McKeon, Lasswell, Plamenatz (Oxford), Charles Frankel, Hofstader, Rabi, Hoagland (the biologist) and Clarence Faust (Ford Foundation), in addition to representatives o f the religions. I couldn’t decline, especially since the first half will take place at Lake Mahonk, a wonderful place in upstate New York, and since a very nice honorarium will be paid. So I decided not to go to Europe.1

The editor’s footnote attached to the first sentence of this paragraph identifies Schutz’s “Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World”

'Aron Gurwitsch and Alfred Schutz, Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence o f Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939-1959, ed. Richard Grathoff, trans. J. Claude Evans, Foreword by Maurice Natanson (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 255. L ester E m b ree (e d .) Schutzian Socia l Science, 23 5-3 18 . © 1999 K lu w e r A c a d e m ic P u b lish e rs. P rin te d in the N e th erla n d s.

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as written for the institute mentioned in this letter. Actually, however, that essay had been presented at a conference the previous year, i.e., 1955, and the institute on ethics, while related in theme, was held in 1956. No essay by Schutz and indeed no volume came from the 1956 institute, but unpublished materials have survived not only in the Schutz nachlass but also in the Rare Book Room of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, which sponsored the institute and subsequent conference. Materials found in the latter archive include stenographic transcriptions of the general discussions in the first two weeks of the institute, two memo­ randa that Schutz distributed there, and a letter he sent the organizers. In addition, two draft sections he wrote for the report of his subcommittee that he co-authored were found in the Schutz papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. Dr. Seth Jerchower at the seminary and Dr. Vincent Giroud at the library are thanked for their cooperation. The Schutz Family is thanked for permission to publish these documents and Ms. Claudia Schutz in particular is thanked for special help. Finally, Professor W.M. Reisman, Literary Executor for Harold Lasswell, is thanked for permission to publish the report that Lasswell co-authored with Schutz. The present edition is then of the documents authored or co-authored by Alfred Schutz for the 1956 institute. All but three of the thirty-seven interventions by him preserved in the stenographic transcription, a dozen of them extensive, are quoted within the body of the present introduction, as are the draft sections and the letter. The four longer texts then follow. The third was co-authored with the Yale political scientist Harold D. Lasswell (19021977). An analogous study of Lasswell’s contributions to the institute is plainly possible, but the concern here is with Schutz’s contributions. What is the overall significance of these materials? While in most of his life work Alfred Schutz is devoted to social-scientific theory and especially the philosophical theory of social science, his contributions to the 1956 institute have an “applied” or, better, ethical-political focus almost unprece­ dented in the oeuvre. Only the brief text, “In Search of the Middle Ground,” of 1955 is comparable as a whole,2 although parts of the “applied essays” in Volume II o f the Collected Papers are convergent.

2Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. IV, eds. Helmut Wagner, George Psathas, and Fred Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), pp. 147-151; hereafter this volume will be cited as “ IV.”

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In one of these applied essays, a concrete example relates historically to how veterans, Schutz included, were received after Austria’s defeat in World War I (something Ilse Schutz later compared to how returning veterans were received after the American defeat in Vietnam): M uch has been done and still more will be done to prepare the homecoming veteran for the necessary process o f adjustment. However, it seems to be equally indispensable to prepare the home group accordingly. They have to learn through the press, the radio, and the movies, that the man whom they await will be another and not the one they imagined him to be. It will be a hard task to use the propaganda machine in the opposite direction, namely, to destroy the pseudo type o f the com batant’s life and the soldier’s life in general and to replace it by the truth. But it is indispensable to undo the glorification o f a questionable Hollywood-made heroism by bringing out the real picture o f what these men endure, how they live, and what they think and feel— a picture no less meritorious and no less evocative.3

As Helmut Wagner puts it, “No longer the impartial, and that is unin­ volved, ‘scientific observer,’ [Schutz] assumed the role of sympathetic observer lending advice to those for whom active involvement is a personal and moral obligation.” (IV 147) Considerable new insight into Schutz’s theoretical account of how a citizen in the United States can become wellinformed about political matters can also be gained from these materials. I. Context and Thematics of the Institute Some political events of that time may be worth remembering. The United Nations was established in 1946 and Alfred Schutz took its position on discrimination and its general role in relation to the nation states of the planet very seriously. Already that year he saw, however, the modem world with open eyes: We are less and less able to choose our partners in the social world and to share our social life with them. We are, so to speak, potentially subject to everybody’s remote control. No spot o f this globe is more distant from the place where we live

’Alfred Schutz, “The Homecomer” (1945), reprinted in Collected Papers, Vol. II, ed. Arvid Brodersen. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1964, 118. Hereafter this volume will be cited as “II.”

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than sixty airplane hours; electric waves carry messages in a fraction o f a second from one end o f the earth to the other; and very soon every place in this world will be the potential target o f destructive weapons released at any other place.4

The United States was in a dominant position on earth and enjoyed a considerable prosperity, but also the so-called “cold war” was well begun. East and West Germany became distinct nations in 1949 and NATO was established that same year (the opposing Warsaw Pact was only established in 1955). The USSR detonated a thermo-nuclear device in 1952 and a truce was reached in the Korean war in 1953. Domestically, the elimination of racially segregated facilities of public accommodation began in 1954; after the USSR had launched the Sputnik satellite in 1954, there would be an increase in federal support for higher education, particularly for the naturalistic sciences and engineering in 1957; Dwight Eisenhower was reelected in 1956; and the 101 st Airborne Division would be sent to integrate the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. But the Vietnam War and the many events now referred to as “the 1960s” were hardly on the horizon. Box 70 in the archives at The Jewish Theological Seminary o f America includes a thirty-two page “provisional draft” of a “general report” on the institute that was written by E. Durwood Foster after the one-month institute and before the August conference. The institute belonged to the tradition of the Conferences on Science, Philosophy, and Religion that dates back to 1939. Foster discerns three reasons for those conferences: The first may be said to stem from the seeming inarticulateness o f the democratic way o f life amid the political and ideological crises o f modem times. The source o f the second is well indicated by the phrase “fragmentation o f knowledge,” connoting the widely felt disintegration o f the m odem intellectual world into islands o f advanced but isolated specialization. The third is the hardest to construe or state properly, but we catch something o f it if we say that it is the specifically ethical concern, the concern with the common good by which the cultural, religious, and other pluralisms o f democratic society are nurtured and in which they somehow cohere— the concern, that is, with the general clarification o f this com m on good, and the progressive realization o f its concrete implications. Interacting and mingling, these three main currents o f concern have carried the

4Alfred Schutz, “The Well-Informed Citizen” (1946), reprinted in II 129. Hereafter this essay will be referred to in brief as “Citizen.”

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lines o f continuity and development through seventeen years o f Conference activity, (p. 4)

While previously there had been merely four-day annual meetings of the Conference, these began in 1950 to be preceded by informal discussions at Lake Mohonk and this then lead to the month-long preparatory institute in 1956. The first fortnight at the resort included some fifteen “senior participants” and the second fortnight included considerably more “younger scholars” or “fellows” and was held at Columbia University in New York City. Schutz’s well-documented interventions are from the first two weeks. For June 18-29 Person D. Cohen, Moshe Greenberg, and F. Ernest Johnson joined Lasswell and Schutz on Committee II. Foster reports that in general “The fellows were aggressive, but in the good sense. And if they played a greater role than expected, it was because the senior group welcomed it.” (p. 18) There is a six-page resume in Box 69 of the second fortnight of discussions that refers to the further participation of Schutz, but his opinions are merely summarized and the summaries not worth rendering here. The formal report on the second two weeks will be returned to in Section III below, but also contains nothing distinctly by Schutz. A copy of the program with annotations in his hand suggests that Schutz attended the conference of August 27-30, 1956 in New York, but there is no record of his contributions there. He also does not mention the institute again in his letters to Gurwitsch. (The list of participants, their institutional affiliations, and their roles in the institute are shown in Figure 1, which comes from Box 22, Folder 407, at the Beinecke.) As for the thematics o f the institute, there is an undated copy in Box 67 of what seems the final draft of the letter of invitation by Louis Finkelstein, Chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Since Schutz characterized the institute to Gurwitsch as being concerned merely with equality of opportunity in education, which would have been a natural continuation from the previous year’s conference, he probably received that letter. But another letter to participants in Box 70 of March 16, 1956 by Clarence H. Faust of The Fund for the Advancement of Education and director of the 1956 institute refers more broadly to “areas of agreement among us with respect to practical questions involving such matters as equality o f opportunity in education and in political and social life.” (p. 2; emphasis added) This letter goes on to describe, among other things, six particular topics and the transcription shows that this description functioned as the frame of reference for the discussions.

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THE INSTITUTE ON ETHICS

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The six topic statements all begin with the phrase—the double asterisk included—“Barriers to equality of opportunity. . . Since “equality of opportunity” as such had been the previous year’s theme, the concern with barriers is the novelty, something it will be seen presently that Schutz found problematical when he read the letter. The identical footnote relating to the asterisks attached to the word “barriers” on each of the six statements reads “Including responsibility for eliminating them and implications for action by segments of the Institute or individuals, in areas of their special compe­ tence.” This footnote also occurs in the program for the conference that Fall. Foster explains it in relation a “framework of approach” that was also proposed for the six topics: The five levels were, in brief: reasons for the existence o f the barriers, aspects of the barriers (and related problems) “usually overlooked”— with special accent on costs to the community; matters connected with the foregoing which require or invite further technical research; the underlying ethical concepts which might emerge from analysis o f the barriers; and the possibilities o f developing general methodological insight from the experience o f the Institute. It should be remarked that while this scheme did undoubtedly represent a victory for the empirical point o f departure— for the sake o f “tangibility,” “concreteness,” “tractability,” etc.— the practical-ethical concern did keep reappearing in various editions o f the plans. For instance, when the framework o f approach dropped any reference to “proposals for action” or “resolutions,” there appeared as it were compensatorially a footnote to the circulated description o f all six o f the areas, saying in effect that discussions o f the barriers should always include consideration o f responsibility for removing them as well as means toward that end. (Box 70, p. 15)

The footnote was also said to stem from concern with “the middle ground between our broad philosophic and religious principles and our specific views on practical actions regarding equality” (ibid., p. 2), possibly an allusion to the memorandum circulated by Schutz after the previous year’s conference, i.e., “In Search of the Middle Ground,” but of course he discusses in that text a matter of consensus there. This too will be returned to below. Concerning the rest of general title in 1956, i.e., “equality of opportunity,” Foster states that

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the qualifying phrase “o f opportunity” was added to the theme mainly for one purpose: to help avoid the impression that the Mohonk group was committed to any form o f “egalitarianism.” As a matter o f fact, in the planning sessions far more emphasis fell upon inequality than upon equality p e r se. Factual inequalities o f capacity were fully recognized; a life o f equal attainment was never entertained as ideal, (p. 13)

After each beginning with “Barriers** to equality of opportunity,” the six committees’s topic statements are then completed as follows. (1) “ . . . in the cultivation of individual excellence, that is, barriers to the opportunity of individuals] for advanced education”; (2) “. . . for the development of powers of social and civic judgment, that is, barriers to opportunities for the individual to acquire a sense of social responsibility and to prepare for wise participation in the solution of social and political problems”; (3) “. . . for self-cultivation and self-realization of the individual as personality or self’; (4) “. . . for the development of educators in the community”; (5) “. . . among groups within the community”; and (6) “. . . among peoples.” (pp. 37) Topic #2 was assigned to Lasswell and Schutz. The particular task for their subcommittee is further described in Faust’s letter as follows. Exclusion o f this sort from the preparation necessary for effective participation in a democratic society may arise from racial or sex prejudice or from poverty, or from the forces in the society, family, school, or community that tend to suppress the free expression o f differences o f viewpoint and generally o f the intrinsic qualities o f the individual personality Also to be considered is denial o f access to media o f public communication that emphasize the goals and objectives as well as the factual position o f the community. Another problem for study is denial o f experience in responsible participation in the decisions made by families, school classes, and other groups— exclusions based upon traditional attitudes hostile to the sharing o f choice. Barriers to adequate preparation for democratic citizenship may arise also from the com mitments of a society, and consequently of its schools, to the develop­ ment o f various special powers and talents o f individuals. Denial o f opportunity to acquire a personality free o f compulsions may incapacitate the individual from making genuinely ethical judgments or living up to the ideals o f responsible participation.

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Discussion should center, too, on denial o f reward for sacrificing on behalf o f a conception o f the common good (rewards going to egocentrics who are successful competitors). The tendency o f schools in a democratic and pluralistic society to avoid controversial questions, and to treat either as unimportant or as dangerous the fundam ental issues on which the society is divided, may deserve consideration under this head. (p. 4)

II. Schutz’s Contributions in the General Discussions at the Institute What is documented of Schutz’s contributions to the ethics institute when the senior fellows met as a group? In the typewritten transcription of the stenographic record, his first intervention is in a discussion of what constitutes a “people,” which relates to topic #6. After others mention Gypsies, who always consider themselves a people, assimilated German Jews who only became a distinct people under Nazi persecution, and exiled Yugoslavs in London during World War II who denied they were “Yugoslavs,” Schutz mentions that “We have a North Korean and South Korean people, a West German and an East German people” (p. 30). Probably he was reacting to groups being defined merely from outside, something that will also be returned to below. A. Problems with “Barriers” in General. Schutz’s second intervention comes eleven pages and perhaps a half an hour later. There is reference here and below to the laws formulated by 1.1. Rabi. Probably Schutz was familiar with the report by A. Durward Foster on the preparatory meeting of April 6-8, 1956. (Gen. MSS 129) Barriers to the cultivation of equality of opportunity in the cultivation of individual excellence and for the development of powers of social and civic judgment were not discussed there specifically because of the limited number of participants (Schutz is not mentioned as being there). In the second session there occurred discussion of “how traditional spiritual and moral values might be conserved while material needs were met through new adjust­ ments” and a lengthy discussion of “Americanization” “as a threat to other cultures, including the charge . . . that the common American attitude is offensively ethno-centric and arrogant.” The end of the third session was then reported by Foster as follows.

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Respecting the intercultural situation, it was noted that the “universalizing” forces o f technology, free communication o f ideas, trade unions, religious traditions, etc., tend to break down the smaller, isolated cultural units. W hile this process was regarded as inevitable, it was observed that ethnic and geographic distinctiveness would doubtless persist through the influence o f historic and environmental factors. (3). On the third level (definition o f research projects), the above suppositions were given the structure o f hypothetical laws (called the “Rabi” laws) to be verified or modified by further inquiry. In threefold form the laws were: (a) that the small cultural units do break down under universalizing forces; (b) that the causes o f the breakdown are the factors named above (dissemination o f technology, etc.); and (2) that local coloration and configuration will continue to exist through environmental and other influences.

The talk of levels by Schutz no doubt stemmed also in part from this memo, which he might have had with him as he spoke. May I make a few general remarks summing up this point six? I think there is real evidence in our discussion on this point that we use both terms equality and opportunity in three different connotations. On the first level it is really an ethical problem if we are taking into account the United Nations. However, the second level, for instance, whether Point IV countries should be granted equal technological access is, I feel, not a problem o f ethics. It is a problem o f equality, and equality o f opportunity is quite a different one [on] the first and second level[s]. On the first level an equality o f opportunity might be highly desirable. On the second level it might not be desirable [or] desirable only in another sense. For instance, the Point IV program is technical help by the United Nations. It has to have quite another aspect in structure in Pakistan than let us say in India or in South America. Here equality o f opportunity means something entirely different. And the third meaning o f equality o f opportunity I feel comes in if we turn to the third level, to the laws formulated by Dr. Rabi. We have to be very careful we are not pursuing here a goal which we cannot achieve because, we have to deal with three sets o f concepts. Now if I may return to my second remark, which I have already communicated to Dr. Faust and Dr. Finkelstein, there is to my mind a great danger in the use o f the word “barrier.” Barrier is a very nice and convenient term, but it implies— in the ordinary course o f things and redevelopment, equality o f opportunity would be something which would be achieved in the course o f world history— the term “barriers” has great dangers. It is not a question o f whether we have to remove barriers and how barriers came in and what we can do if other barriers are

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substituted, but what we want to do is define what equality o f opportunity is in the six varied fields which Foster has defined, and this is a positive performance. O f course we can say that the Isthmus o f Panama was a barrier to shipping before the Panama Canal was built, but it is quite another thing to come to the statem ent and advance the idea to pierce the Isthmus and then to go to the blueprints and to the ground and really design how this canal should be built. I have the feeling [that] this innocent use o f the word “barrier” has great dangers, and after [our] discussion o f this point six I come to the conclusion that the only thing that holds on these three levels [for] the concept o f equality of opportunity is in the misuse o f the word “barrier,” which scans from one sense to another, (p. 41)

What Schutz had communicated to Faust and Finkelstein were his letter of May 12, 1956, which were found in Box 70 at the Jewish Theological Seminary: May 12, 1956 Dear Dr. Faust: Many thanks for your letter o f May 8, 1956, in which you outlined questions o f approach relating to the forthcoming meeting o f the Institute. You were kind enough to invite my reaction to your communication. The plans o f operation show that you and your colleagues have given so much thought to the mapping out o f the program and all the details o f the procedure that, in my opinion, the prospects for a successful study are excellent. I am fully aware o f the importance, as well as the difficulties, o f the task to be performed and am looking forward to co-operating in this endeavor as best I can. There are, however, two problems on my mind which I should like to bring to your attention. The first one is o f a rather general nature. We are approaching the various problems o f equality of opportunity by thinking in terms o f “barriers” o f various kinds. It is obvious that, basically, the term “barrier” is meant to be a semantically innocent figure of speech. Yet, it seems to me that this metaphor is, nevertheless, fraught with a certain danger. I feel that it carries along the connotation that equality o f opportunity would have developed in the natural course o f affairs if obstacles, which prevented a free growth o f given tendencies, did not exist or had not been artificially established. The use of the term induces us to speak o f “imposing barriers,” “erection o f barriers,” “reasons o f the existence o f barriers,” “raising” and “destroying” barriers, etc. Inadvertently, thus, we might become inclined to think that the job o f bringing about equality o f opportunity consists primarily in the rem oval o f existing obstacles and not in

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the creative determ ination o f new directions. To be sure, both aspects o f the question will have to be considered and are indeed included in the program o f the Institute. The sole purpose o f my remarks is to call your and your colleagues' attention to the possible danger inherent in overemphasizing the metaphor under scrutiny. Surely, we should avoid that our thinking in terms o f “barriers” becomes a “barrier” itself to our grasping all aspects o f the problem o f equality of opportunity. M y second problem is a minor one and refers to the characterization o f the topic assigned to Group II: “Barriers to Equality of Opportunity for the D evelopment o f Powers o f Social and Civil Judgments.” This point is o f particular interest to me as Dr. Louis Finkelstein informed me that I have been assigned to the discussion group concerned with this question. O f course, I shall gladly accept this assignment, but, for the time being, I am rather at a loss to grasp the precise scope o f the topic this group will have to discuss. But I shall certainly learn more about this during our first meetings. Looking forward to seeing you shortly, I am with kindest regards Sincerely yours, ALFRED SCHUTZ

The central paragraph of this letter to Faust is remarkably like the beginning of Text I below, namely, “Some Considerations Concerning Thinking in Terms of Barriers,” which Schutz wrote and distributed at the institute after the above somewhat unsuccessful intervention on the first day. The letter also of May 12 to Finkelstein is substantially the same as the second paragraph of the one to Faust. Finkelstein replied to both letters on May 15 stating that Schutz’s comments on barriers were justified, but that he and Faust could not think of a better word, and that they would try to avoid thinking of equality of opportunity negatively. In addition, they invited Schutz to chose another committee if he thought he could be more helpful on it. In the general discussion that follows his intervention in the general discussion, Schutz first clarifies the difference between his first two levels: “Each nation has a right to determine its own fate as the United Nations Charter defines it or in a similar sense.” This is freedom of opportunity on the first level. Then, in an exchange with Richard McKeon, who along with 1.1. Rabi had brought up technology and the exchange of ideas as tending to bring peoples together and for whom the second and third levels did not appear to include

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moral principles, but rather what would be required for backward nations to become equal with other nations, Schutz says It seems to me that there is a misunderstanding here. Most certainly what you said is our aim, but I submit [that] in going ahead and dropping, for instance [word m issing?] in this document we forget our initial goal and we shifted the opportunity in the transition from the first to the second and from the second to the third level.

(The missing word here is probably “opportunity” and “equality” rather than “opportunity” may have been expressed later in the same sentence and thus the stenographer was confused, but the discussion does not focus on that.) When Richard McKeon replies that he cannot see any such transition between levels, Schutz replies that “[This is b]ecause only in a formal sense can we draw conclusions from the ethical principles in applying this, let us say, to the second level of the technological field.” McKeon replies that they are talking about only one inequality and asking, if the moral reasons apply, what can be done in particular cases. McKeon next makes a transition to Schutz’s second remark by doubting that the group was using “barrier” in more than one sense. Schutz replies, I think we do. I think we do. In speaking o f barriers we have dodged the problem. The first thing is perhaps [that] really in our times [the] removal o f the barrier and through [removal of] the barrier in the ethical sense we have established equality o f opportunity.

McKeon denies they are talking about ethical barriers and asserts instead that they are talking, e.g., about a South African unable to develop himself economically because his country has not benefited from technological advances elsewhere. Then again, two neighboring nations are unequal in some respects and thus what is needed to give both of them equality of opportunity is different in each case. Others suggests that Schutz is more concerned with “barrier” than “equality of opportunity” and that “barrier” was introduced because it led to concrete situations rather than general talk about inequality, and was thus like a doctor attending to complaints, diseases, etc., rather than discussing the concept of health. It is a question of eliminating an obstacle from which some but not all other people suffer. Schutz replies:

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The principle might induce us to grant a program, a Point IV Program o f help for underdeveloped countries. Now, here equality o f opportunity consists in nothing else but this country helping the have-not countries.

Others respond that this is not equality of opportunity, but a moral urge in the “haves” that is like that whereby the healthy should help the ill. He replies: It is the first level, isn’t it? Now [on] the second level, however, to be able to handle the problem of inequality, we have to, in order to help Pakistan and to help Mexico, choose different goals, different procedures, different methods, different means, and we cannot generalize this any more.

The response he receives is that health is one thing and curing cancer is a different process. But then, as happens in discussions, there is another shift. Thomas R. Adam introduces the concepts of rights and remedies and the need for the latter in order to have the former. Schutz replies: “We can have a choice o f remedy which is certainly not an equality of opportunity. Equality o f opportunity has quite a different meaning here.” When the two different meanings are still not seen, he continues: “Remedy, that is an ethical principle. We are going into the concrete methods under which we have to transform our concept of equality of opportunity.” When it is next suggested that the word “barrier” removes his problem, Schutz answers, perhaps ironically, “If the doctor has only to remove barriers to win health, then I agree.” It is then suggested by 1.1. Rabi that the problem is in the use of the term “levels,” whereas it is actually a matter of different approaches to the problem. Schutz: Yes, and here comes in the whole social and cultural structure o f a particular people or nation. . . Relations between people[s] and nations and these existing cultural and sociological structure[s] are not barriers which can be removed. I am wondering if they should be removed.

This then leads to the moral question of whether one group has the right to change the culture o f another group, etc., after which Schutz attempts to summarize his position:

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I want to say this is not an objection to the program as outlined, and that is not an objection that perhaps this program cannot be carried out. W hat I want to state is ju st that we have to be very careful, that we have to revise all our conceptual framework in the transition from the first to the second and from the second to the third level. All this can be done, but we have to watch our step. We are operating with too big knives. That is what I want to drive home.

Chairman Faust begins to close the session by agreeing that it is very naive to believe that equality of opportunity could be achieved merely by removing barriers, discussion of barriers being nevertheless a practical way of getting into the issues. SCHUTZ: One thing more. I think we should try to define where equality o f opportunity is perfectly legitimate and highly desirable in terms o f ethics and morality and also at the same time define the limits o f this concept o f opportunity. We have the question o f equality as defined by the outsider and equality as defined by the in-group and they do not necessarily coincide.

Faust closes the session before this intervention can be responded to. Comments: Considering also Text I and abstracting from the difficulties of communication indicated above, what is Schutz’s position here? Overall, he abides by the talk of three levels in the concern with “barriers” to “equal” “opportunity” among nations and peoples: (1) The first level is ethical and, where peoples are concerned, this involves the Charter of the United Nations, whereby each nation has sovereignty. On this basis, the nations called “haves” cannot impose ideas and technology on have-not nations against their will, which in any case would modify their cultures. Text I below goes into aspects of cultures considered from within, including how barriers might have been imposed and possible effects of removing them on social systems; it implies analogous concepts regarding minorities within nations, e.g., the United States, where the goal of “equality of opportunity” would seem to have arisen. (2) The second level has to do with technical aid. It is not about ethical principles, but about goals, procedures, etc. involved in the transfer of technology in particular cases, which ethical principles might justify. Besides being unsure whether this is universally desirable, Schutz seems to intend that this is not about equality of opportunity, but rather about the establishing of equality, which it was seen above that the institute was not advocating. In

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addition, equality of opportunity does not have the same meaning as “remedy.” Here Schutz also opposes the implication that equality of opportunity among peoples would arise of itself in world history if barriers were removed. Plainly such a view of world history is naive and a remedy is often something more than a mere removal. As this is put in the letter to Faust and Text I, we become inclined to think that “the goal of bringing about equality of opportunity consists primarily in the removal of existing obstacles and not in the creative determination of new directions.” Finally, by using the word “barrier” the institute is imposing barriers on itself where features of the human condition, the limits on self-actualization, the actual structure of a given social group, etc. are concerned. (3) The third level is like the second in that there is a spread or universal­ ization from the have to the have-not countries, but it has to do with ideas rather than technology. The ideas from outside can disrupt what is believed about the world in underdeveloped societies. Schutz is concerned about alleged “barriers” between particular peoples and nations with their existing socio-cultural structures. He doubts they actually are barriers and wonders if there should be efforts to remove them, which seems to him unethical. Schutz’s last intervention in the first general session introduces the distinction between equality as defined by the insider and as defined as the outsider, which rarely if ever coincide. This distinction alludes back to his “Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World” of the previous year, it comes up in the subsequent discussions, and is discussed below. B. Barriers and Individuals. Schutz’s initial intervention in the next general session relates to the first three topics of the institute, which are together concerned with individuals. Seeking equal opportunity is part of an individual’s self-realization. He holds that some barriers to equality of opportunity in this respect might be removed or overcome, but not all: It seems to me that we have to deal here in this issue with two sets of problems. One o f these problems is pointed out in Dr. Faust’s letter. These areas 1, 2, and 3, as Dr. McKeon commented and as we can read on page five o f this draft letter, the three problems have very good meaning— first, illumination o f barriers for the education o f the expert and of the citizen and then barriers for the individual. If we consider the three areas as a relationship, we find ourselves ethical

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principles and we can derive from them the details o f how the barriers might be removed. Now in addition to this we have a second problem which is an ethical problem. It has been and is formulated by controversies, my duties to society, and my duties toward myself. That is an ethical issue in addition. Let us assume very optimistically we have succeeded to remove all the barriers as to education o f the citizen and as to the education o f the expert. Now I find m yself in conflict in what I have to choose. Have I to become an expert, have I to become a citizen, have I to become a saint or a sage or an artist or whatever it might be? And if this is so, because freedom o f self-realization is a freedom only within the imposed soci[o-] cultural structure, including the institutional and legal and juridical situation, I cannot realize m yself if I have dedicated m yself to a scientific task because this requires sacrifices in other fields of life. Therefore, self-realization will always be a partial realization and here is an ethical issue which is formulated by content and can be formulated in terms o f other ethical concepts or theories.

This statement about limits to self-realization was not contested by others in the general session. Perhaps half an hour later, Schutz continues: There are other limits imposed on the social order in that the man is only a fragment o f himself. He may only realize in part all o f his potential. He has to make a choice. W illiam James formulated it once very nicely when he said, “I want to be a great psychologist and a millionaire and a saint and a lady-killer and a poet, but unfortunately I can’t do all o f these things because these are controversial postulates. As a psychologist I have a very poor chance to become a millionaire; the saint and the lady-killer are also incompatible. I want to make my choice o f self-realization within the limits o f my possibilities.” There are two different problems and each o f them have an ethical issue and can be formulated in terms o f ethical possibilities.

There is again no challenge from the rest of the group. Some interventions in a later general session specify what has just been quoted and are thus best rendered here. Experts and those with advanced education are types o f individuals rather than groups and Schutz was, of course, a professor on a graduate faculty: I suggest that we perhaps should distinguish between competence and excellence. We have on the one hand need for the competent expert who has the skills and the possibility even to go on into research.

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On the other hand, a man should not be only an expert but also have knowledge o f things beyond his particular specialized field. And in passing on to the concrete problems, concrete barriers, I would say that I feel it is a shortcoming o f our higher education in this country that we have too rigid a curriculum in the universities and colleges, a too highly complicated system o f credit points and the departmental structure which makes it impossible for the student to mill around, which imposes on the gifted student too early a choice o f his specialized field. We don’t given him enough opportunity to develop the other sides o f his personality in which he might display a greater excellence than in the field chosen by him after the two years o f junior college when he has to choose a major. I think that these are concrete problems which should be investigated, and concrete barriers which should be eliminated. [W]e have in this country a situation in which a man may become a competent expert in economics without ever having a course in sociology and vice versa. We have here a situation where a psychologist has no idea o f the physiological structure o f the nervous system. We have to provide equality o f opportunity to choose a specialized field, but before this can be done we should grant equality o f opportunity to look around and make a choice.5

In sum, there are limits to self-realization that are not removable barriers, but, as it were, ontological: Mutually exclusive possibilities signify that if one pursues one opportunity, one cannot pursue another. But, then again, there are removable barriers in an advanced educational system that imposes specialization on students such that they not only become narrow but are also not as well prepared as possible to choose a specialization to begin with. The appended Text IV below offers a strong multidisciplinary corrective for such premature and then excessive specialization in education. C. Barriers and Groups. The discussion then shifts to the second set of three topics, which has to do with groups rather than individuals. Early on, Schutz speaks of minori­ ties:

5There are two further comments by Schutz in the transcription concerning education from June 28 (pp. 79 and 82), but the present writer can make no useful sense o f them.

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I think we have to distinguish between one type o f minority group and another. One type o f minority group wants to have equal rights, to be recognized equally, politically, socially, and economically and so on. The other type o f minority wants in addition to preserve its racial, national, and religious peculiarity within the framework o f the larger group. They want to have their conventional schools. They want to preserve their language. They want to issue their newspapers and so on. This becomes especially clear when you consider minority problems in the United States. But let us say in Russia and also in Hungary there was quite another issue in the minority problems than we have here in the United States. There are minorities who want to preserve their national, racial, or religious culture within the framework o f the larger group, and these are two different concepts o f minorities and two sets o f problems are involved.

During the subsequent half hour Schutz offers a series of related comments that are also not opposed by his colleagues. In the Austro-Hungarian monarchy no one objected to the granting of the Slovaks also the right to vote, but there was a great issue whether the Slovakian school[s] should be preserved and the Slovakian leadership^] which didn’t exist[,] should be created. Then we come to problems o f this type. It is one thing to grant Puerto Ricans educational opportunities. It is a different matter whether the Puerto Rican children are entitled to Spanish schools which teach the subject matters in Spanish, because if they are taught geometry in the Spanish language they [do not (?)] have equal opportunity with the[ir] American or English-speaking fellows. There are problems o f that kind. Another problem is [that] nobody will have any objection if the Jews observe their laws and close their businesses on Saturday; but another question is whether they are entitled, because they have closed on Saturdays, to open their stores on Sundays, because the laws o f the country do not permit the opening o f stores on Sunday. You have problems o f that type coming up. Here we run into an American ideology which is a cherished possession o f this country, which is that it is a melting pot, the United States is a melting pot for all the immigrants, all the nations, all the cultures in order to transform everyone into what is called a regular fellow and a good American. This melting pot idea is one that should be investigated.

Then, more generally and methodologically, he says,

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I d o n ’t know if I should bring up these questions. M y question is, first o f all, whether we have to make a distinction between the definition o f the group by those who are members o f the group and by those— a definition o f the group by outsiders. Both o f these two concepts are different, and you must go inside, to the definition o f the group from the point o f view o f the insider. He has a feeling of belonging to this group. If the group is just defined from the outside, it is opposed to the feeling o f the individual, it is confined to this notion o f the group which is made externally. M y second point would be that I am not so sure whether groups such as sex groups can be handled in the same way as, for instance, national groups and religious groups, and sex groups can be found in any society, as there could be also age groups, a problem which is especially important, I feel, for the structure o f the United States, because the age groups really lead to inequality of opportunity, men who are no longer employed. Then, several o f the points for further research have been treated in the literature rather extensively. I should repair to the list which has been referred to in the paper as points for further research. After all, we have, for instance, the United Nations [document] on the problem o f discrimination, in which you can thank the literature o f certain ages which include mostly the points suggested for further research and so far as I know this document o f the United Nations was prepared under the leadership o f Professor Hess, who was a particular expert, and that should be given some thought, and perhaps Dr. M aclver would be concerned with this.6

Analysis: Comparison with “Equality and the Meaning-Structure of the Social World,”7 shows much similarity with these remarks, including the concerns with sexism and ageism.8Nevertheless, some interpretation seems called for, beginning with Schutz’s Weberian methodological framework (Schutz considers the “subjective” meaning—“objective” meaning distinction “the most important contribution of Max Weber’s methodological writings to the problems of social science” [II 92 n.2]). In Text I Schutz appears to refer to the common standpoint of the participants in the ethics institute when he speaks of “We, the analysts.” This

6Most o f the same points— and no new ones— are also made by Schutz in an intervention during the last general session that therefore does not need to be quoted. 1 1I 226-273. Hereafter this essay will be referred to in brief as “Equality.” 8Cf. Lester Embree, “Alfred Schutz on Reducing Social Tensions,” in Kevin Thompson and Lester Embree, eds., The Phenomenology o f the Political. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, forthcoming.

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is a group for which “equality of opportunity” and “barriers” have so-called “objective meaning.” That meaning does not necessarily coincide with the meanings these same matters have for those striving for that equality or for those who might remove barriers and otherwise grant equality of opportu­ nity. Schutz offers his best critical statement about subjective and objective meaning in “Some Equivocations in the Notion of Responsibility,” which is based on his interventions in February 1957 at a different conference: It was Max Weber who made this distinction the cornerstone of his methodology. Subjective meaning, in this sense, is the meaning which an action has for the actor or which a relation or situation has for the person or persons involved therein; objective meaning is the meaning of the same action, relation, or situation has for anybody else, be it a partner or observer in everyday life, the social scientist, or the philosopher. The terminology is unfortunate because the term “objective” is obviously a misnomer, in so far as the so-called “objective” interpretations are, in turn, relative to the particular attitudes o f the interpreters and, therefore, in a certain sense, “subjective.” ( I I 275, cf. II 227 & I I 244; for the addition o f mythology and theology to this catalog o f outsider standpoints, see II 248 ff.)

This statement clarifies three types of matters that can have meaning, how meanings can be for or relative to one or more individual persons, and how meanings can be, so to speak, “subjectively” subjective or, in at least four different ways, “subjectively” objective, i.e., fo r partners, everyday observers, social scientists, philosophers, theologians, etc. Plainly, this position can be further refined to take into consideration the schools of thought of the philosophers and cultural scientists (e.g., phenomenology), the social scientific discipline (e.g., economics), the philosophical subdiscipline (e.g., ethics), and various dimensions of everyday life (e.g., social status [and thus those seeking equality of opportunity vs. those able to grant it]). What is lacking in the above statement substantively is a recognition of groups in contrast to individuals, but the distinction is recognized in many places, including later in the same 1957 essay and indeed for the ethicallegal realm, which is also part of the everyday world: The same dialectic underlies the meaning a norm has for the norm-giver and the norm-addressee. Any law means something different for the legislator, the person subject to the law (the law-abiding citizen and the lawbreaker), the lawinterpreting court, and the agent who enforces it. Duty has a different meaning as defined by me autonomously and as imposed on my from outside. The whole

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question o f determinism in law and ethics will have to be answered in a different way if formulated in subjective and objective terms. The preceding remarks dealt with the dialectic of the subjective and objective meaning o f laws, values, morals, and responsibility merely from the point o f view o f the individual. But the same dialectic recurs on the level o f group relations. Adopting Sumner’s classical distinction between in-group and out-group, it can be said that “responsibility,” for example, has a different meaning if an in-group acknowledges responsibility for its acts and holds some o f its members responsible, or if an out-group makes the in-group and its members responsible for misdeeds. It is one thing if, in the Nuremberg trials, the Nazi leaders were held responsible by the Allied Powers, and quite another thing if they were held answerable to the German people. (II 276)

As mentioned, Schutz’s very first intervention in the institute concerned East and West Germany and North and South Korea, which were initially defined chiefly by outsiders, was probably made in this perspective. Verbally, the critical statement of 1957 is interesting because it shares in the tendency in the last writings of Schutz to use “interpretation” as an alternative if not replacement for “meaning.” The new expression appears better to connote how the meaning bestowed upon a matter is relative to the determinable attitude of a person or group. The present writer has gone further in this spirit to propose that “insider” and “outsider” be substituted for “subjective” and “objective” so that there are individual and collective insider and outsider interpretations of actions, relationships, and situations. The words “insider” and “outsider” also occur more frequently in the last writings, although never as directly qualifying “meaning” or “interpretation.” Schutz does come close when he writes, e.g., “[i]n objective interpretation the notion of group is a conceptual construct of the outsider.” (II 255) The outsider group referred to in Text I as “We, the analysts” (in Schutz’s own insider interpretation!) interprets barriers as they are already interpreted “from the point of view the individual or of the group seeking equality of opportunity and from the point of view of those who should grant it,” (below, p. 287) who are also insiders for themselves and outsiders for each other. And in Text II, the man in the street, the well-informed citizen, and the expert individually or collectively not only are insiders and outsiders with respect to each other, but also the eye witnesses, insiders (in a different signification), reporters, analysts, and commentators are not only insiders for themselves and their special groups but also outsiders for them as well, because they are the citizens who consume what the mass communication

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media produce. Schutz’s particular analyses throughout his career rely on this scheme of interpretation. Returning now to what is more explicitly expressed in the ethics institute of June 1956, there are some distinctions made among groups in everyday life from the outsider standpoints, which can be shared, of social scientists and philosophers. In “Equality” Schutz recognizes a difference between “existential” and voluntary groups, according to whether one is in them by birth or chooses to join them. I cannot choose my sex and race, nor my place o f birth, and, therewith, the national group into which I was bom; neither can I choose the mother tongue I learned nor the conception o f the world taken for granted by the group with which I was indoctrinated during childhood. I cannot choose my parents and siblings, or the social and economic status o f my parental family. (II 250)

While involuntary, these—race included—are nevertheless cultural for Schutz; “Could Marian Anderson sing Negro Spirituals in her unsurpassed way if she did not share with her fellow Negroes this specific cultural heritage, this specific conception of the world of which the Spirituals are a partial expression?” (II 259) Minority groups are then existential groups (and as such cultural) and among minority cultural groups Schutz then recognizes two types. Some seek equality of opportunity in a way that would lead to assimilation, change of cultural identity, and the minority eventually ceasing to be a minority as and when it becomes part of the majority group. Whether the majority group can become utterly homogeneous for Schutz, as the image of a melting pot suggests, or instead is something of a dominating alliance of ethnic groups with internal hierarchy and continuing group identities within it is not clear. Minority cultural groups of the other type seek rather thoroughly to preserve their own ways of life through separate and culture-specific schools, languages, newspapers, etc. Drawing on his own experience in Austria before and after World War I, Schutz relates this to the traditional notion of the protection of minorities by the whole nation (and thus also by a protecting majority). On the basis, then, of this distinction between types of minority groups, “equality” has at least two different insider interpreta­ tions and, it might also be remarked, a shift in emphasis between equality among individuals and equality among groups has occurred. The barriers to equality of opportunity would be different as well. And tensions can arise:

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For example, as many sociologists and political scientists have pointed out, a minority group that becomes satisfied with its relationship toward the predomi­ nant group tends to become more and more assimilated by the latter. If, however, the members o f a minority group feel that the rule imposed by the predominate group prevents them from maintaining their particular distinctive characteristics, or inhibits the development o f their aspirations for the future, the group’s relationship toward the predominant one tends to become more and more strained. (II 265)

Schutz also questions the image of America as a melting pot. Probably he was familiar with the doctrine of ethnic pluralism developed in the 1920s by his colleague in the New School philosophy department Horace Kallen.9 By this doctrine, instead of differences of minorities that are transient and disappear when the minorities assimilate to the way of life of what, correlatively, is only a majority until all the minorities disappear, differences are recognized to be fundamental and often practically irreducible. After all, many Native Americans and Latino Americans as well as African Americans have not, after centuries, assimilated to the “White” European-American mainstream. One would like to believe that Schutz would have approved the newer images of America as a salad bowl or mosaic of ethnic groups, but this is not sure. III. The Lasswell-Schutz Report Schutz’s interventions in the general discussion quoted above come from the first week of the institute. Texts I and II were written then too. Text III, the report, was completed during the second week, its contents were presented orally by Lasswell on June 13, and the first mimeographed version of the report is dated the next day. There are six interventions by Schutz in the transcription that relate to the whole span of his work with Lasswell. The first occurs on June 6, which was at the end of the first week: Mr. Chairman, since I have been assigned to the subcommittee considering Group Two, might I be permitted to ask a question? I gave some thought to this problem, but I am afraid that obviously I have misunderstood entirely the whole topic because my approach is in a completely different form. May I be permitted to tell

’Horace Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States. New York: Boni and Liverwright, 1924.

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what I understood in this question and ask you whether this approach is interesting to the group at all? I thought, as I say, the moral issue involved is first o f all the question o f responsibility and o f wisdom o f judgment; therefore, irresponsible judgm ent should be discouraged and responsible judgm ent should be encouraged, and all the barriers and obstacles to obtaining or arriving at responsible judgm ent should be, if possible[,] removed. So my question, and I prepared some notes for my organizational] meeting tomorrow with Dr. Lasswell, was centered around the following: How can the citizen arrive at a wellrounded judgment? How can he become well informed? Being exposed to all sorts o f information, public and mass communication, how can he arrive at a formulation o f a sound judgment? And what might be the barriers which are obstacles to him in arriving at such judgment? And what are the means, what can the group suggest in order to help him in this situation? I think that is an entirely different approach than all the topics discussed this afternoon. Therefore, as I put it in my letter to you and to Dr. Finkelstein, this is my feeling o f what this area covers and maybe what I am pointing at is entirely irrelevant to the problems o f the group.

The latter reference here must be again to the letter of May 12 quoted above, but this time it is to the paragraph addressing Schutz’s second problem. The former reference is to Text II, which is addressed to Lasswell. In the discussion that followed, the group proved agreeable to Schutz’s approach. During its course he also said: I don’t interpret this term “responsible judgm ent” in the sense o f policy making, but in order [for individuals] to exercise wisdom in social and political affairs as our topic lies. How can they arrive at this goal? Layman citizens are seeking information and reliable information. This is not in contradiction to what Dr. Plamenatz said and other speakers today, but is in an entirely different approach to it. It may be one you are not interested in.

But they were. Overall, Schutz appears concerned that his focus on the individual citizen as relating to her socio-cultural situation was different from the focus of others on that situation or the social system itself. Schutz’s focus is well reflected in Text II and also in the sub-committee report. A. Schutz’s Memorandum to Lasswell. There are no transcriptions of the discussions between Lasswell and Schutz in their subcommittee. There is, however, Text II, the memorandum

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addressed to Lasswell on June 7. The copy edited below comes from the Schutz nachlass, it is initialed “HDL” in a hand other than Schutz’s, and seems thus somehow returned after being received by Lasswell. Alfred Schutz may have met Harold D. Lasswell at the previous year’s conference or they may have met at least as early as the retirement dinner for Kurt Riezler in February 1952. If so, then the formality of address (“Doctor Harold Lasswell”) in Schutz’s memorandum might indicate that they were still not closely acquainted. A friend of Horace Kallen, Lasswell had long been involved in the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, and was, in 1956, President of the American Political Science Association. Neither Lasswell nor Schutz seems to refer to the other in subsequent publications and no correspondence exists in the Lasswell or the Schutz papers at Yale or is known to the Konstanz Schutz archive, but negative evidence of course proves little. There are no signs of substantial disagree­ ment between them in the transcriptions of the general discussions. Text II is plainly based on Schutz’s “The Well-Informed Citizen: An Essay on the Social Distribution of Knowledge” (1946; II 120 ff). That essay might seem odd within his oeuvre in having a political category central to its title. Perhaps the process of immigration and naturalization into a new political system had interested its author in citizenship.10 “Citizen” is not about the distribution of specialized knowledge in science and technology, but rather of common-sense knowledge in “the various fields of practical activity,” especially “the social world we live in,” where “We rely upon the facts that our fellow-men will react as we anticipate if we act toward them in a specific way, that institutions such as governments, schools, courts, or public utilities will function, that an order of laws and mores, of religious and political beliefs, will govern the behavior of our fellow-men as it governs our own.” (II 121) The essay goes on to construct the ideal types of the expert, the man in the street, and the well-informed citizen, the last type standing between the other two. On the one hand, he neither is, nor aims at being, possessed o f expert knowledge; on the other, he does not acquiesce in the fundamental vagueness o f mere recipe

l0One contribution to the secondary literature must especially be commended: Jonathan B. Imber, “The W ell-Informed Citizen: Alfred Schutz and Applied Theory,” Human Studies 7 (1984): 117-126.

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knowledge or in the irrationality o f his unclarified passions and sentiments. To be well informed means to him to arrive at reasonably founded opinions in fields which as he knows are at least mediately o f concern to him although not bearing upon his purpose at hand.11

This typology is then related to a sociological theory of professions and much else, Schutz’s emerging theory of relevance especially: Our own social surrounding is within the reach o f everyone, everywhere; an anonymous Other, whose goals are unknown to us because o f his anonymity, may bring us together with our system of interests and relevances within his control. We are less and less masters in our own right to define what is, and what is not, relevant to us. Politically, economically, and socially imposed relevances beyond our control have to be taken into account by us as they are. Therefore, we have to know them. But to what extent? (II 129)

Relevance, whether imposed or not, is the subject of a quite complex, extensive, but incomplete theory in Schutz, yet something must be said about it here. He asserts in Text II that the well-informed citizen knows some events of immediate concern that might become relevant to her. “These may be facts or events originating within the group of which he is a member or outside of it. They are not relevant to him by any intrinsic reasons—that is, because they originate within the sphere of his particular interests, but because they are or might be imposed upon him.” (below, p. 292) There are thus both inherent and imposed relevances and in the modem world the latter increasingly predominate. The individual inherent relevances of actors are usually emphasized by Schutz. This is a concise and balanced statement: Any definition o f the situation involves a selection o f a particular sector o f the social world which is o f interest to the actor. This selection depends on the system o f interests and relevances originating in the biographical situation o f the actor within his actual environment or, as I sometimes preferred to say, in his life plan. The interpretation o f this selected sector occurs in the form of typifications which frequently and in the greater part are elements of the world taken for granted and socially derived as well as socially approved. Thus the social world as a whole is experienced by the actor within it in the form o f preconstituted types and

"II 122. Cf. Alfred Schutz, “The Problem o f the Rationality o f the Social W orld” (1942), also reprinted in II.

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preconstituted interpretations. Within this social world the actor has to find his bearings and he has to come to terms with it. He has eminent interest in the outcome o f his practical or theoretical actions. (IV 141, cf., I 227 & I 92f.)

But relevance can be relative to groups as well individuals and it can be more complex than this statement might suggest. Thus Schutz can contrast whole domains of relevance in terms of insider and outsider interpretations by two racial groups in the United States through quoting a famous passage that always deserves to be re-quoted: The white m an’s rank-order o f discrimination: 1. Intermarriage 2. Social equality 3. Segregation 4. Political rights 5. Equality before the law 6. Economic equality The N egro’s own rank order is just about parallel, but inverse, to that o f the white man. The Negro resists least the discrimination on the ranks placed highest in the white m an’s evaluation and resents m ost any discrimination on the lowest level.12

As for relevance that is imposed rather than inherent, The . . . discrepancy between the subjective and the objective interpretation o f the group remains relatively harmless, so long as the individuals thus typified are not subject to the outsider’s control. The American way o f life is not disturbed by the fact that foreigners identify it with the pattern presented by Hollywood films. . . If, however, the outsider has the power to impose his system of relevances upon the individual typified by him, and especially to enforce its institutionalization, then this fact will create various repercussions on the situation o f the individuals typified against their will. Strictly speaking, nearly all administrative and legislative measures involve the placing o f individuals under imposed social categories. Tax laws group them into income classes, draft laws into age groups, rent laws into various categories o f tenants. This kind o f imposed typification will hardly achieve the effect that those

l2II 266, quoting Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, New York, 1944, p. 43.

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subjected to it consider themselves members o f a We-group, although those concerned may, for example, form a protective committee. (II 255)

Schutz goes on sympathetically to describe in detail the impact of racial discrimination as an imposed relevance system that “breaks the integrity of the personality asunder.” (II 256) Then there are those individuals and groups who impose relevance: Doubtless the meaning o f equality is a different one for those who are aspiring to an equal position with the superior, whether a superordinate individual or a “predominant” group, and for those in the privileged position who are required to grant equal treatment. An example can be seen in the analysis o f the two types o f minorities m entioned. . . To minority groups o f the type (a), assimilation is the kind of equality aimed-at. To those of type (b), however, real equality is the kind aimedat; that is, obtaining special rights such as the use o f their national languages in schools, in the courts, etc. The history o f the cultural struggle o f national minorities in the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy is an excellent instance o f the point in question. The predominant group may interpret equality-to-be-granted as fo rm a l equality, and may even be willing to concede full equality before the law and full political equality, and yet resist bitterly any claim to special rights. [I]t m akes a characteristic difference whether tensions o f this kind can be solved by shifts within the prevailing common system o f relevances, or whether this system m ust be abolished. . . Those in the privileged position will interpret equality-to-be-granted in terms o f the former, while those who aim at obtaining equality frequently interpret it in terms o f the latter. (II 267-68)

As intimated above, it is not entirely clear where Schutz stands concerning real vs. formal groups, but as for how change ought to be effected, he quite unusually speaks of himself: Quite another question is that o f the strategy by which the evil o f social tensions can at least be diminished. This educational goal can in my opinion be reached only by a slow and patient modification o f the system o f relevances which those in power impose upon their fellow-men. (II 262)

One reason for gradual change for Schutz may be that it avoids the disappointments that come when expectations are raised too high for early fulfillment, (cf., below, p. 309)

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During the last general session of the first fortnight of the institute, Schutz also commented as follows where education is concerned. I want to reflect to the comment Dr. M cKeon made. It seems to me that our difficulty consists o f the fact that the report o f Committee Four gives us two different problems. On the one hand we are dealing with the problem o f the educators, especially the intellectual educator who has, as Dr. McKeon put it, to unify the community. In another part o f the report we admonish [that] we should take the term “educator” in a very broad sense and this does not include only the intellectual, but we have educators o f other kinds, too, the sage or the hero, who is also an educator in the sense o f the humanities. O f course we restrict our investigation to the educator within the democratic system, let us say, o f the United States or o f the idea of-educating the citizen. That is one problem which is broad enough to allow all these distinctions and investigations which are made in the report. If, however, we are thinking o f educators in the broad sense and cannot see that intellectuality is a necessary prerequisite, cannot see it in the instance where it unifies the community as the ideal let us say; for the type o f educational hero who is a good man . . . is always dependent upon the social setting without involving further investigation. To me this is a very m oot question since we are dealing with two different problem s at two different levels and perhaps each o f the strata which are sometimes called the model or the type o f genesis to which man wants to live up to requires a particular investigation. I think most o f the statements made by the report and in the summary o f Dr. Carman are absolutely correct as far as we are thinking o f our society within the U nited States and unifying the community as was the tendency o f Group Four. But if we say educator means something more, then I think we have to enlarge the area o f investigation.

Charles Frankel responds: I find m yself thinking along somewhat the same lines or parallel lines with Dr. Schutz. As I heard the discussion before about having to decide the nature o f the good man or determine what educational ideals were, I found m yself reflecting on just the obvious fact that we might be taken in by the problem o f the singular word again or the good man. I take it you might be talking about producing good men. This doesn’t have to be one type or one ideal.

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[W]hat I mean to say is that in the Anglo-Saxon or American tradition o f formal education we are trying to train persons o f character. We are trying to do it in a special way. We are doing it in a special intellectual environment. We are providing a microcosm o f the great big world but with a carefully selected and distinctive intellectual flavor, it isn’t affected by the whole body o f independent learning bearing upon carrying out this activity, then you are not doing very much that is distinctive or important. I think that this is the kind o f issue which we have to raise about the production o f educators within the community. You have to ask yourself what we are talking about, what influences in our society bear upon the maintenance o f independent institutions o f education and the development o f independent social ideals within these institutions o f education. DR. SCHUTZ: May I just make a very brief remark in reply to that? I think the line o f my comment was more or less the same. The only thing I want to add is [that], by establishing this ideal, by this treating ourselves to this type o f educator, we have already made a certain ethical choice. We have to face this problem that by taking educators in the sense o f Dr. Frankel we have already decided our modem problem in a particular sense. I have no objection to this, but we have to face it.

A digression in a text from 1958 concerning relevance and education (and also generational difference) additionally appears relevant at this point: From the transcendence o f that which is typified emerge large numbers of variations o f traditional pre-experiences appresenting (in the older person) or else merely implying empty horizonal intentionalities which, if need be, could be interpreted (by or for the younger person). One o f the problems o f the younger w ill always be: Which o f these horizonal intentionalties can be interrogated? From this emerges a philosophy o f educableness and education that to my know ledge has not yet been undertaken. The main goal o f the education o f the young is to learn how to typify “correctly”; to learn techniques o f appresentative awakening; to learn how to diagnose that which is worthy o f being motivational questioned. However, what is really necessary is the determination o f the connected thematic, and interpretative systems o f establishing what is worthy o f investigation and o f the conditions under which concrete problems are to be solved to a degree sufficient for the given purpose. In adult education there appears an important difference: teachers and students belonging to the same generation must share not only the definition o f the situation but also both its em pty and its interpreted horizonalities, and this in terms o f the socially appropriated and derived schemes of relevance (including the typifying and rules

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o f method) for problem positing and problem solving derived from this definition.13

This view of relevance systems imposed by groups upon other groups is clearly in the background of much that Schutz says at the ethics institute. Thus he writes in Text I: Our diagnosis [is that] there are such features which function as [barriers], but does [not] however necessarily include that those individuals or groups who strive for equality o f opportunity are aware that the features ascertained in our analysis as such are indeed obstacles to their obtaining equal opportunity; on the other hand, those features which we, the analysts consider as barriers to equality o f opportunity might be the outcome of an historical development or might be imposed by a dominant group. In the first case, they might have highly important functions for the maintenance o f the social system and their being a barrier to equality o f opportunity is an unfortunate by-product. And even if these features are established by the dominant group, it does not necessarily follow that the primary motive o f this group was the blocking o f equality o f opportunity, (below, p. 277)

Hence, that which is interpreted as a barrier to equality of opportunity by outside analysts may be interpreted that way neither by those striving for it nor by those able to grant it. As a feature of the social system it may be primarily the outcome o f historical development and be important for the functioning of that system. Returning now to the main thrust of Schutz’s contributions to the ethics institute, the three types of citizen are furthermore related in “Citizen” not only to this everyday world of increasingly imposed relevance, but also to socially derived knowledge. Then the others from whom information is received are said to be of four types: the eye witness, the insider, the analyst, and the commentator. (II 132) In addition, knowledge is socially approved, which can be by, e.g., “my father, my priest, my government” and some­ times “the whole in-group.” (II 133) Schutz closes “Citizen” with comments on the interplay of socially derived and socially approved (and socially distributed) knowledge and draws one “practical conclusion for the diagnosis of our present situation”:

131V 239. Cf. Alfred Schutz, “Some Structures o f the Lifeworld” (1958) in Collected Papers, Vol. Ill, ed. Ilse Schutz. The Hague: M artinus Nijhoff, 1966, 120.

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Socially approved knowledge is the source o f prestige and authority; it is also the home o f public opinion. Only he is deemed to be an expert or a well-informed citizen who is socially approved as such. Having obtained this degree o f prestige the expert’s or the well-informed citizen’s opinions receive additional weight in the realm o f socially approved knowledge. In our time, socially approved knowledge tends to supersede the underlying system o f intrinsic and imposed relevances. Polls, interviews, and questionnaires try to gauge the opinion o f the man on the street, who does not even look for any kind o f information that goes beyond his habitual system o f intrinsic relevances. His opinion, which is public opinion as it is understood nowadays, becomes more and more socially approved at the expense o f informed opinion and therefore imposes itself as relevant upon the better-informed members o f the community. A certain tendency to misinter­ pret democracy as a political institution in which the opinion o f the uninformed m an on the street must predominate increases the danger. It is the duty and privilege, therefore, of the well-informed citizen in a democratic society to make his private opinion prevail over the public opinion o f the man on the street. (II

134) Perhaps Schutz was seeking a third way for modem civil society between the extremes in the political philosophy in the Ancient agrarian societies of the doxa of the hoipolloi, on the one hand, and the episteme of the aristoi, on the other. The present concern, however, is with the memorandum printed below as Text II. This memorandum of a decade later than “Citizen” early asserts that “social responsibility and wise participation in social and civic affairs involves that equality of opportunity should not be granted to any kind of judgment, but to well-informed judgment only [and that] the formulation of uninformed judgment should be discouraged (Example: Polls on ‘opinions’ of the men in the street).” Thus even the highly intelligent and generally well-informed citizen ought, as a civic duty, to defer to experts and refrain from uninformed judgment. This is not theoretical analysis but normative assertion and shows up again late in Text III. What might equality of opportunity and barriers to it be for the well-informed citizen? The “pre-requisites of a well-informed [social and civic] judgment” are then outlined in Text II in almost a paraphrase of “Citizen,” with reference to essential and non-essential “distortions,” as they might be called generically, included. One particular difference, however, is that there are now five rather than four sources of socially derived knowledge, “reporters” being inserted between insiders and analysts on the list: “The reporter’s knowledge is generally a second-hand knowledge based on the immediate experiences of eye witnesses and/or information given by insiders. He has,

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especially if using mass communication media, the tendency to make a selection from his material in terms of their ‘news value’ for the consumer. (‘Frontpage news,’ ‘headlines’).” (below, p.293) Then the sources of information are characterized with their distortions: information is always selected by even the trustworthy eye-witness’s interests and thus incomplete, it is often censored by the insider, the unnewsworthy is at least played down by the reporter, even the analyst not intending to manipulate public opinion has a system of relevance that rarely coincides with that of the information-seeking citizen, and the commentator can easily exceed her responsibilities and wax prophetic. We always select from available information and there are always differences in relevance system between individuals and between groups. “All these difficulties in obtaining reliable information are barriers of equality of opportunity to the information seeking citizen.” Whom to trust, how to select from information received, how to evaluate it, and how to use one’s own judgment even if it is non-conformist? These barriers “deeply rooted in the institutionalized structure of our system of communication” can and ought to be struggled against by the citizen seeking her own immediate knowledge in the local situation, by her learning to see things in terms of relevance systems not only of her own but also of others, by resisting the tendency of the average American to conform to popular judgment, and by making herself as immune as possible to propaganda. These are the ends. Debating clubs, book lists, adult education, and non-partisan round-table conferences, discussion groups, and television programs are means. There is, finally, a section of Text II entitled “Barriers to Equality of Opportunity to the well-informed citizen to influence the course of events” and there Schutz characterizes three relationships. One can educate one’s children to take the viewpoints of others into consideration and to formulate independent judgments, one can visit or write newspaper editors and political representatives, and one can vote. He values the first-mentioned highest, does not seem to feel the need to even comment on. the limited effectiveness of the second (more on which presently), and remarks that the voter “has to accept the whole platform of a party and cannot pick out or eliminate a particular plank.”14

14 This last point seems odd to the present writer for whom it is clear that the United States is not strictly a democracy in which one directly votes for platforms and might yearn to vote on separate planks, but rather a republic in which discussions o f platforms by candidates in

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Concerning the taking of the viewpoints of others into consideration, the following may be the best passage for entry into this complex aspect of Schutz’s philosophy. In the mundane sphere o f everyday life I conceive m yself as well as the Other as a center o f activity, each o f us living among things to be handled, instruments to be used, situations to be accepted or changed. Yet my possibilities, my instru­ ments, my situation have their specific structure as they appear to me [and] his as they appear to him. Each o f us “defines his situation” as the sociologists call it. In order to use an object as an instrument, I have to bring it within my reach; in order to engage in a project, I have to acknowledge it as being relevant. What is relevant to the Other, what is within his reach, certainly does not coincide with w hat is relevant to me and within my reach, if for no other reason than I am “Here” and he is “There”. .. Yet recognizing that the Other lives in a setting not defined by me does not transform him into my utensil. He remains within his situation (as defined by him) a center o f activity; I can understand him as being not me, his activities as not mine, his instruments as being beyond my reach, his projects as being outside my accepted possibilities.15

Clearly, the citizen’s ultimate opportunity is to influence the course of events in the political system. This requires wise social and civic judgment and thus the knowledge whereby a citizen can be said to be well-informed, there are barriers to obtaining such knowledge, and these barriers should be struggled against. A previously unpublished draft of a section that is pertinent in this respect and was at most summarized in the report written with Lasswell has survived in the Schutz papers at the Beineke (GEN MSS 1229, Box 23, Folder 496): (c) B a rrie rs o f e q u a lity o f o p p o rtu n ity o f b rin g in g a b o u t th e a lte rn a tiv e ch o sen b y th e in d iv id u a l o r a t le a s t o f b e in g h e a rd b y th o se w h o m a k e th e decisio n .

In discussing this problem we have to avoid carefully a too broad interpretation o f the term “barrier” as including all the institutions and mores prevailing in the actual socio-cultural surrounding within which the decision occurs. The study o f the concrete barriers will, thus, have to be limited to a particular society at a

parties are merely means by which voters decide whom to elect to decide policy for them. Text III suggests that Schutz came to understand this. lsAlfred Schutz, “Sartre’s Theory o f the Alter Ego” (1948), reprinted in Collected Papers, Vol. I, ed. M aurice Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, 201.

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particular moment o f its historical existence. Some statements o f a general nature can, however, be made. We have to consider briefly the various dimensions o f social distance. The social world has several dimensions in time: contemporaries, predecessors, and successors. We are here concerned exclusively with the world o f contemporaries. It consists in a kernel o f situations in which the individuals participate in what might be called a face-to-face relationship in the sense that the participants share a sector of space and live together [during] a stretch o f time. In other words, each participant knows the other and they act reciprocally one upon the other individual. O f course, even within this group o f consocii various degrees of intimacy and anonymity prevail. This group o f consocii is surrounded by various layers o f contemporaries characterized by increasing social distance and anonymity. For example, each reader knows something about the author o f a book but not vice versa. Many contemporaries are to the individual merely relevant in terms o f their social role. Others are representatives o f an institution. In m any cases the individual is even unable to think o f the others who will influence him in terms o f individual human being (management, labor, the Democratic party, etc.). This situation is o f great importance, on the one hand, as to the influence o f the others upon the individual’s aim at obtaining information and clarifying his motivations, on the other hand, in terms of influencing the other [in making] oneself heard by him. We are concerned here merely with the latter problem. In the group o f consocii (family, congregation, local town hall meeting, local professional group) the individual may talk to individuals, answer questions in immediacy, argue in vivid discussion. He has at least theoretically an opportunity to be heard equal to all others. Only differences in personal status and prestige ham per this opportunity. An example o f the extreme opposite case is the possibility for the individual voter to be heard by the once appointed government. They are extremely limited: The individual citizen may write to his Congressman or the editor o f his newspaper, he may form a protective committee, he may induce his local organization to action; all these steps have the functions o f suggestion boxes in a large corporation: The suggestion is put in the box but nobody knows whether the box will be opened and if so whether the suggestion will be considered, still less whether it will be accepted. This problem has so far not found the attention it deserves. Students o f public opinion were mostly concerned with the question [of] how to manipulate it more than with the question [of] how individual opinion can be transformed into public opinion. It would be rather meaningless to consider this problem in terms o f barriers: It is ju st the consequence o f the fact that the modem society and its institutions are principally opaque to the individual citizen: He does not know and cannot know where to address his message and if, in exceptional cases, he also knows his contemporary, whether his message will reach him and whether it will

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be considered by him. If [illegible] the bureaucratization o f our institutions were a sufficient explanation for this state o f affairs. The only hope for a remedy consists in the assumption that by speaking out among the familiar group o f consocii a kind o f chain reaction can be created which might bring about the desired result. By the very reason o f the activity o f the responsible citizen in the smallest circle accessible to him— the family, the classroom, the discussion group, the local political or professional organiza­ tion— is of the highest importance and should be encouraged. By the same reason all forms o f expression o f opinion in which the citizen speaks not as an individual but just as one o f many (polls, etc.) should be discouraged. The more technical question [of] how individual opinions should be made known otherwise than as an elem ent o f mass opinion deserves a special study. Obviously the first educational prerequisite for reaching this goal should be to teach [the citizen] the arts o f acquiring the necessary knowledge for formulating a responsible judgment in social and political affairs, o f evaluating his own motivations, and of expressing him self within the limits imposed by the particular socio-cultural setting in the highest articulate way. It has, however, to be understood that at least the m ajority principle upon which the democratic way o f life is founded is incompatible with the ideal o f equality o f opportunity to the single individual to make his personal opinion be heard and appreciated.

B. The Report by Lasswell and Schutz What can be known of what Schutz brought to his collaboration with Lasswell has now been documented and discussed. What Lasswell brought could be determined in the same way, i.e., through study of his interventions in relation to his memoranda, letters, etc., and also his earlier publications, but that is, as mentioned, another task than the present one. (While there seems to be no materials from his institute participation in his papers at Yale’s Sterling Library, there is at least as much from him as from Schutz at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, including, in Box 69, his handwritten first draft of the joint report.) Chairman Faust reviewed the initial work of the institute and then projected how the six reports would be used: We spent the first two or three days in general meetings, looking at the areas that we had outlined at our last Mohonk session, and the approach to them proposed by the Steering Committee. Then we have had Committee sessions, developing reports and we will, today and tomorrow and Friday, look at these reports each day in the hope that we can put them into such shape that they can be stenciled

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and be prepared for preparation for the discussion in the last two weeks o f the month. These are not, as someone was saying earlier, “papers,” they are not finished papers, they are memoranda o f our discussions or reports about what we have accomplished in this two-week period. Importantly, I think, they are the basis for further discussion for this and an enlarged group in New York during the last two weeks o f the month. In view o f that, I suppose our chief question, as we look at these reports, should center around their usefulness, their adequacy, their richness for the purpose o f further discussions at the two-week session in New York.

The version of the report edited below as Text III is a revision made after the whole four-week institute was over. Comparison of it with the version dated two weeks before (and after the presentation to the Senior Fellows) shows little change. Some spelling errors were corrected, a few words were italicized, there were perhaps a score of stylistic rewordings with no apparent change of meaning, and the sections on “Bureaucratic Neutrality” and “Economic Institutions” were moved to their present position and the latter had subtitles within it deleted and three sentences moved. It is the version that most surely contains views that Schutz accepted. Handwritten notes on early versions as well as the draft sections quoted above and below show he participated fully in formulating its contents. Harold Lasswell composed the written report. Comparison with the materials presented in the present introduction would show how the contents of the report are continuous with them. Rather than support this claim in detail, a summary of Schutz’s normative position from the report he co­ authored as well as his independent statements will be offered below as Section V. But first the remainder of Schutz’s interventions and some after effects need to be rendered. After Lasswell presented it orally to the other senior scholars, Schutz spoke in such a way as to, among other things, acknowledge his collabora­ tor’s skill at orally summarizing the written report: I should like to add a few words. There was a project assigned to Group II and with such a general one, as you have seen, we can go in any direction almost, and I’m sure you will join me in my admiration o f the selection o f what are the most relevant points o f our discussion. M ost certainly, each o f these topics could be enlarged and further analyzed. We could easily make a topic, for instance, o f mass media and its particular

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influence on public opinion. Several o f the main topics are just indicated in this report by Dr. Lasswell. The leading idea was that we felt that the participation o f the citizen in sound and responsible judgm ent in civic affairs requires, first o f all, that to formulate such a judgm ent as a rational one the citizen has to have sufficient information, and reliable information, and he has to develop also the sense o f how he can bring this information to bear in the development o f the context in order to formulate a reasonable judgment. The ordinary citizen has to have sufficient insight into his own motivations, into the whole section o f the [social] structure too, and in order to formulate practical judgments he has to have a certain idea about the preformability o f his projects under the circumstances o f the given social and political institutions of the actual period. Therefore, what we call barriers— and call [them] whatever you please— they are o f three different types: There are, first o f all, barriers as to the free flux o f information; we have, secondly, barriers as to the free formation o f motivations; and we have the third barrier, that the individual citizen, himself, might at least be heard as a competent authority to make the decisions or, if possible, to influence others in the sense o f this decision. These are our basic ideas, and Dr. Lasswell is right in his report to sum up with the various attempts in our conversations to apply these principles to the various concrete existent social organizations o f our time.

One might imagine that the reference here and several times earlier by Schutz to the insight of the citizen into her own motivation came from Lasswell, who was far more friendly to Psychoanalysis than Schutz, but above Schutz emphasizes it, while his colleague had not mentioned it in his oral report, and, of course, Schutz has his own account of motivation. This account is too elaborate for summary here, but a direct and concrete passage may encourage deeper study: B ut this term [motive] is equivocal and covers two different categories which have to be kept apart, the “in-order-to motives” and the “because motives.” The form er refer to the future and are identical with the goal or purpose for the realization of which the action itself is a means; it is a “terminus ad quem.” The latter refer to the past and may be called the action’s reason or cause; it is a “terminus a quo.” It m ust be added that neither the chains o f in-order-to motives nor those of because motives are chosen at random by the actor performing a concrete act. On the contrary, they are organized in great subjective systems. . . . The in-order-to

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motives are integrated into subjective systems o f planning, a life plan or plans for work and leisure, plans for “what to do the next time,” timetable for today, the necessity o f the hour, and so on. The because motives are grasped into systems which are appropriately treated in the American literature under the title of “social personality”. . . . The se lf s manifold experiences o f its own basic attitudes in the past, as they are condensed in the form o f principles, maxims, and habits, but also o f tastes, affects, etc., are the elements for building up such systems which can be personified by the actor.16

Another intervention at the institute made by Schutz perhaps fifteen minutes later also relates to the report (and to the Cold War): Our various interests are each made partially within our own sphere o f life and are partially imposed upon us. We are now entering a period when the imposed relevances are predominating more and more. This is posed by the fact that the U nited States has taken leadership to a certain extent, and many o f us would prefer to dedicate his spare time to his studies and not bother with what happens in Russia. But these are now dangerous and highly-important factors, which might influence the destiny o f each man, woman, and child in the United States. Therefore, we have to form some judgm ents on matters which are not o f our immediate concern, especially so because public opinion within the United States is a decisive factor for all our political decisions. Therefore, one o f the principles Dr. Lasswell stated in his report is that we feel we should discourage irresponsible and uninformed references by citizens and should encourage well-formed and well-founded judgments.

When a colleague asks about how well-informed are the readers of the Hearst Press, Schutz replies: This is the danger o f the mass media and also the regulation of public opinion that we have here by way o f headlines and news publications, which have an influence on matters which deeply influence our own private system[s] o f relevance. W hen the Korea issue broke out and someone I knew was sent there, I had a Korean stamp in my stamp collection and otherwise I didn’t know where he must go, to Korea, and many o f my fellow citizens felt, certainly, the same way.

l6Alfred Schutz, The Theory o f Social Action: The Correspondence o f Alfred Schutz and Talcott Parsons, ed. Richard Grathoff. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1978, 33-34.

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Finally and also anticlimactically, after Lasswell distinguishes between the various degrees to which the individual has access to and use of sources of information available to her as member of the local community, trade union, etc., on the one hand, and the “federalization” of the flow of information through the national mass media, on the other, Schutz says: To make things more complicated, too, [there is] how this division is crossed by the membership o f the Veterans o f Foreign Wars, or the National Association for the Advancement o f Colored People, or the Lions, or whatever it may be.

Lasswell then adds that there are at least 1,500 such pressure groups in the United States. There are no further interventions by Schutz in the stenographic transcrip­ tion of the general meetings of the senior scholars at the institute on ethics of 1956. There is, however, a report, also composed by Lasswell, on the second fortnight of the institute. It interestingly discusses power and responsibility, considers the uneven distribution of leisure a barrier, and also mentions [p]ossible instances o f the former (topics discussed for the guidance o f the public at large): When should the citizen speak up— and shut up? Should citizens always vote? Granting that the citizen o f a democratic body politic has an ethical as well as a moral duty to obey the laws, when— if ever— do ethical principles require civil disobedience (i.e., nonpayment of taxes, refusal o f military service)? When is it justifiable to denounce others privately on suspicion that the law is being violated? When is it ethically justifiable to break a private confidence in order to contribute to public information? Is it ever justifiable from an ethical standpoint to exaggerate a position in order to gain support for it?

And so on. It is not possible, however, to distinguish Schutz’s particular opinions from those of others in this second report. The reports on the six areas were the basis for the conference of August 27-30 at Columbia University. There are signs in the archives of considering them for a volume, but the reasons why a volume was not published were not noticed in the materials seen. There was also hope for a permanent institute on ethics, but why that was not established is also not know to the present writer.

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There is, however, another draft by Schutz of a section in Folder 496 of Box 23 at the Beineke that relates to the issues of Lasswell and Schutz fundamentally: (2) The ethical issue involved.

Participation in public affairs, to be responsible, has to be rooted in the principles o f practical reason (to use Kant's terminology), that is, it has to be guided by the certainties revealed by conscience and the recognition o f the freedom o f all human individuals]. There is, however, no short cut connecting these ethical principles with the concrete actions and reactions in a given situation in the social or political life. Although each o f these concrete attitudes has to be founded on general ethical principles, they have to be translated into the forms o f the particular order and organization o f the socio-cultural settings to which they have to be applied. This concrete socio-cultural setting includes the systems o f socially imposed rights and duties as well as the interplay o f the dominant social form, such as church, school, state, and economic structure, each in its historical setting and taking into account the acceptance of their specific symbolic functions by the concrete society. In other words, the mores prevailing within the group are themselves secularized transformations of the underlying ethical principles and as such subject to interpretations and criticisms by both the philosophy o f morals and the sociology of knowledge. Thus, the main ethical issue in political and civic life is the problem o f the freedom o f decision to be granted to the individual or, more precisely, the interpretation o f such freedom accepted by the social group under scrutiny. It is clear that all policy involves to a certain extent the imposition on other people's freedom o f decision o f what might be experienced, in a certain sense, as barriers to the individual's [aspiration to] equality o f opportunity. The guiding principle in a democratic organization o f society involves that such impositions [on] the other's freedom o f decision should never impair his freedom as a human being in areas not connected with the specific measures required by the particular political or civic problem at hand. The term “freedom o f decision” is, however, equivocal. In order to decide responsibly myself I have first o f all to know what stands to choice, including all the implications involved in the alternatives to choose between. In order to make a reasonable decision I have to have sufficient insight into my motivations inducing me to prefer one o f the alternatives to the other. In order to make a p r a c tic a l decision I have to know whether there is any chance for my bringing about the chosen state of affairs. My decision has therefore to be based on reliable information, correct motivation, and guided by the assumption o f the preformability of the chosen alternatives.

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B arriers to equality o f opportunity for the development o f social and civil judgm ent are, thus, o f three different types: (A) Barriers to equality o f opportunity o f free access to sources o f information; (B) Barriers to equality o f opportunity o f free development o f individual motivation; and (C) Barriers to equality o f opportunity o f bringing about the alternative chosen by the individual or, at least, o f being heard by those who have to make the decision.

Three new points here deserve comment. In the first place, where mores as secularized transformations of ethical principles are concerned, “Equality” refers to the “central myth” governing a concrete group’s ideas. “For example, the idea of equality might be referred to an order of values ordained by Zeus, or originating in the structure of the soul; it might be concerned as reflecting the order of the cosmos, or the Right of Nature, as revealed by Reason;” etc. (II 245, cf. IV 149) This is a matter of the self­ interpretation of an in-group and it can change in history, e.g., to and from the “separate but equal” interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Secondly, the reader unfamiliar with his thought should know that Schutz has a full theory of how economic subjects, for example, make choices that can be extended to include political voting and other decisions. Perhaps this general passage conveys its core. Our analysis, which we have intentionally restricted to the daily life situation o f choosing between projects, started from the world taken for granted beyond question as the general field of our open possibilities. Our biographically determ ined situation selects certain elements o f this field as relevant for our purpose at hand. If this selection meets with no obstacle, the project is simply transformed into a purpose and the action is carried out as a matter o f course. If, by the very vagueness o f our knowledge at hand at the time o f projecting, a situation o f doubt arises, then some o f the formerly open possibilities become questionable, problematic. Some part o f the world formerly taken for granted beyond question and therefore unquestioned has now been put into question. The decision re-transforms what has been questionable into a certainty, but an empirical certainty that is again an unquestioned element o f our knowledge, taken for granted until further notice. 17

lfred Schutz, “Choosing among Projects o f Action” (1951), I 94, cf. Alfred Schutz, Jh o ice and the Social Sciences (1951),” in Life-W orld and Consciousness, ed. Lester Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972.

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Finally, Schutz has an account of reasonableness, which also relates to the question of the well-informed citizen’s insight into her own motives, which is discussed above. We may say that a man acted sensibly if the motive and the cause o f his action is understandable to his partners or observers. This will be the case if his action is in accordance with a socially approved set o f rules and recipes for coming to terms with typical problems by applying typical means for achieving typical ends. If I, if We, if “anybody who is one o f us” found him self in typically similar circumstances, he would act in a similar way. Sensible behavior, however, does not presuppose that the actor is guided by insight into his motives and the meansends context. A strong emotional reaction against an offender might be sensible and refraining from it foolish. If an actor seems to be sensible to the observer and is, in addition, supposed to spring from a judicious choice among different courses o f action, we may call it reasonable even if such action follows traditional or habitual patterns just taken for granted. Rational action, however, presupposes that the actor has clear and distinct in sig h t.. . into the ends, the means, and the secondary re su lts.. . .(I 27)

The draft section above and some related passages in Schutz’s oeuvre thus also enhances the analysis of his contributions to the institute on ethics of 1956. IV. Later Events At least two events in Schutz’s subsequent life (he died three years after the ethics institute) are relevant to the contents of his contributions in June 1956. That Fall, he taught a graduate seminar on “Equality, Prejudice, and Discrimination.” He kept the report he wrote with Lasswell in 1956 and also his own paper at the 1955 conference in the folder for that course along with a reading list and a list of seminar topics. No doubt this course was mostly prepared before the 1956 institute and informs his contributions there, but it must also have been affected by it afterwards. The seminar topics assigned to the students can be quoted: I. September 24.

Introductory Lectures [by Schutz].

II. October 1.

"

III. October 8.

THE ETHICAL-POLITICAL SIDE OF SCHUTZ IV. October 15.

Equality: Encyclopedia o f the Social Sciences.

V. October 22.

John Plamenato: Paper for Conference on Equality of Opportunity.

VI. October 29.

Tawney: Equality.

VII. November 5.

T.V. Smith: The American Philosophy o f Equality.

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VIII. November 12. U.N. Document on Discrimination. IX. November 19.

Arnold Rose: Roots o f Prejudice. Sanger: Prejudice.

X. November 26.

Treatm ent o f Equality in American Literature (Faulkner, Penn Warren, or Meyers).

XI. December 3.

Nationality Policy in Russia.

XII. December 10.

Maclver: The Web o f Government.

XIII. December 17. Bierstadt: Sociology o f Majorities. Simmel on Superordination and Subordination. XIV. January 7.

M onroe Berger: The Law and Equality.

XV. January 14.

Maclver: The More Perfect Union

Secondly, there is the letter of December 10, 1957 that is edited below as Text IV. Schutz had had lunch with Clarence Faust at the 1956 institute, kept in contact with him, and the ultimately frustrated hope was to obtain funding for the Graduate Faculty of the New School, which did not have an endowment and which had considered not rebuilding the Department of Philosophy after Felix Kaufmann’s death in 1950 and Kurt Riezler’s retirement in 1952. (IV 112 ff, cf., IV 134 ff) Earlier efforts had failed to bring Aron Gurwitsch to the Graduate Faculty (he came as Schutz’s replacement in 1959), but Dorion Cairns and Hans Jonas had soon helped preserve the department. The style of the letter is polished. The concern is with the teaching of the values o f the United States as a democratic society in the schools so that better citizens would be formed. This would be accomplished by what has

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subsequently come to be called a multidisciplinary approach to the interconnected economic and social, as well as political, ideas guiding the American culture and social heritage. Schutz believes that the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, whose Philosophy and Sociology departments he belonged to, was well-suited for this task: W e are convinced that the study of human affairs is only possible within the unified field o f the social sciences in their totality, not within a particular discipline alone; and that this principle applies even to scientific inquiry into very concrete problems. Elsewhere it is possible to study social psychology without sociology, sociology without the history o f ideas, government without political philosophy, economics without reference to the other disciplines; but Graduate Faculty students become aware o f social sciences as an integrated whole.18

It is difficult to believe that Schutz’s long developing views in this respect were not also refined through his participation in the 1956 institute on ethics. V. Sketch of an Ethical-Political Focus. The various normative statements expressed by Alfred Schutz in the surviving documentation from the ethics institute of 1956 deserve comment. These are assertions and implications of what ought (or should) or ought not (or should not) be the case for the citizen. Schutz writes once of “ethicalpolitical postulates.” (II 263) These belong to several contexts, beginning with that in his memorandum, “In Search of the Middle Ground,” which is a summary of impressions requested from Schutz about the 1955 conference and originally published in the same volume as his “Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World.” There was unanimity at the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion that year that future meetings should explore a middle ground to enable “the participants in the conference to achieve a meeting of minds within a well-established universe of discourse with a view to mutual clarification.” (IV 148) This intention to explore a middle ground y/as then in the background of the 1956 institute and conference.

18Alfred Schutz, “The Scope and Function o f the Departm ent o f Philosophy within the Graduate Faculty” (1953), IV 113.

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In his report on the April 6-8 meeting at Lake Mohawk that Schutz seems not to have attended (Gen. MSS 129, Box 21, p. 3) A Durwood Foster writes: The ‘middle ground’ concept had attempted to meet the problem of [the religiousphilosophical diversity of the group] by locating a series of ethical principles which could be jointly espoused without broaching the metaphysical or theological roots from which, in various traditions and individuals, these principles derive. Dr. Albert Hofstadter’s paper at the August 1955 Conference was an attempt to formulate such a middle ground.19 Alfred Schutz, however, typically discerned three meanings for the expression “middle ground,” one in common language, one in philosophy and religion, and one that is pragmatic, and, to develop his position, he typically distinguishes different social roles, problems, and goals with which matters were approached and then submits that the universe of discourse in the conference varied with them. The extreme roles (or standpoints) would seem to be the philosopher and religionist, on the one hand, and “the world of eveiyday life taken for granted in the common-sense thinking of actors on the social scene with which they have to come to terms,” (IV 149) on the other. As for what is between these extremes, It seems to me that this region of secularized common-sense thinking is indeed the “epistemological middle ground” where ideas and ideals—transformed into taken-for-granted notions of social reality—become springs of social interaction. It is the task of the theoretical social sciences to study the rather complicated structure of this social reality and the forms of these transformations. It is the task of empirical research to apply such theoretical findings concrete social groups and social relations in a given setting at a given historical moment. (IV 150) Schutz's “Equality” also contributed on the philosophical level. For example, it would seem a philosophical point that the place to begin concerning, e.g., equality of opportunity, ought to be with “the self-interpretation of the in-group and the interpretation by the out-group”:

19 “The Career Open to Personality: The Meaning o f Equality o f Opportunity for an Ethics o f Our Tim e,” Apects o f H uman Equality, eds. Lyman Bryson, Clarence H. Faust, Louis Finkelstein, and R.M. M aclver. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956.

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On the one hand, the question was raised [of] how we, members o f the Confer­ ence, can communicate our findings to the man in the street who neither uses nor understands our language. On the other hand, several members emphasized the necessity for giving a series o f practical answers applying to education, equality o f opportunity in choosing work, international relations, etc. All this is <solely> possible if we have some knowledge o f the particular structure o f the common-sense thinking within the social group addressed by us, that is, the systems o f typifications, the relevance structures, the schemes o f interpretation, etc., that prevail in it. To convey our message to the common m an and be understood by him we have to use his language and to translate our thoughts into the conceptual framework accepted by him. (IV 151)

The ethics institute and conference the following year clearly grew out of the 1955 conference. As the repeated footnote with two asterisks in the framework statement, i.e., “Including responsibility for eliminating [barriers] and implications for action by segments o f the Institute or individuals, in areas of their special competence,” indicates, the tension between thought and action continued, which Schutz's distinguishing of ethical from technological and ideological levels in his early interactions with McKeon and Rabi, for example, shows. And Schutz and Lasswell were aware of this in their last section: The w orking definitions o f “social and civic judgm ent” with which we began raise normative issues that the conference may desire to consider. If the discussions moves toward general ethical theory, [more o f these] issues will eventually appear. If the discussion centers upon some o f the relatively concrete problem s o f our society at this historical phase o f development, the conference may focus upon one or more major barriers and undertake to formulate rather detailed and helpful guides to the conduct o f m odem man. (below, p. 300)

What are ethical issues for Schutz? That he has a broad concept of the ethical is evident in how he agrees that respect for national sovereignty is an ethical issue and the same holds for his reflections on relationships between age, class, ethnic, gender, and other groups within a given society. His emphasis, however, is on individual political action and that will be followed here. There are three issues concerning the individual. In the first place, there are limits to self-realization whereby one choice precludes others and this holds for all spheres of life. Secondly, where political action by individual citizens is concerned,

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the main ethical issue in political and social life is the problem o f freedom o f decision to be granted to the individual or, more precisely, the interpretation o f such freedom accepted by the social group under scrutiny, (above, 266) [T]he moral issue involved is first o f all the question o f responsibility and o f w isdom o f judgm ent; therefore, irresponsible judgm ent should be discouraged and responsible judgm ent should be encouraged, all the barriers and obstacles to obtaining or arriving at responsible judgment should be, if p ossible], removed, (above, 249)

A third area of ethical issues is education. Here Schutz objects to rigid curricula that discourage breadth and force on the student premature choice o f a major. And in Text IV he advocates use o f multidisciplinary graduate work for teachers so that pre-college students can be taught the basic ideas concerning our social heritage, their historical development, their compatibility or incompatibility with ideas o f foreign cultures, their manifestation in any department o f our social world, the interconnectedness o f these depart­ ments, and, first o f all, their meaning and significance, (below, 306)

This is education for better informed political participation. Ethical principles are also mentioned. Schutz holds that these can be “secularized” into the mores of groups and are subject to examination by moral philosophers as well as social scientists, (above, 276, cf. IV 149) One can also draw conclusions from ethical principles to apply to such questions as the transfer of technology to poor countries. Examples of ethical principles would seem to be that the healthy ought to help the ill and, more generally, the principle of remedy is perhaps explicable such that those who are able ought to remedy deficiencies. Equality of opportunity would seem another ethical principle. The last section of the Lasswell-Schutz report is devoted to “Ethical Problems.” A distinction is made there between principles of subject matter or content of social and ethical judgment and principles of procedure by which the principles of content can be applied in concrete circumstances. “An instance of the former is the statement that the citizens of a democratic society should recognize their responsibility for contributing to the common good. An instance of the latter is the statement that they should seek pertinent information.” (below, p. 310)

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While the level of ethical principles is recognized, the emphasis in these Schutzian materials is on what appear best called normative statements. The context in this respect is different. It has practical action at one extreme, requisite knowledge at the other, and the normative in between. This three-fold structure is referred to twice in the Lasswell-Schutz report: “The ordinary citizen has the possibility of joining with others in attempting to consider the normative grounds of his goals, as well as available informa­ tion. . .” (below, 310) and To the extent that the citizen is to make up his mind about issues, he needs to clarify his goals and the relation o f alternative policies to probable results. This calls for consideration o f the normative grounds of his goals as well as the factual content o f the trend, conditioning factors, future development (if no action is taken), and the invention and appraisal o f alternative policies, (below, 288)

Goals and policies to attain them pertain, plainly, to action. Such matters of action have normative grounds expressible in normative statements. Normative statements, however, have what are called “pre-requisites” of a cognitive sort, e.g., the “basic facts in the societal life of each group that knowledge is socially distributed not only as to its contents but also to its degree of clarity and completeness [and the] basic fact of societal life that only few can be in command and that the others have to obey.” (below, 278) This is general knowledge, but there are also particular and socio-historically specific knowledge. This is where concerns with knowledge belong, including the essential and cultural limits on individual self-realization, the social distribution of expert and common-sense knowledge, the communica­ tion and political systems, etc. Discussion of cognitive prerequisites predominate in Schutz's contributions to the ethics institute, but a not insignificant quantity of normative statements relate to cognitive prerequi­ sites and “ground” goals and policies. The first section of the Lasswell-Schutz report tidily contains ten normative statements, which deserve some commentary: Except to say that it plays a predominating role in the set, enough has been said about the ethical principle that a citizen in a democratic society ought to recognize her responsibility to contribute to the common good. To make decisions in service to the common good, citizens ought to seek reliable information. It is not obvious in the first section of the report, however, that this includes the citizen having sufficient insight into her own motivations. Motives can be evaluated and this is done in order to have

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“correct motivation,” which involves “responsible judgment,” i.e., judgment based on sufficient and reliable information. What ought the citizen be motivated to do? She ought to be motivated “to recognize responsibility, to seek information, and to participate actively.” (below, 289) Individual citizens thus ought to participate “in the processes of civic choice.” This includes the development of powers of judgment and insight into how to develop relevant knowledge. They have the right to abstain when things go satisfactorily. The fine statement about how a citizen ought to be critical about the sources of her information sums up much in Texts II and III. Citizens ought to refrain from the expression of uninformed opinion. This parallels how the media ought not to poll and report the uninformed opinion of the man in the street. Schutz would seem to want equal opportunity to participate in social and civic judgment somehow confined to the wellinformed. As it is put in “Citizen,” “To be well-informed means to him to arrive at reasonably founded opinions in fields which as he knows are at least mediately of concern to him although not bearing upon his purpose at hand.” Citizens ought to decide about people using information and experience to assess their trustworthiness and competence. That the citizen ought to support government secrecy as well as personal privacy can be understood at least in part with reference to the Cold-War situation. Citizens ought to be outspoken in public, especially where they have special knowledge and experience. This relates to professional groups, but, generally, one’s influence is greatest among consocii, beginning with the rearing of one’s own children. In sum, the materials presented here show that Alfred Schutz subscribes to a not insignificant set of ethical norms for grounding the political action of the individual citizen. These norms are at the heart of his ethical-political side.

Text I Some Considerations concerning Thinking in Terms of Barriers20 Alfred Schutz The term “barrier” is meant to be a semantically innocent figure of speech. Nevertheless, this metaphor is fraught with certain dangers. (1) It carries along the connotation that equality of opportunity would have developed in the natural course of affairs if obstacles which prevented a free growth of tendencies did not exist or had not been artificially established. The use of the term induces us to speak of “imposing barriers,” “erection of barriers,” “reasons for the existence of barriers,” “raising” and “destroying” barriers, etc. Inadvertently, thus, we become inclined to think that the goal of bringing about equality of opportunity consists primarily in the removal of existing obstacles and not in the creative determination of new directions. (2) The term is highly equivocal and means different things in the various areas under scrutiny and was frequently used in our preliminary discussions in a different sense of the problem involved in one single area. Instead of embarking upon a detailed analysis I shall try to develop a few of the implications of the concept of “barrier” as used in our discussions. (a) There is first of all the objective meaning of the term: We, the analysts, find that the ideal of equality of opportunity cannot be translated into reality because there are certain features in the socio-cultural structure under scrutiny which prevent the bringing about of the desired state of affairs. Our diagnosis that there are such features which function as barriers does not, however, necessarily involve the fact that those individuals or groups who strive for equality of opportunity are aware that the features ascertained in our analysis as such are indeed obstacles to their obtaining equal opportunity; on the other hand, those features which we, the analysts,

20E d ito r’s N ote: On internal grounds, this text was composed after the June 1956 institute began. It was typed up and circulated to the other Senior Fellows. For other considerations o f context and significance, see the Introduction above. Lester E m bree (e d .) Schutzian Social Science, 2 8 7 -2 8 9 .1 9 9 9 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P u b lish e rs. P rinted in th e N e th erla n d s. © T he S c h u tz F am ily .

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consider as barriers to equality of opportunity might be the outcome of an historical development or might be imposed by a dominant group. In the first case, they might have highly important functions for the maintenance of the social system and their being a barrier to equality of opportunity is an unfortunate by-product. And even if these features are established by a dominant group, it does not follow that the primary motive of this group was the blocking of equality of opportunity. (b) The subjective meaning of the term “barriers” is also a different one from the point of view of the individual or the group seeking equality of opportunity and from the point of view of those who should grant it. For example, to the individual seeking equality of opportunity for self-realization any obstacle involved in the carrying out of his chosen project seems to be a barrier. To the minority group which wants to preserve its folkways and nevertheless be recognized by the majority group as equal, the very incompatibility of its way of life with that of the majority group is inter­ preted as a “barrier” to equality of opportunity. The history of the “separate but equal” doctrine is an example of the changing interpretations of “barriers” from the point of view of the majority group. (c) If we speak, however, of barriers to equality of opportunity among nations, we have to do with quite a different concept. The discussions around the “Bricker amendment” are examples for the double aspect of the term “barrier” in this case. Is the principle of sovereignty a barrier to equality of opportunity for the nations within the framework of the U.N. or is the charter of the U.N. a barrier to the self-realization of the U.S.A. in terms of its equal right to autonomous decisions? (d) Used with respect to equality of opportunity for the development of powers of social and civil judgment, the facts that the individuals don’t have equal access to the sources of information, let alone to decision making, seem to be “barriers.” But it is a basic fact in the societal life of each group that knowledge is socially distributed not only as to its contents but also to its degree of clarity and completeness; it is also a basic fact of societal life that only few can be in command and that the others have to obey. (3) It is as I submit a self-imposed “barrier” to our thinking [in the institute] if we interpret the following items as “barriers”:

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(a) Basic features involved in the human condition as such (e.g., for finite human beings the postulate of self-realization is necessarily limited to the self-realization of a part of his possibilities). (b) Basic features involved in the societal life of any group at any historical period. (c) Institutionalized essential features of the socio-cultural framework of group life which have their tradition and history and have to fulfill primarily important functions for the maintenance of the group, although they happen to be incompatible with the bringing about of equality of opportunity. (d) Non-essential features of group life, arbitrarily imposed or not, which can be modified or eliminated without endangering the maintenance of the group and which open a way for the realization of equality of opportunity. (e) Features regulating the coexistence of groups within the same institutionalized order (nation). (f) Features regulating the coexistence o f institutionalized orders themselves (international problems). (4) I submit that the interdependency of the factors enumerated under 3 (a)-(f) does not become even visible as long as we use indiscriminately the term “barrier.” Moreover, it is quite possible that the maintenance of one or the other of the so-called “barriers” guarantees the realization of an ethically higher value than that of equality of opportunity so that inequality of opportunity might be the price we have to pay for attaining a more valuable goal.

Text II M E M O R A N D U M 21 TO: Doctor Harold Lasswell FROM: Alfred Schutz

DATE: June 7, 1956

Some points to be considered in connection with area #2: Barriers of Equality of Opportunity for the development of social and civic judgment, Barriers to the Individual to acquire a sense of social responsibility and to prepare for wise participation in the solution of political problems. (1) The postulate of social responsibility and wise participation in social and civic affairs involves that equality of opportunity should not be granted to any kind of judgment, but to well-informed judgment only. The formula­ tion of uninformed judgment should be discouraged (Example: Polls on “opinions” of the men in the street). But even the highly intelligent and generally well-informed citizen who is not an expert in this particular field might have considerable difficulties in formulating for example a responsible judgment as to whether the farm bill vetoed by the President or the new one is preferable. To refrain from uninformed judgment is certainly also a civic duty. (2) What are the pre-requisites of a well-informed judgment? Knowledge is socially distributed. Each of us is an expert in a rather small field and laymen in many others. In terms of William James, each of us has knowl­ edge about relatively few topics, knowledge of acquaintance of a larger sector, blind beliefs with respect to still wider areas, and complete ignorance of the rest. In terms of ideal types we may distinguish the expert, the man in the street, and, in between, the well-informed citizen, keeping in mind that each individual represents all of these three types. (a) The expert has, at least theoretically, [a] complete, clear and coherent knowledge of his particular field. (The dangerous type of the selfstyled expert is here disregarded.) This field is to him a unified whole. He sees and evaluates only those aspects of things and events which are relevant

21E d ito r’s Note: For the context and significance o f this text, see above, pp. 259ff. L ester E m bree (e d .) Schutzian Social Science, 2 9 1 -2 9 5 .1 9 9 9 K lu w e r A cad em ic P u b lish e rs. P rin ted in the N e th erla n d s. © T h e S c h u tz Fam ily.

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within the sector of his expert knowledge, and handles them in terms of his specialty. He is supposed to do so in order to give competent advice. On the other hand, his disregarding [of] all other aspects of the problem involved limits the usefulness of his judgment for practical solutions. (Clemenceau’s dictum: “War is too important a business that its conduct could be left to the generals.”) (b) The man in the street does not have any “knowledge about.” He lives in a world taken for granted until further notice. He knows, however, for all practical purposes enough about things of his immediate concern. He knows, furthermore, who is an expert in particular fields and is confident to find a good doctor, lawyer, or accountant if needed. (c) The well-informed citizen knows that certain events of his immediate concern are or might become relevant to him. These may be facts or events originating within the group of which he is a member or outside of it. They are not relevant to him by any intrinsic reasons—that is because they originate within the sphere of his particular interests, but because they are or might be imposed upon him. (For example: The policy of the Federal Reserve Bank and the possibility of a war in the Middle East do not immediately concern a local retailer, but might become, at any time, relevant to him.) He wants, therefore, to be informed of this development at least to an extent sufficient for his purpose and if possible to influence the course of events. (3) A very small sector of everyone’s knowledge originates in his personal experience. The greater part of his knowledge is socially derived. It consists of communicated experiences of other persons, individuals or anonymous reporters, coming to him directly or by way of the mass communication media. His information may roughly be subsumed under the following categories: (a) Eye witnesses (b) Insiders (c) Reporters (d) Analysts (e) Commentators

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Each of them fulfills an important but limited function: (a) The eye witness, if trustworthy, reports his immediate experiences but from his particular one-sided point of vantage. He communicates, thus, merely a specific aspect of the total situation and he does so in terms of his—the eye witness’s—system of relevances. (b) The insider is supposed to have an overall picture o f the situation but he reveals not only those aspects of it which he thinks in his interest to be made public. (“Classified information,” “business secrets,” etc.) (c) The reporter’s knowledge is generally a second-hand knowledge based on the immediate experiences of eye witnesses and/or [information] given by insiders. He has, especially if using mass communication media, the tendency to make a selection from his material in terms of their “news value” for the consumer. (“Front page news,” “headlines.”) (d) The analyst pre-digests the material gathered by the persons mentioned under (a)-(c) for the consumer. Even if he does not intend to manipulate public opinion, he selects or emphasizes certain aspects of the material in accordance with his personal judgment, that is, in accordance with a system of relevances which is his own and does not necessarily coincide with that of the information seeking citizen. (e) The commentator (editorialists, columnists, etc.) tries to place the information in a general context showing the implications of the problem involved, its repercussions on other facts or events, or its significance for future developments. He has frequently the tendency to assume the role of an expert prophet (“I predict”) or of a man possessing knowledge of otherwise unknown facts (“behind the news”). (4) All of these difficulties in obtaining reliable information are barriers [to] equality of opportunity [for] the information seeking citizen. He finds himself faced with the following problems: (a) Whom to trust?— [The] danger of submitting to the prestige of the “socially approved” source of information (for example “Walter Winchell”).

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(b) How to select from all the information passed on to him [that which is] relevant to the problem from his, the individual’s, point of view, as well as from the point of view [of] the community as a whole. (c) How to evaluate this relevant information in its context with the general situation under scrutiny. (d) How to use his own judgment, even if it were a non-conformist one, in spite of social pressures of different kind[s], (5) The aforementioned barriers [to] equality of opportunity for the individual to gain [access] to reliable information are deeply rooted in the institutionalized structure of our system of communication. How then can the citizen be helped to prepare for wise participation in the solution of social and political problems? (a) By encouraging his arriving at a well-founded judgment in the affairs of which he has sufficient immediate knowledge (his local commu­ nity, his professional group). (b) By educating him to see things, not only in terms of his personal system of relevance, but also in terms of the systemfs] of relevance of others. (c) By fighting the tendency of the average American [to believe] that, in order to be a “regular fellow,” one has to submit to the judgment o f the majority (“ten million Americans cannot be wrong”). (d) By making him as far as possible immune to attempts [at] propa­ ganda of all kind[s].” (6) Means for reaching this goal: (a) Encouraging of debating clubs on all levels of education, using pro and con teams.

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(b) Preparing o f a list of books containing the reliable information in various fields and presenting as far as possible the various aspects of the problems involved in an objective way (these are not the “ 100 great books”). (c) Adult education on various levels. (d) Non-partisan round-table conferences. (e) Sponsoring inter-professional, inter-confessional, inter-racial, etc. discussion groups. (f) Sponsoring television programs to this purpose. (7) Barriers to Equality of Opportunity [for] the well-informed citizen to influence the course of events. The average citizen has, of course, the right to vote; he has, however, to accept the whole platform of a party and cannot pick out or eliminate a particular plank. Having once voted, his possibilities are extremely limited. He is just an atom of public opinion and his only hope is to influence others by direct contact or by writing to his congressman or to the editor of his newspaper. But he has one privilege: He may educate his children in the art of formulating independent judgments and of taking into consideration the point[s] of view of others.

Text III Draft Confidential Not for distribution or publication

June 14, 1956 Revised July 5, 1956

The Institute on Ethics22 of The Institute for Religious and Social Studies The Jewish Theological Seminary of America 3080 Broadway, New York 27, New York “Equality of Opportunity” Report on the Discussions of Barriers to Equality of Opportunity for the Development of Powers of Social and Civil Judgment Committee II Harold D. Lasswell Alfred Schutz (1) Social and civic judgment: (a) We postulate that the citizens of a democratic society should recognize their responsibility for contributing to the common good. (b) They should seek the information enabling them to make social and civic choices in harmony with this ideal. (c) They should participate actively in the processes of civic choice (and this includes the right to abstain when affairs are going satisfactorily).

I2E ditor's N ote: For the context and significance o f this text, including the question o f how much o f this joint report came from Schutz, sec the above Introduction, especially pp. 259ff. Lester E m b ree (e d .) Schutzian Social Science , 2 9 7 -3 1 1 .1 9 9 9 K lu w e r A c ad e m ic P u b lish e rs. P rin ted in th e N e th e rla n d s. © T h e S c h u tz F am ily.

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(d) The citizen needs a critical attitude toward the sources upon which he depends, and enough information about these sources to assess the credibility of what is said about past and present events, and about the probability of future events. This calls for knowledge o f a source’s opportunity for observation and competence in observation and reporting. It also includes knowledge of the interests of the source. A critical attitude is tentative and not dogmatic about the probable effect of any particular characteristic upon bias and competence (e.g., the effect of class position, of functional affiliation or role, of personality type, of cultural identification). Since sources are organizations as well as individuals, the functioning of an organization as it affects the output of information needs to be understood. (e) The citizen should discourage in himself and others the public expression of uninformed opinion. He should of course feel no reluctance to participate in public inquiries designed to clarify goals and to assess alternative policies in the light of probable results. This calls for the mobilization of available information about historical and contemporary distributions and trends, and the factors affecting trend[s]. (f) To the extent that the citizen is to make up his mind about issues, he needs to clarify his goals and the relation of alternative policies to probable results. This calls for consideration of the normative grounds of his goals as well as the factual content of the trend, conditioning factors, future development (if no action is taken), and the invention and appraisal of alternative policies. (g) To the extent that the citizen is to make up his mind about people, he needs information and experience enabling him to assess his judgments of trustworthiness and competence. (h) It is important that the individual should support policies that limit his access to information in the interest of military security, respect for privacy (and other value objectives). Some of this information should be an official monopoly; some should be wholly private. (i) The citizen ought to be outspoken in public as a champion of opinions that he believes to be in the public interest (and which are

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neglected). This norm applies with particular force in areas o f the citizen’s special knowledge and experience. (j) In applying community sanctions to long established violations of democratic practice, the citizen should be willing to apply initially the methods of persuasion and education, with gradual resort to severe sanctions (in view of the psychic cost of abandoning old established beliefs). This is an aspect o f toleration of the infirmities of others. (2) “Barriers” (a) For working purposes we give provisional interpretations to the conception of a barrier. For instance, we use it to refer to factors that limit the citizen’s access to the available range of information (and interpretation) presented in convenient and comprehensible form. (b) Barriers are also understood to be factors that limit the willingness of the citizen to recognize his civic responsibility, to seek relevant informa­ tion about topics beyond the range of his immediate and narrowly personal interests, and to participate actively in the process of social and civic choice. (We note that some barriers may be recognized by citizens; others may not. Even if—in the role o f social observers—we do not agree with the individual’s sense that his access to information is restricted (in specific situations), we accept the individual’s interpretation as itself constituting a barrier. We do not assume that all barriers as here defined are “unethical.” After reviewing the barriers now current we shall undertake to formulate some of the normative issues that arise.) (3) A check list of barriers in the United States. (A comprehensive summary of this kind would assess the magnitude of each barrier, the costs of each in terms of all our values, the trends toward elevating or lowering a barrier, and our knowledge of the factors that account for the fluctuating magnitude of a barrier. We do no more than indicate some of the topics pertinent to such an inquiry. The plan is to glance at our institutional context and to locate both the barriers to information (2.a., above) and to the cultivation of motivations to recognize responsibility, to seek information, and to participate actively (2.b., above). (The latter

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concerns the degree to which such motivations when expressed in behavior are followed by gratification, or by lack of gratification—viewed in the perspective of the one who acts.) (a) Government. (aa) The impact o f some basic trends23 (1) Scale o f interdependence. What happens around the world affects the fate of individuals to an increasing extent. This means that the individual is more dependent upon others for relevant information than when local factors were relatively more important. Research question: In nations with a tradition of popular government, does this result in an increasing sense of the helplessness of achieving informed political judgment? (There is more talk of this kind, but the per capita exposure to information, and the level of information, appears to have been raising.) (2) Govemmentalization and centralization. It is usually said that for some time the role of government and especially of national government has been of increasing importance in American society. To the extent that this is true it has been becoming comparatively more important for every component interest in the American body politic to seek to influence the formation and execution of government policy. Has this meant that more Americans spend more time hearing about and attempting to influence government, than during previous interwar periods? (Note contradictory facts—and especially the image that America was developed with a minimum of dependence upon government versus the image of the exercise of governmental power in monetary* banking, transportation, land policies, and the like.) Has the expansion of central government reduced the importance of local government to a point that civic initiative is allowed to atrophy? (There are indications of a contrary

23 Schutz writes “(aa) The ascertainment o f the area o f political interest” on a draft without this heading.

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kind—the revitalizing of local civic action in connection with school, police, and similar functions.) (bb) The instrumentalities o f popular government as opinion-shaping influences,24 (3) The separation of powers. The partition of authority among legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government creates great difficulty on the part of the citizen in determining whom to hold accountable for official action. Does this constitute a cumulative source of dissatisfaction with the instrumentalities and—in various critical contingencies—with the ideal of popular govern­ ment itself? For instance, is the basis being laid among Americans for the support of dictatorial actions taken by a strong executive who relies upon the military structure to cope with emergency situations? Or, on the contrary, are we developing a demand for (and aptitude in carrying on) government within a slowly changing frame of consensus by the use of a great diversity of rather rapidly shifting coalitions? Does this keep alive the sense that effective results can be obtained by citizens who act in harmony with the ideal of enlightened civic and social judgment? (4) The Federal and the presidential system. Our presidents are typically chosen from state governors or from administrative figures who lack a long record of previous commitment on national policy. To what extent does this stimulate general civic interest by rewarding active participation in local affairs? To what extent does it lead to an uninformed public estimate of the judgment on national policies of presidential candidates? Is civic judgment distorted by the custom of running presidential elections according to the calendar, rather than according to the sense of urgent issues to be solved? Do the practices of prolonged nominat­ ing procedure distort civic judgment more than a shorter procedure? Does the highly personalized emphasis in United States public life contribute to sound civic judgment? For instance, do we become relatively expert in assessing the integrity of our top figures? (Note the absence of “despots,”

24T h is title w a s a d d e d b y S c h u tz to a n e a rlie r draft.

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“tyrants,” or “criminals” among United States presidents. In a complex society that depends on “agency” relationships, is it most effective to concentrate on the appraisal of trustworthiness?) Does a federal system put a premium upon obtaining national action by “deals” in which the territorial distribution of interests is reflected, thus increasing the cost of national action save in times of recognized common emergency? Does this build up vested interests in blocking national consensus in order to increase the “take” obtained by state and local bosses in these deals? Are such vested interests contributed to by national “functional” interests that seek to increase their special “take” from national policy programs? Despite the cost, is the result of encouraging pluralistic interests to keep alive a pattern of diversity in American life that avoids the costs of a totally hierarchized and centrally administered system? (5) The coordination of areas. In a rapidly changing society, disharmonies develop among areas of government and other areas in the social context. These discrepancies add to public confusion and to the dispersion of responsibility. Barriers in the effective expression of sound social and civic judgment are frustrative in their effect upon civic life, and result in various degrees of withdrawal. Among the more conspicuous discrepancies in the United States are the boundaries of metropolitan areas, of states, and regions. Failures of reapportionment create vested and sentimentalized interests that distort the flow of information, and create conditions that discourage activity on behalf of a comprehensive conception of [the] public good. (6) Legalism. The rational clarification of goals in a factual context, including estimates of the probable future, has been inhibited by the “legalistic” technique of thought and discussion. Possessing a written constitution, a debating premium has been put in the United States upon presenting an objective or a proposed alternative as consistent with the authoritative language of the document (and of subsequent interpretations by authorized tribunals). This common frame of reference has undoubtedly performed an important function in fostering the unity of the American body politic. At the same time it has encouraged a technique of double-talk and double-thought that

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confuses the consideration o f public affairs. Statements of goals are frequently left unspecified and highly ambiguous while the argument jumps promptly to the interpretation of constitutional prescriptions. Estimates of the future course of development (assuming no new policy; assuming new policy) are unevaluated while the argument revolves around plausible constructions o f legal language. This occurs although “legalism” is not the only or the most defensible conception of the methods appropriate to the clarification of legality. If interpretations are made in terms of basic purposes of the body politic, the problem becomes that of discovering the policies by which these goal values can be maximized in the unfolding context. Estimates of future effect call for the critical assessment of available information about past historical sequences, and accessible knowledge about the determinative impact of variables upon such trends. This conception of legality as distinct from legalism has been of rising importance in the practice of the higher courts and in theories of jurisprudence. (7) Bureaucratic neutrality The expansion of governmental activities in the United States has led to relatively severe limitations upon the civic activity of public employees. Such restrictions have been justified as essential to an efficient and nonpartisan civil service, and to an electoral process free of coercion. As security considerations become more important, measures have been adopted for the declared purpose of guaranteeing the patriotism of public employees. To what extent is an atmosphere of intimidation created in which an ever enlarging fraction o f the body politic withdraws from participating in the principal civic choices of policy and personnel? (cc) Governmental barriers to the free flow o f information,25 (8) Militarization and official secrecy. Since the end of World War II a continuing sense of crisis in matters relating to national security has led to an unprecedented expansion of the role of government. The government performs acts of great importance, and screens many o f them as official secrets (e.g., the closed sessions of

25T h is title w a s a ls o a d d e d b y S ch u tz.

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Congressional committees). To what extent has this contributed to the sense that informed political judgments are impossible? What are the effects of the image of the superior knowledge supplied by official intelligence services versus the counter-image of their ineptitude? Have many citizens voluntarily withdrawn from public life because they were dissatisfied with the available sources of information? Has a “vacuum” (created by such “privatization”) favored the rise of unscrupulous and hysterical opinion leaders? Have anxieties bred of continuing crisis in an ideologically divided world favored the survival in public life of relatively demagogic leaders and the eclipse of men of moderate and critical judgment? Has preoccupation with national security greatly increased the inclination of the general public to rely upon military rather than civilian opinion concerning all the major policies most important for the body politic? (9) Official censorship and propaganda. In this connection we refer to the censoring of private sources and channels of information chiefly (though not exclusively) in the name of national security, together with the positive management of opinion by the timing of official addresses, press conferences, leaks, and the like. Is the lack of discipline within government such that few effective limitations are imposed upon the information available to the public at large or to the diversity of policy recommendations that succeed in getting general attention? Are demands for “open diplomacy” and spot news so strong that official secrecy, censorship, and propaganda are nullified? Are restrictions in the name of blasphemy, obscenity, respect for reputation, and public harmony on the increase? (10) Comprehensibility of public reports An informed citizen must receive information in a style that presents the relevant content in a comprehensible and concise fashion. Public reporting of the national budget, or of the relationship between public purpose and performance, leaves much to be desired. There is failure to clarify goals, trends, conditions, prospective developments, and the probable outcome of alternative policies. No doubt, as said before, this mode of reporting is encouraged by the dispersion of responsibility resulting from the separation of powers. It is also fostered by ideological barriers against comprehensive

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planning, and ideological support relying entirely on a balancing process whose automatic operation is expected to devise and discover the goals of common action. The “invisible hand” is supposed to achieve the common good with no advance connection with a central goal-setting intelligence. (There are grounds for saying that the expansion of government is altering this outlook and that we are in a transition toward more planning and appraisal in comprehensive perspectives, and toward more comprehensible modes of public reporting.) (b) Political Parties: the two party system At the national level the party structure operates as a two-channel system, even though at the State and local level it often falls into another pattern, and acts as a one-party system or dissolves into so many shifting nonpartisan alignments that it ceases to function according to the traditional conception of a party structure. In general a premium is put upon discovering formulas that obliterate rather than define issues of policy. The highest rewards go to persons who perform this unifying role and become adept in appealing to marginal groups in the other party or to noncommitted groups while retaining the confidence of their own party. On major matters agreement is emphasized while the issue is joined on administrative efficiency and integrity, upon personal congeniality, and immediate and narrow combina­ tions of interest. The system operates to soften national differences on questions that relate to fundamental ideology or to the structure of govern­ ment and society. At the same time it adapts to social tensions in their early stages (unless the tension arises from expecially rapid and novel factors). Individuals who are primarily preoccupied with their conception of the public good often find other than party channels gratifying, until they have achieved a position that makes them eligible to receive the nomination of a party for a top position. Attention to public affairs is presumably fostered by the drama of the campaign; but in an era of rapid communication, may not the campaign be relatively redundant? (c) Pressure organizations. It is not far wide of the mark to recognize that the pressure system of organizations specialized to political influence is the most distinctive institutional development of the twentieth century in bodies politic where

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popular government prevails. The political party came in the nineteenth century with the expansion of the suffrage. As usual with new institutions the rules for the pressure network are not yet generally agreed upon. The component organizations range all the way from the cultivation of narrow and immediate interest to the pursuit of inclusive conceptions of public good. The latter organizations have been sufficiently effective, and it is probable that they will be effective enough to sustain the motivation of large memberships. The shifting coalitions entered into by these associations contribute to the disclosure of information to the community at large, as well as to the multiplication of comment and interpretation. Given the diversity of the groupings involved and the variability of coalition alignments, it is likely that the net effect of the pressure system is to disclose more informa­ tion than is withheld and to disseminate more alternatives of policy than are suppressed. (d) Mass media. (1) Degree of concentration. The concentration of media control has been favored by technical developments in the fields of television, radio, and print. Since revenues depend largely upon advertising, and the purpose of advertising is to activate a mass market, the media have strong incentives to avoid anything likely to alienate potential customers. Controversial and nonconformist opinions are in this category. Nonconformist opinions are played down or denied access to the media. Controversial opinions, on the other hand, are circulated under various explicit and tacit rules. An opinion ceases to be nonconformist and becomes controversial when it is championed by established public figures, political parties, pressure organizations, and the like. The controllers of the media tend to de-emphasize their own opinions, but to adhere to a policy of “fair play” (of balanced presentation of controversial positions). Since the rewards of providing enjoyment are high, the mass media provide entertain­ ment on a vast scale that continually tends to drive out “serious” matter. But there is ground for recognizing a cyclical process that results in making the controversial interesting after a period of neglect. Such self-correcting tendencies within the system result from time to time in large quantitative coverage of public issues: coverage is regular in channels that cater to the politically alert sector of the audience.

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(2) Public images. The mass media exercise a particularly profound effect upon the traditional images that prevail at any given time among Americans. To a very large extent these images are unpremeditated even though they may be deeply affected by the diverse attempts of groups and individuals to determine their pattern. The images are affected by the artistic conceptions of those who specialize in the arts and skills of communication. The media are continuously re-editing the prevailing image of the United States, of other countries, o f the future of the world, of the past and present; and the media affect one’s working conceptions of who is worth listening to on any topic. The media tend to personalize abstractions, and to make abstractions of individual traits. Thus the man of fervent gesture and florid speech becomes an object of ridicule. Is there a tendency for the man of conviction to be imaged as a crackpot or a pretentious intellectual or an uneducated haranguer? Do the images made available to young and old present in an affirmative style the person who seeks seriously to exercise social and civic judgment? (3) Invasion of privacy The mass media are continually seeking new sources of general appeal. We have indicated before that official secrets are not only disclosed by officials in order to mold public response, but that they are found and disseminated by the press. At this point we emphasize another consequence of the barrier-penetrating proclivity of the media. Individual privacy is continually being invaded. Does this break down the respect for individuality which is one of the main components of our conception of the public good? Is this part of the “vulgarization” [inseparable] from mass appeal? (e) Economic institutions. The concentration currents in the corporate life of the country result in multiplying the incentive to conformist and nonconformist expressions of opinion. Advancement within and among the private hierarchies of business goes to persons who are skilled in the arts of consent. This is true of the administrator who is concerned with a smoothly functioning machine, the

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salesman, the arbitrator-conciliator-mediator, the negotiator, and similar role takers. Recently, a labor leadership has developed under conditions of general acceptance. Yet the members of many unions are expected to conform to the code of acquiescence that grew up in the days of acute industrial conflict. Nonconformism and controversiality are discouraged. We do not overlook the fact that planning procedures are better developed in large scale and concentrated organizations, and that must information is mobilized and evaluated in terms of long and middle-range objectives and the probable outcomes resulting from alternative policies. Both public and private agencies are encouraged to enlarge the scope of their contributions to intelligence and appraisal functions. Alongside the bureaucratizing tendencies that operate within the economic system, there are opportunities for meteoric advancement on the basis of speculative gain. In recent times we have witnessed the rise in some areas of a newly rich group that displays the ruthless arrogance and parochialism that has so often been seen under similar circumstances in the past. The growth of leisure is creating an unparalleled opportunity for individuality and for the cultivation of social and civic judgment. (f) Educational institutions. (1) History and the social sciences. There are grounds for asserting that the educational institutions of this country fail to supply the student with a comprehensive factual picture of the place of this country in the flow of world developments either in the Western European community or in the globe as a whole. Hence the self-image of Americans is thin in temporal and spatial perspective. From this sparsity spring many results that influence the flow of information and the working conceptions of social and civic judgment. (2) The expression of opinion. Does the educational system encourage the serious pursuit of informed opinion? Does it reward seriously meant expressions of nonconformist and controversial views? Do teachers provide models worth emulating in these matters?

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(g) Family and friendship institutions. There is much evidence that the families of lower class status in the United States do not draw their children into an active posture toward public affairs. The growth of leisure and of an assured income basis for family life creates conditions that favor the modifications o f this result. (h) Religious institutions. To what extent is the “social gospel” taken seriously by those who proclaim it or who are exposed to it in sermons, church, schools, auxiliaries? (i) Professional standard-setting groups. We are giving special prominence to the professions with a tradition of public service. To what extent do the formative experiences and the subsequent practices of these fields contribute to sound social and civic judgment? We refer especially to law, medicine, and the sciences. (4) A check list of barriers in industrializing and modernizing societies.26 Although the cultures of nonindustrial societies vary widely from one another, it is common to encounter several recurring patterns. At the village level decisions have in fact often been in the hands of a few leaders of kinship or ceremonial groupings. Modernization calls for a new outlook on the part of local leaders, and to some extent this involves the growth of new leaders. How can acceptance be gained for a new set of perspectives—and often of personnel— without precipitating costly human conflict between the old order and the new? How can the map of the social reality be modernized and related to the structure of official and unofficial organizations at the provincial and national level? (There are indications that old ideologies can be redefined in ways that facilitate rather than retard the transformation of such societies.) At the national level one of the most difficult problems turns on the degree of coercion to be used in influencing the tempo of capital formation or inflow. Since the tempo is greatly affected by the capacity to absorb information, a major opportunity lies in the use o f modem instru­

26On a prior draft, Schutz crossed out the title, “e. The Sharing o f Power” here.

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ments of effective communication for the purpose of sharing with the whole community, as broadly as possible, a map equivalent in broad outline to the intellectual map of the national leadership. It is clear that democratic ideals are frequently discredited by the disenchantment that follows the rather abrupt introduction of some o f the practices connected with popular government in the West. There is not much doubt that the results of relatively gradual innovation are less vulnerable to disappointment than quick change. Where outside political interference is a threat, the “appearance” of democracy may be an essential step toward its effective fulfillment (fostering the consent necessary to bring about alterations in the social context that strengthen popular institutions). We are especially concerned with problems that arise in the policies of the United States in its effort to encourage sound social and civic judgment in industrializing and modernizing countries. (5) Ethical problems. The working definitions of “social and civic judgment” with which we began raise normative issues that the conference may desire to consider. If the discussion moves toward general ethical theory, [more of these] issues will eventually reappear. If the discussion centers upon some of the relatively concrete problems of our society at this historical phase of development, the conference may focus upon one or more major barriers and undertake to formulate rather detailed and helpful guides to the conduct of modem man. It will be noted that we have formulated principles of two types: (a) principles of subject matter (content of social and ethical judgment) and (b) principles of the procedure by which the principles of content can be applied in concrete circumstances. An instance of the former is the statement that the citizens of a democratic society should recognize their responsibility for contributing to the common good. An instance of the latter is the statement that they should seek pertinent information. The working definitions are phrased in reference to the choices confront­ ing the ordinary citizen in the performance of his civic functions. (It is the assignment of another committee [of this institute] to examine the role of leaders.) The procedural proposals can be executed by the citizen acting by himself (as when he is thinking about a civic question) or in direct inter­ course with others. For instance, we speak of the context in which each issue

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needs to be considered (as in paragraph f). We think that each phase of a problem as worthy of separate attention, and speak of the order of consider­ ation as constituting a procedure. (The point is not to propose an invariable order but to make sure that the consideration of each problem includes every approach.) Acting by himself the citizen can follow this contextual mode of thought. Note further that the same approach is applicable to the delibera­ tions of a group. The ordinary citizen has the possibility of joining with others in attempting to consider the normative grounds o f his goals, as well as available information and estimates of the future relevant to making an assessment of alternatives. As we emphasized in our examination of barriers, the ordinary citizen has little “two way” intercourse with individuals employing the mass media, or acting as officials or members of large organizations. The radio-TV commentator comes into the parlor but he is not an intimate object in the sense that a neighbor is an intimate; nor is he reachable by the immediate replies or questions of his isolated viewer. The individual viewer can write a letter or use the phone, or in more rare cases, visit the studio; but this is a less intensive mode of social intercourse than can prevail among neighbors. The conference may decide to formulate principles to guide the judgment of citizens who are playing the roles indicated: (a) private consideration; (b) interaction in face-to-face situations; and (c) interaction in reference to socially distant figures. In this connection we may note a possible relevance to the work of our conference (especially to the long run activities of The Institute on Ethics). If our goal is to influence other persons than those who are in immediate attendance, and if our chosen method is some form or forms of communica­ tion, we have the task of evaluating the procedures available to us for conducting the preparation of our eventual communication in the most efficacious manner. The direction o f our work will depend largely upon decisions to be made by the Institute as a whole. The Conference might develop proposals for the removal of unapproved barriers upon information and upon social and civic judgment. These proposals would be addressed to leaders as well as citizens in their ordinary roles. Here, too, the objectives of the Conference and the Institute will need to be clarified as part of the whole program.

Text IV Letter of Alfred Schutz to Clarence H. Faust, The Fund for the Advancement of Education27 December 10, 1957 Dear Dr. Faust: On the occasion of my last visit to your office I told you of a certain idea which had occurred to me when I studied the Woodring Report prepared under the sponsorship of the Fund for the Advancement of Education. You were good enough to invite me to outline my idea in the form o f a personal letter to you. This I am doing herewith—before having consulted with the Administration and Faculty of our School. However, I did have the benefit of certain discussions on this topic with Professor Maclver and some of my colleagues who are familiar with this matter. I am glad to say that my suggestions met with their interest and that I found much encouragement to elaborate on them. The Woodring Report deals in an excellent way with the highly important question [of] how teaching on the grammar school and on the high school level could be improved. It seems to me that not only the analysis of the actual situation, but also the various pilot projects outlined in the Report will meet with general approval. There is, however, a particular field the Report does not deal with and in which I believe the Graduate Faculty of our School could make a significant contribution. This is the educational field in grammar school and high school teaching which is generally known as that of “Social Studies.” Being familiar with your own way of thinking, I am sure you will agree that not only the future of this country, but the survival of democracy and of the Western way of life will depend upon the task of educating the young generation to become good citizens and to understand the meaning of the social heritage we want to hand down to them. This important tasks seems to be pushed into the background by the present demand for the development

27E ditor's Note: For the context and significance o f this text, see the above Introduction, especially pp. 279f. L ester E m b ree (e d .) Schutzian Social Science, 31 3-3 18 . 1999 K luw er A c ad e m ic P u b lish e rs. P rin ted in th e N e th erla n d s. © T h e S c h u tz F am ily .

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of scientists, engineers, and technicians, a demand which is perfectly justified as long as we consider education a kind of weapon in the struggle for survival. But science and technology can determine only the means, not the ends for which they should be used. It is the means which may help us to find our bearings in the world and, if successful, to dominate nature and society. It is, however, the ideas which make us understand the world and which guide us in the selection of the way of life which the means furnished by science and technology should be used to bring about. Ideas in this sense are the product of slow developments in the course of the history of a particular culture or civilization. Those who live within such a particular cultural environment are inclined to take its values for granted. They believe [they] understand the guiding ideas if they know how the institutions work in which these ideas as actualized and very frequently ossified. To know that democracy is a government by the people, for the people, and of the people, to understand the three branches of government, to study how the laws are made in our country— all this, of course, is an indispensable and highly useful preliminary condition for becoming a good citizen. But mere knowledge of the institutions does not give full understand­ ing of the underlying values and the reasons why they are worthwhile to be defended. I have taken my example from the realm of political institutions. The same reasoning holds good for the economic field, that of social relationships in all their forms, and, last but not least, the questions of ethics and even religion upon which all the others depend. If this brief analysis is correct, an ideal program of Social Studies designed to transmit our cultural heritage to children and young persons should have the goal to make them understand the world they live in and the way of life to which they will have to make their contribution. This has to be done not only by studying textbooks, but by continuous inquiry and reexamination on the part of the student in the form of discussions, debates, etc. Most certainly this is being done in our country and it is one of the most gratifying aspects of the American education that children are encouraged at a very early age to participate in the life of the nation by discussing freely the major problems connected with daily events and to try to formulate sensible and well-founded opinions on these issues. I well remember the student regulations at the Austrian “Gymnasium” where I studied under the Hapsburg Monarchy: students up to the age of 18 years who engaged in any

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kind of political discussion were threatened with immediate expulsion. On the other hand, I had the good fortune o f watching how my own children, who were educated at American schools, enjoyed full freedom of opinion, and were guided to good democratic citizenship not by authoritarian dogmas, but by unfolding the faculties of their judgment. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that the so-called “Social Studies” in the New York grammar schools and high schools are mainly concerned with explaining the institutions of our country and not sufficiently with the values of our culture. In particular, these “Social Studies” do not lead to the insight that our culture, in spite of its diversification, is a field unified by some guiding ideas which manifest themselves not only in the political, but also in the economic and social structure of our way of life. This, if I am not mistaken, is also the impression of Professor Maclver who conducted, as an experiment, a course in social Studies in a New York junior high school during two terms. As could be foreseen by everyone familiar with Professor Maclver's approach to the study of the social world, he made his young audiences understand the central values of the democratic form of life in terms of which the particular institutions become meaningful. Professor Maclver, who graciously put at my disposal some material which was the outcome of this course, told me of the magnificent response of the students. To be sure, we cannot expect a teacher o f “Social Studies” in grammar school or high school to have the wisdom and the pedagogical talent of a Professor Maclver. But much can be done to give teachers of Social Studies on this level a better background as far as their own understanding of our social world is concerned. In making this statement I am guided by my conviction that a good teacher has to know more than what he is teaching. Only by a deeper understanding of the subject matter than the one he is supposed to transmit to his students can he convey to them a part of his own insights; only by knowing the context in which a problem stands can he analyze the problem itself appropriately; only by feeling the penumbras which surround any issue in human affairs can he bring this issue to full clarity. Most certainly, many institutions are training teachers in an excellent way for their job of conducting courses in “Social Studies.” Everyone has to recognize the merits and the efficiency of these endeavors. The Teachers Colleges, especially those attached to major universities, have established training programs which stress courses for teachers in the subject fields

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including the social sciences. Some of these Teachers Colleges attached to universities turn to the Liberal Arts Departments of their own institutions for courses in the social sciences for their students training to become teachers. Others have developed their own courses in subject fields such as Sociology, Economics, and the like. There are excellent textbooks, not only on what to teach in “Social Studies,” but also how to teach it. As far as I am informed, the Board of Education has established courses in methods, procedures, and what is called philosophy of education, including questions of the social sciences, in the City of New York. Under these circumstances, what contribution could the Graduate Faculty of the New School make in this field? Let me start with an enumeration of the few things a program for teachers of Social Studies in grammar schools and high schools should and could not cover: (1) Time should not be spent here in telling the teachers what to teach, nor how to teach it; for training of this kind, the Teachers Colleges are far more competent; (2) Time should not be spent here in learning to conduct a classroom discussion or debate. What the Graduate Faculty can and should contribute is to give teachers and teachers in training an opportunity to acquire an understanding of the basic ideas constituting our social heritage, their historical development, their compatibility or incompatibility with ideas of foreign cultures, their manifestations in any department of our social world, the interconnectedness of these departments, and, first of all, their meaning and significance. A program of this kind conducted on the graduate level would not aim at a specialization of knowledge in a particular field of the social sciences. It would not have the goal to achieve full theoretical training in, let us say, modem economics or sociology. It would, however, have to make clear to what extent political democracy, as we understand it, is connected with the idea of an economic system of free market competition, with the role of trade unions in this economic system, with the question of equality of opportunity and the problem of desegregation, with the particular forms of class structure in a democracy as well as with the philosophical issues of human dignity and freedom. Such a program would not have the primary aim to offer informa­ tion about the institutions of our political, economic, and social life— good textbooks fulfill this purpose— , but to reveal the meaning of these institu­ tions. It is the insight into this meaning which transforms information into knowledge. If such a program succeeds, it can be hoped that future teachers will be able to show their students something which is perhaps more important than

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the transmission of information: that is a glimpse at the meaning of the life with which the new generation will have to come to terms. Why is the Graduate Faculty especially equipped to carry out such a program? It is a principle of the Graduate Faculty to teach the social sciences not in a departmentalized, specializing way, but as a unified field. Our departments are merely administrative units. Our pedagogical goal has always been to give the students a broad understanding of the facts, not just a catalog o f them. In our opinion, the issues in social life as well as in the social sciences refer necessarily to the great philosophical issues of mankind. I feel, therefore, that our Graduate Faculty is uniquely qualified to give the social sciences that kind of dynamic and functional significance which will inspire those who have to teach the social sciences to children and high school students. A practical point of view ought to be mentioned: Nearly all courses and seminars at the Graduate Faculty are given in the evening hours, which would enable teachers or teachers in training to attend these courses without interrupting their regular activities. As mentioned at the beginning of this letter, I wanted to bring before you just the general principles of my ideas. If you find them worthwhile being followed up upon, I would have to discuss with the Administration and Faculty the ways and means by which such a program could be translated into actuality. Most certainly many of the courses regularly offered may fit this program; additional ones would probably have to be organized. It is not up to me to formulate an opinion whether perhaps teachers attending this program should be granted a particular degree or a kind of diploma. Neither is it up to me to tell which other incentives would have to be offered to teachers or teachers in training in order to interest them in participating in such a program. We have reason to believe that teachers are rather reluctant to take further education as far as subject matter is concerned unless such a training will lead to an increment in their salaries. Still less am I in a position to estimate the cost of such a program to the Graduate Faculty. But it is my feeling that highly important results can be achieved with a comparatively small investment. I shall highly appreciate your advice on whether you think the whole idea worthwhile to be submitted by me to the Administration and the Faculty, and whether you feel that I should encourage them to submit a detailed application to the Fund for the Advancement of Education.

318

SCHUTZ

Availing myself of your kind permission, I shall call you up in about two weeks in order to ask for another appointment. With kindest personal regards, I am, Very sincerely yours, ALFRED SCHUTZ

Notes on Contributors Michael Barber (Ph.D., Yale University, 1985) is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Louis University. He is author of numerous articles and four books: Social Typifications and the Elusive Other (1988), Guardian o f Dialogue (1993), Ethical Hermeneutics (forthcoming), and Equality and Alterity (forthcoming)-. His current interests are the phenomenology of the social world, ethics, and various forms of discrimination. Daniel Cefa'i (Ph.D., Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1989) is Maitre de Conferences of Social Sciences at the University of Paris. He is author of Phenomenologie et sciences sociales. Alfred Schutz: naissance d ’une anthropologie philosophique (Geneve: Droz, 1997). His current interests are in epistemology and methodology of qualitative sociology, anthropology, and the micro-sociology of political cultures. Richard M. Ebeling (M.A., Rutgers University, 1980) is the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan since 1988. He is also vice-president for academic affairs for The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia. He has written several articles applying Alfred Schutz’s concept of the ideal type for analyzing the nature and process of market coordination. He has also edited fifteen books, among the most recent are: The Case fo r Free Trade and Open Immigration (1995); American Perestroika: The Demise o f the Welfare State (1995); The Future o f American Business (1996); The Failure o f America’s Foreign Wars (1996); Between Power and Liberty: Economics and the Law (1997); and The Age o f the Economist: From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman (1998). He is presently working on an intellectual biography of the Austrian Economist, Ludwig von Mises and a history of the Austrian School of Economics. Lester Embree (Ph.D., New School for Social Research, 1972) is William F. Dietrich Eminent Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University and President of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomen­ ology, Inc. He has authored, translated, and edited a number of books and articles chiefly in constitutive phenomenology. His current interests are in the history and philosophy of science (cultural sciences specifically, archeology in particular), technology, and environmentalism.

320

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Hwa Yol Jung (Ph.D., University of Florida, 1962) is Professor of Political Science at Moravian College. He studied phenomenology and existential philosophy with John Wild at Northwestern and Yale. He has writtten in the areas of political philosophy, comparative philosophy, ecophilosophy, literary theory, and postmodernism in addition to phenomenology, existential philosophy, and hermeneutics. His most recent book is Rethinking Political Theory (Athens, OH), and he is currently engaged in multi-volume work on camal hermeneutics/body politics. Fred Kersten (Ph.D. Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, 1964) is Frankenthal Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He translated Husserl’s Ideas, First Book, and other books and essays of Husserl, Aron Gurwitsch, and Alfred Schutz. With George Psathas and Helmut Wagner, he edited and co-translated Alfred Schutz’s Collected Papers, Vol. IV. He is author of Phenomenological Method: Theory and Practice and, most recently, Galileo and the "Invention " o f Opera. A Study in the Phenomenology o f Consicousness. He has published numerous essays in the field of transcendental phenomenology dealing with the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Schutz, and Gurwitsch. He is currently working on several books, Essays on Phenomenological Subjects, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Metaphysics, The Philosophy o f Aron Gurwitsch, and a novel, The Last Free Lunch. Hisashi Nasu is Professor of Sociology at Waseda University in Tokyo. He is the author of Genshogaku-teki Shakaigaku eno Michi (The Way to Phenomenological Sociology, 1997), editor of Kuronikuru Shakaigaku {Sociological Theory in Chronology, 1997), co-editor of Kiki to Saisei no Shakai-riron (Social Theory in Crisis and Regeneration, 1993), Josei-tachi no Seikatsu-sha Unodo ( Women’s Grassroots Movement fo r an Alternative Life, 1995), and co-translator into Japanese of Alfred Schutz’s Collected Papers and Reflections o f the Problem o f Relevance. He has authored numerous articles on the work of Schutz, Weber, and on grassroots movements. Tom Nenon (Ph.D., Freiburg, 1983) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Memphis. He co-edited with H.-R. Sepp volumes XXV and XXVII of the Husserliana; is the author

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

321

of Objektivitat und endliche Erkenntnis, as well as numerous articles on Dilthey, Gadamer, Heidegger, Husserl, and Kant. His current research interests include questions of personhood and subjectivity, especially in Husserlian phenomenology, and issues in the philosophy of the social sciences. George Psathas (Ph.D., Yale University, 1956) is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Boston University, where he has taught since 1968 and served as Chairman and Associate Chairman of the Department. His most recent works are Conversation Analysis: The Study o f Talk in Interaction (1995), Situated Order (1995) co-edited with Paul ten Have, Interaction Competence (1990), an edited collection of papers on interaction analysis, and Phenom­ enology and Sociology: Theory and Research (1989). He is founder and editor-in-chief (since 1978) of the international quarterly journal, Human Studies: A Journal fo r Philosophy and the Social Sciences. His areas of interest include qualitative research methods, interaction and conversation analysis, ethnomethodology and phenomenological sociology. Ilja Srubar (Ph.D., Frankfurt/M., 1974) is Professor of Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His main interests are in the fields of “phenomenological” sociology, sociological theory, the sociology of knowledge, and the history of sociology. He is editor o f Alfred Schutz’s Theorie der Lebensformen (Frankfurt/M.), co-author with Helmut Wagner of A Bergsonian Bridge to Phenomenological Psychology (Washington, D.C., 1984), and author of Kosmion. Die Genese der pragmatischen Lebenswelttheorie von Alfred Schutz und ihr anthropologischer Hintergrund (Frankfurt, 1988). He is one of the co-editors of the Jahrbuch fu r Soziologiegeschichte and the co-editor of Alfred Schutz- Werkausgabe (forthcoming) as well as of the German edition of the Selected Papers o f Jan Patoc&a (Stuttgart, 1987-1991). Benno Werlen is Professor of Social Geography at Friedrich-SchillerUniversitat Jena. His theoretical interests focus on the conceptualization of action-centered social geography, based on Schutzian phenomenology. The main fields of interests are the ‘everyday-geographies of power,’ ‘informa­ tion’ and ‘symbolic appropriation’ under globalized conditions and the ‘geographies of children’. He has widely published on these topics and is the author of Gesellschaft, Handlung und Raum (Stuttgart, 1987), Society,

322

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Action and Space. An Alternative Human Geography (London, 1993), Zur Ontologie von gesellschaft und Raum (Stuttgart, 1995), Globalisierung, Region und Regionalisierung (Stuttgart, 1997), Sozialgeographie (Bern, 1999) and the editor of Kulturen und Raum (Zurich, 1995), Geographien des Alltags-Empirische Befunde (Stuttgart, 1999). Yu, Chung-Chi (Ph.D., Bochum, 1996) is Associate Professor of Philoso­ phy at Tamkang University on Taiwan. He has published articles on topics in phenomenology of religion. His ongoing research project is a study of Schutz’s reading of Husserl’s phenomenology and the methodological foundation of the study of religions.

Index of Names and Topics Abeles, Marc, 136 Action, 5, 34, 49, 54, 61, 63, 66, 67, 94, 118, 121, 127, 128, 129, 131, 133, 141, 190, 281 Adam, Thomas R., 248 Adequacy, 49, 50, 58ff, 62 Aeschylus, 219 African-Americans, 232 Age groups, 254 Altizer, Thomas J.J., 217, 218 Amano, Masako, 85 American culture, 280 Americanization, 243 Analyst, 267, 293 Anamnesis, 215, 227 Anderson, Marian, 257 Anonymity, 98, 99, 129 Aposteriori, 175 Apperception, 166 Applied phenomenology, 108 Appresentation, 140, 154 Appresentative references, 140, 141, 150, 156 Apriori, 175, 182, 185 Aquinas, Thomas, 28, 193 Arendt, Hannah, 25, 28, 138, 145 Aristotle, 25ff., 32ff., 193, 195, 210, 211,220, 222ff. Articulation, 3Off., 35, 40 A spernatio rationis, 216 Assimilation, 257, 263 Associative integration, 28 Austin, John L., 35 Austrian economists, 117-134 passim Austrian school, research problems, 115 passim Authority, 193ff., 211,267, 273, 301, Averroistic, 225 Bakunin, Michael, 210 Bales, Robert F., 81 Barriers (to equality o f opportunity), 2 4 Iff., 245ff., 249ff., 257ff„ 266ff.,

277ff., 287ff., 288ff. Bartels, Dietrich, 4 Bateson, Gregory, 124 Beck, Ulrich, 14 Becker, G., 120, Bellier, Irene, 136 Benford, R., 138, 147, 155 Berger, Brigitte, 70 Berger, Peter L„ 72ff. Bergson, Henri, 90, 93, 103, 105, 174, 181 Berry, Brian, 4 Bilateral monopoly, 130 Bios politikos, 26 Bird, John, 4 Blood and soil rhetoric, 21 Blumer, Herbert, 137, 152 Body, 4ff., 95, 103-109 passim Boltanski, Luc, 136 Bourdieu, Pierre, 147, 149 Brown, Martha Steffy, 117 Buber, Martin, 96 Bunge, William, 4 Burawoy, Michael, 147 Bureaucratic neutrality, 272, 303 Burke, Kenneth, 153, 155 Button, Graham, 49, 67, 68 Cairns, Dorion, 199 Campanella, Thomas, 201 Category, 190, 194, 203, 306 Censorship, 304 Centralization, 300 Certeau, Michel de, 149 Choice, 73, 74, 85, 117, 123ff., 242, 248, 251ff., 265, 277, 285 Christianity, 222, 225 Cicero, 195, 210 Cicourel, Aaron, 142, 143 Citizen, 135ff., 144 passim , 187, 195, 210, 237, 238, 250 passim Citizenship, 242, 260, 315 Claesges, Ulrich, 18, 172

324 Clark, John Bates, 116 Coase, R.H., 134 Cognitive style, 72ff., 80, Cohen, Jean L., 138 Cohen, Person D., 239 Cold war, 238, 274 Collective behavior, 137 Collins, Randall, 142 Commentator, 256, 266, 292, 293, 311 Common sense, 47, 50, 5 4 n ll, 98, 99, 102, 112 Communal integration, 28 Communalization, 191, 194ff., 208, 210 Communication, 37, 38, 43, 242, 245, 249, 256, 268, 284, 292, 305ff. Communicative objectification, 33 Competence, 52, 58ff. Competition, 41, 116, 121, 127, 130 Conditio humana, 26, 32, 35 37, 40 Cone, Edward T., 139 Conflicts, 43 Conformism, 308 Consciousness, 188ff., 196,199, 206, 211

Consociates, (as Umwelt), 91, 95, 97 Consocii, 270, 285 Constitution theory o f the lifeworld, 36 Constructs, 75 Contemporaries, (as M itwelt ), 91, 95, 270 Contingency, 202 Cosmion, 30 Coulter, Jeff, 57 Cowan, R.M., 122 Creativity, 126 Critical attitude, 298 Cultural difference, 159-172 passim sciences, 189, 191, 199, 205, 209

INDEX Davis, Philip, 137 Decision making, 132, 269, 276, 283, 290 ex post, 124 ex ante, 124 Defining power, 25, 27, 34, 39, 44ff. Definition o f group, 237, 243, 246 Democracy, 256, 268, 310, 313, 316 Descartes, 217, 224, 225, 227 Dewey, John, 88, 137 Differentiation, 26, 28, 32, 35, 41 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 191, 206, 207 Discursive genesis, 44 Disenchantment, 87ff., 110 Division o f labor, 120, 132 Don Quixote, 104 Doxa, 220 Dramaturgical stage, 145ff., 150, 152 Dreaming, 77 Duty, 255, 267, 275,291 Ebeling, Richard, 116,118,119,122, 123, 130, 134 Economics, 22, 115-134/?ay5Wi, 185, 208,210 institutions, 272, 307 Edelman, Murray, 147 Education, 235ff., 250ff, 264ff„ 268, 271, 275, 285, 294, 300, 308, 313ff. Egalitarianism, 242 Eidetic ( eidos, eide), 24, 73, 175, 178, 179, 182, 183, 186, 187-195 passim , 197, 199 Eisenhower, Dwight, 238 Elliptical expressions, 65 Embree, Lester, 6, 66, 69, 76, 80 Empirical research, 173-180 passim science, 54,173-180 passim , 195, 210 Episteme, 220

Entrepreneurship, 126, 133

119,

121,

123,

INDEX Epoche, 82, 92

Equality (of opportunity), 232ff., 235, 239, 242 (aimed-at), 255 (real) 255 (to-be-granted) 255 Eschaton, 216, 221,228 Essence, 184, 188, 193, 197ff. Ethics, 90, 102, 107ff., 112, 212, 220ff., 236, 243, 249, 254, 266 275ff., 278, 29 7 ,3 1 1 ,3 1 4 Ethnic group, 237, 258 Ethnic pluralism, 258 Ethnocentric, 33 Ethnomethodology, 49, 50, 53, 54f, 57, 60-68 passim Everyday life, 25, 27, 34, 45, 47-66 passim , 92, 98, 106, 160, 163, 171, 17, 180, 184 Exclusion, 37-44 passim Existential groups, 257 Expert, 250-260 passim , 284, 291, 301 Explanation, 50, 63, 66 and political consequences, 8 Eye witness, 256, 266, 292, 293ff. Face-to-face, 75, 79, 82, 128, 130 Fact, 71-83 passim , 175ff., 185 Familiarity, 32, 37, 41 Family, 242, 257, 271, 287, 309, 313 Faust, Clarence, 238ff., 246, 250, 271, 281, 313ff. Feuerbach, Ludwig, 111 Feyerabend, Paul, 101 Finite province(s) o f meaning, 78, 80, 84 Finkelstein, Louis, 239, 244, 246, 259, 281 Fireman, Bruce, 148, 153 Formability o f o f human world, 37 Formal ontology, 190, 191 Foster, E. Durwood, 238, 241 Foundation, 173-186 passim Fragmentation (o f knowledge), 238

325 Frame alignment, 138, 155 Framing activity, 139, 151 Frankel, Charles, 264, 265 Frankel, S.H., 133 Freedom o f decision, 276, 283 French revolution, 219 Friend-foe relationship, 33, 34, 38, 4 Iff., 44 Fukuyama, F., 133 Futurity, 125 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 90 Gamson, William, 136, 140, 148, 150, 153 Gans, Herbert, 152 Garfinkel, Harold, 47-70 passim , 143, 145 Garment o f idea, 72 Gender, 282 Generational difference, 265 Genesis, 78 Geography, 19ff. Gierke, Otto, 198 Giddens, Anthony, 10ff., 19 Giroud, Vincent, 236 Gitlin, Todd, 152 Globalization, llff., 16 Gnosticism, 216, 224,228,231 God, 215, 217 Goffman, Erving, 139, 140ff., 145, 153 Govemmentalization, 300 Graduate Faculty o f the New School, 2 5 1 ,2 7 9 ,2 8 0 ,3 1 3 ,3 1 6 ,3 1 7 Grassroots movement, 85 Grathoff, Richard, 70, 71, 76, 140, 144 Greenberg, Moshe, 239 Gregory, Derek, 5 Group membership, 39 Gurwitsch, Aron, 76, 140, 195, 206, 211,235, 239, 279 Gusfield, Joseph, 137, 147

326 Haberler, Gottfried, 117 Habermas, Jurgen, 17, 35, 44, 146 Haecceities, 50-55 passim , 60 Hanson, Norwood R., 101 Hart, H.L.A., 146 Harvey, David, 16 Hayek, Friedrich von, 115, 116, 117, 120, 130 Hegel, Georg, 110, 111,217 Heidegger, Martin, 5, 96, 97, 104, 105, 109, 111 Helen o f Troy, 215 Henderson, Lawrence J., 71 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 14 Here and Now, 75, 76, 83 Heritage, John, 51 ,5 2 Herodotus, 215 Hesse, Mary, 101 Hettners, Alfred, 3 Higher education, 238, 252 History (historicality), 196, 199-206 passim

Homer, 215 Horizon, 73, 76, 79, 83, 84,226, 230, 233 Human behavior, 35 Hunt, S., 147 Huntington, Samuel P., 44 Husserl, 6, 17, 29, 36, 38, 51, 69, 71, 74, 76, 79, 86, 88, 90ff., 97, 100, 106, 109, 111, 140, 159, 162, 164, 165ff„ 172, 174ff„ 181, 183, 188, 189,190,193, 196ff, 200, 202, 207, 209, 210, 213, 218, 219, 224ff., 227ff. Ideal objects, 181, 197, 199, 200, 202, 207 Ideal types, 51, 115, 127, 129, 132, 173, 183, 184ff. Ideation, 200 Identity, 14 Ideology, 137, 138,253, 305

INDEX Imber, Jonathan B., 260 Imagination, 125, 197 Inclusion, 37-44 passim Indexical, 65 In-group, 249, 256, 266, 277 Insider, 250, 254, 256,262, 266,267, 268, 292, 293 Institution, 239, 251, 260, 265, 268, 270, 273, 289, 294, 299, 305, 307, 3 0 8 ,3 1 0 ,3 1 4 ,3 1 6 Institutional structures o f meaning, 128 Intentionality, 115, 130, 164 Interbeing, 94 Intercorporeality, 90, 102, 106 Interpretation, 47, 49, 57, 71, 73, 75ff., 80, 95,99, 111, 121, 123, 159, 168, 170, 172, 203, 205, 213, 216, 221, 226, 227ff., 232, 233, 254-260 passim , 272, 276, 281,282,288,299, 302, 303, 306 Intersubjectivity, 40, 41, 43, 93, 95, 97, 106, 144,159, 170,171, 219, 224 Intuition, 75, 196, 199, 202, 206, 207 Jackson, Jesse, 210 James, William, 82, 140, 188, 251, 291 Jaspers, Karl, 27 Jerchower, Seth, 236 Jewkes, J., 126 Joachim o f Flora, 215 Johnson, F. Ernest, 239 Johnson, Lyndon, 201 Jonas, Hans, 206, 279 Joseph, Isaac, 137, 145, 147 Jouvenel, B. de, 126 Judaism, 217,225 Judgment, 1 8 8 ,1 8 9 ,196ff., 204,206, 210, 242, 246, 259, 267, 271, 273, 274, 277, 283, 288, 291, 294, 295 Kallen, Horace, 258, 269 Kant, Immanuel, 2, 8, 107, 108, 175,

327

INDEX 177ff., 1 8 3 ,2 2 5 ,2 7 6 Kaufmann, Felix, 117, 118, 279 Katz, Elihu, 136 Kelsen, Hans, 115, 198 Kersten, Fred, 73 Kierkegaard, Seren, 97, 110 Kirzner, I.M., 121, 122 Knowledge, 27, 38, 136, 139, 141, 143, 151, 157, 238, 252, 256, 260, 265-316 passim Kuhn, Thomas, 101 Kurozawa, Akira, 93 Lachmann, L.M., 119 Lascoumes, Pierre, 136 Lasswell, Harold D., 236, 239, 242, 258ff., 272, 274, 278, 283, 291, 298 Lazarsfeld, Paul, 136 Law, 26, 182, 185, 188, 191, 192ff., 200, 201, 205ff., 243ff„ 253, 255, 260, 262, 275, 2 9 2 ,3 0 9 ,3 1 4 Lefort, Claude, 145 Legalism, 302, 303 Legitimacy, 136, 148, 149, 153 Lenclud, Gerard, 136 Levinas, Emmanuel, 230, 231 Lifeworld (Lebenswelt), 3, 9, 13, 1722 passim , 87, 91ff., 94, 96, 98, 101, 102, 106, 108, 159-172 passim Linton, Ralph, 85 Livingston, Eric, 59 Locke, John, 210 Lofland, Lyn, 145 Logical consistency, 48, 50 Luckmann, Thomas, 77, 142 Luhmann, Niklas, 17, 18, 44 Lyman, Stanford, 145, 147 Lynch, Michael, 54, 59, 61, 66, 67, Maclver, Robert, 235, 254,279, 281, 313,315 M achlup, Fritz, 115, 116, 117, 118, 122, 129 Macro-situations, 75, 76

Man in the street, 256ff., 260, 282, 285, 291,292 Mandelbaum, Maurice, 107 Marcel, Gabriel, 97, 103, 105 Marion, Jean-Luc, 102 Market, 87, 116, 119, 120ff„ 126ff. Marx, Karl, 111, 225 Mass media, 135, 136ff., 149, 151, 272, 274, 275, 306ff. Material ontology, 194 Mayer, H., 126 McKeon, Richard, 235, 246ff„ 250, 264, 282 McKinney, John C., 61,62 Mead, George H., 88, 89, 92, 93 Mechanism o f variation, 35 Melting pot, 253, 257, 258 Menger, Carl, 118 M erleau-Ponty, Maurice, 87 103, 105, 140 Metaphysics, 220, 221 Metaxy, 215, 216, 217, 228, 231 Methodology, 187, 189, 200, 204, 206,211 M icro-situations, 75, 76 Middle ground, 236, 241, 280, 281 Mills, C. Wright, 146 Mind, 48, 49, 50, 57, 66, 118, 122, 124, 127ff., 137, 139, 140, 147, 153 M inority groups, 257, 263 Mises, Ludwig von, 115-134 passim Mises, M argit von, 118 Minsky, Marvin, 139 Modernity, 2 Modigliani, A., 154 More, Thomas, 201 M orgenstem, Oskar, 118, 119, 120, 122

Motivation, 265ff., 270, 273ff., 284, 299, 306 Motives, 48, 66, 94, 127, 273ff., 284 M ultidisciplinary education, 252,

328 280, 283 M ultiple realities, 71, 80, 83ff. Mussolini, 225, 231 Myrdal, Gunnar, 262 Myth, 196 Naivete, 69, 70, 71, 75 Nasu, Hisashi, 85 Natanson, Maurice, 70, 73, 87-114 passim

Nation state, 237 Nationalism, 14 NATO, 238 N atural attitude, 47, 51, 52, 78, 86, 190 reflection, 74, 74, 79 science, 173, 174, 175, 177ff. views, 151 Naturalism (naturalistic), 52, 186 Necessity, 190, 202, 205 Neo-classical economics, 122, 124, 125 Neumann, John von, 122 Newton, Isaac, 5 Nihilism, 109ff. Normative statements, 280, 284 Oberschall, Anthony, 138 Objective meaning, 255ff., 287 O ’Driscoll, G.P., 124 Official secrecy, 303, 304 Oikos, 25 Opportunity, 235, 239, 241-316 passim

Order (and Order*), 47-68 passim , 147, 152, 156, 214-233 passim Organization, concept of, 72, 85; see also S ocial organization Originary experience, 78 Otaka, Tomoo, 24, 187-212 passim Out-group, 256 Pareto, 219 Park, Robert, 137 Parsons, Talcott, 44, 56, 70, 71, 80,

INDEX 85 Participation, 211 Paul, St., 217 Perspicuous settings, 58, 60, 62 Peters, R., 147 Pickles, John, 5 Plato, 23, 24, 25, 91, 201, 214, 215, 217,219, 224, 231 Plessner, Helmuth, 31-41 passim Pluralistic society, 70, 72 Polanyi, Michael, 101 Political action, 282, 285 anthropology, 32 cultures, 139, 142, 146 emergence of, 23, 30, 36, 39, 43 framing, 115, 139, 14 Iff., 151 order, 23-35 passim parties, 143, 305, 306 philosophy, 187-213 pa ssim , 267, 280 semantics, 44 universes, 135, 138, 150 Polis, 24, 25, 25, 30, 40 Polity, 191-210 passim Pollner, Melvin, 65 Positivism, 101, 221 Postulates, 80 Pourcher, Yves, 136 Power, 135-158 passim , 187, 193ff., 208, 210, 242, 256, 262, 275, 285, 288, 297, 300, 304, 309 Pragmatic access, 37, 43 Pred, Alan, 3 Predecessors, (as Vorwelt), 91 Prejudice, 242, 278, 279 Pre-political, 25, 28, 29, 30, 33, 35 Presidential system, 257 Prestige, 259, 267, 270, 293 Presuppositions, 51, 52, 65 Pressure organizations, 305, 306 Price, 116, 119, 120-133 passim

IND EX Privacy, 285, 298, 307 Privatseminar (Mises), 116 Problematic possibilities, 73, 74, 85 Professions, 261, 309 Project, 94, 95, 104, 108, 109, 112 Propaganda, 237, 268, 294, 304 Protection o f minorities, 257 Psathas, George, 48 Psychoanalysis, 273 Public affairs, 145, 150ff., 276, 305 agendas, 138, 152 arena, 135, 146, 148, 149, 154 life, 301,304 opinion, 137, 146, 148, 152, 154 meetings, 152, 153 motives, 146 policies, 149 relevance, 145, 147, 152 reports, 304 space, 135, 139, 145ff., 152, 157 stage, 152, 153 Quere, Louis, 145 Rabi, I.I., 243ff., 282 Racial discrimination, 263 Racial groups, 262 Racism, 136 Rationality, 183 Rawls, Ann, 143 Realfaktoren, 141 Reason, 49-67 passim , 140,145,150, 183, 276, 277 Reasonableness, 278 Reciprocal relation, 25, 27, 39 Reciprocity o f perspectives, 3 7 ,4 Iff. Reflection, 34,40, 43, 73ff., 79, 161, 173, 176, 180, 182, 184, 186 Region, 10, 183, 184 Regionalist discourses, 2 Regionalization, 9, 19ff. Reinach, Adolf, 179 Reisman, W.M., 228 Relativism, 215, 221

329 Relevance, 23, 24, 25, 29, 36, 37, 39, 48, 51, 66, 73, 79, 81ff., 135-156 passim , 219-233 passim , 261-290 passim , 311 Religion, 191, 208, 210 Religious institutions, 309 Remedy, 248, 250, 271,283 Reporters, 256, 267, 292 Representing behavior, 33 Responsibility, 241, 255, 256, 267, 275, 282ff., 291, 299, 302, 304, 310 Rhetorical arguments, 149 Ricoeur, Paul, 97, 201 Riezler, Kurt, 260, 272 Rizzo, M.J., 118, 122, 124 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 28,195,210 Rytina, Steven, 148, 153 Sacks, Harvey, 60ff. Santayana, George, 92, 187, 188, 191, 193, 208ff. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 105, 106, 217 Sato, Yoshiyuki, 85 Schams, Ewald, 118 Scheler, Max, 36,105,108, 109, 193, 219, 223 Schemes o f interpretation, 33 Schmitt, Carl, 34, 41 Schumpeter, Joseph, 121 Schurman, H., 133 Schutz, Ilse, 79 Scientism, 100, 107 Scott, Marvin, 145 Seiler, Robert, 49 Self-limitation, 32, 33, 35, 38, 43 Self-realization, 242, 250ff., 288 Sentiments, 219 Separation o f powers, 301, 304 Sex groups, 254 Sexism, 254 Simmel, Georg, 84 Smith, Neil, 3 Snow, David, 137, 138, 147, 155

330 Social analysis, 4 7 ,4 9 , 53, 67 distance, 270 organization, 24, 187-211 passim personality, 274 reality, 87, 88, 92, 94, 97, 99-103 passim

role, 85, 91, 95, 97, 99 science, 47, 52„ 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 65, 173-187 passim , 189, 191, 196, 204, 205, 206, 209,236, 254, 277, 279, 280, 287, 290, 308, 316 scientist, 47-66 passim situations, 147, 154 studies, 297, 313ff. tensions, 254, 263, 305 world, 71, 88ff., 95-112 passim Socialism, 116 Sociality, 93, 96, 97, 98, 103, 106, 112, 182 Socialization, 80-84 passim , 191, 194, 2 0 1 ,2 0 8 ,2 1 0 Socially derived knowledge, 266ff. Societal community, 28 Socio-cultural, 36, 250, 259, 287, 289 Sociology, 53, 57, 61-67 passim , 137, 142, 151, 153m 154, 157, 191, 197, 252, 276, 2 7 9 ,2 8 0 ,3 1 6 Sociology o f knowlege, 276 Socrates, 222 Space, 3ff. Space-society nexus, 1 Spatial explanations, 3 Speier, Matthew, 82 Srubar, Ilja, 76, 144, 177 Stalin, Josef, 231 Straightforward act, 74, 75, 79 Strasser, Stephen, 71 Straus, Erwin, 106, 107, 109, 110 Strauss, Leo, 107, 110, 214, 215 Structural-functional paradigm, 80, 83

INDEX Structure o f the lifeworld, 23 Subjective meaning, 47, 48, 49, 75, 228, 255, 288 and objective meaning, 288 Subjectivity, 93, 110 Successors, (as Folgew elt), 91, 98, 102 Sudnow, David, 58, 59 Symbolic domination, 147 interaction, 153, 155, 156 universes, 135, 141 Symbolism, 214, 216, 222 Symbols, 77, 78, 215ff. Synthesis o f social and political, 28 Systems o f interest, 151 Tarrow, Sidney, 138ff., 143 Tatsachenwissenschaft, 175 Technology, 2 46 ,247,249,250,260, 283,314 Telos, 26, 225, 228 Temporality, 182 Themis, 215 Theology, 255 Theory, 177ff., 182 Thevenot, Laurent, 136 Thucydides, 208 Tilly, Charles, 143 Tiryakian, Edward A., 61, 62 Tonnies, Ferdinand, 28 Touchman, Gaye, 152 Toulmin, Stephen, 101 Transcendence, 74, 75, 78, 110, 111 Transcendent representation, 30 Transcendental philosophy, 174 Transcendental reduction, 189, 200 Tuning in, 156 Typification, 24, 25, 36, 38, 4 0 ff, 48, 50, 51, 57, 66, 96, 98, 123, 128, 130, 132, 133 United Nations, 237, 244, 246, 254 United States, 237, 249, 253, 259,

INDEX 262, 264, 268, 274, 278, 299, 301, 308, 309, 310 Unity o f science, 100, 101 USSR, 238 Utamaro, 200 Value free (freedom), 213, 216, 228 Value theory, 193 Verstehen, 75 Vico, Giambattista, 101 Victorian, 224, 227 Violence, 137, 148, 194 Virtue, 211 Voegelin, Eric, 24, 27, 30ff., 34, 36, 38, 39, 100, 107, 117, 213-234 passim

Voluntary groups, 257 Vorhandenheit, 73, 104 W agner, Helmut, 73, 93, 100, 103, 236, 237 Waldenfels, Bernard, 159, 172 Walder, Robert, 118 Warsaw Pact, 238 Watson, Graham, 49 Weber, Max, 28, 29, 34, 44, 56, 69, 70, 82, 90, 97, 99, 108, 110, 116, 119, 121, 122, 127, 174, 177, 183, 184, 2 1 3 ,2 1 9 ,2 5 4 ,2 5 5 W ell-informed citizen, 238, 248, 256ff., 260, 261, 267, 268, 278, 284, 291,295 Werlen, Benno, 6, 19 Wesenwissenschaft, 175 Wieder, D.L., 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60,61 Wieviorka, Michel, 136 Wild, John, 88, 91, 108 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 145 W oodring report, 313 World-binding process, 21 World history, 244, 248 World o f adults, 81, 83 World o f children, 81

Wuthnow, Robert, 146 Zaner, Richard, 68 Zeus, 215 Zurcher, L.A., 147

Contributions to Phenomenology IN C O O P E R A T IO N W IT H

THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY 1.

F. Kersten: Phenom enological Method. Theory and Practice. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0094-7

2. E. G. Ballard: P hilosophy an d the L iberal Arts. 1989 3. 4. 5.

ISBN 0-7923-0241-9

H. A. Durfee and D.F.T. Rodier (eds.): Phenom enology an d Beyond. The Self and Its Language. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0511-6 J. J. Drummond: H usserlian Intentionality and N on-Foundational Realism . Noema and Object. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0651-1 A. Gurwitsch: K ants Theorie des Verstandes. Herausgegeben von T.M. Seebohm. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0696-1

6.

D. Jervolino: The C ogito an d Hermeneutics. The Question of the Subject in Ricceur. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0824-7 7. B.P. Dauenhauer: E lem ents o f Responsible Politics. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1329-1 8. T.M. Seebohm, D. F0llesdal and J.N. Mohanty (eds.): Phenom enology and the Formal Sciences. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1499-9 9.

L. Hardy and L. Embree (eds.): Phenom enology o f N atural Science. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1541-3

10.

J J. Drummond and L. Embree (eds.): The Phenom enology o f the Noem a. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1980-X

11. B.C. Hopkins: Intentionality in H usserl an d Heidegger. The Problem of the Original Method and Phenomenon of Phenomenology. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-2074-3 12.

P. Blosser, E. Shimomisse, L. Embree and H. Kojima (eds.): Japanese and Western 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2075-1

Phenom enology.

13. F. M. Kirkland and P. D. Chattopadhyaya (eds.): Phenom enology: E ast and West. Essays in Honor of J. N. Mohanty. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2087-5 14. E. Marbach: M ental Representation an d Consciousness. Towards a Phenomenolo­ gical Theory of Representation and Reference. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2101-4 15.

J.J. Kockelmans: Ideas f o r a Hermeneutic Phenom enology o f the N atural Sciences. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2364-5

16.

M. Daniel and L. Embree (eds.): Phenom enology o f the Cultural D isciplines. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2792-6

17.

T.J. Stapleton (ed.): The Question o f Hermeneutics. Essays in Honor of Joseph J. Kockelmans. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2911 -2; Pb 0-7923-2964-3

Contributions to Phenomenology IN C O O P E R A T IO N W IT H

THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY L. Embree, E. Behnke, D. Carr, J.C. Evans, J. Huertas-Jourda, J.J. Kockelmans, W.R. McKenna, A. Mickunas, J.N. Mohanty, T.M. Seebohm and R.M. Zaner (eds.): Encyclopedia o f Phenom enology. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-2956-2 S.G. Crowell (ed.): The Prism o f the Self. Philosophical Essays in Honor of Maurice Natanson. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3546-5 W.R. McKenna and J.C. Evans (eds.): D errida and Phenomenology. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3730-1 S.B. Mallin: A rt Line Thought. 1996

ISBN 0-7923-3774-3

R.D. Ellis: Eros in a N arcissistic Culture. An Analysis Anchored in the Life-World. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3982-7 J.J. Drummond and J.G. Hart (eds.): The Truthful and The G ood. Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-4134-1 T. Nenon and L. Embree (eds.): Issues in H u sserl’s Ideas II. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-4216-X J.C. Evans and R.S. Stufflebeam (eds.): To Work a t the Foundations. Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4317-4 B.C. Hopkins (ed.): H usserl in Contem porary Context. Prospects and Projects for Phenomenology. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4469-3 M.C. Baseheart, S.C.N.: Person in the World. Introduction to the Philosophy of Edith Stein. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4490-1 J.G. Hart and L. Embree (eds.): Phenom enology o f Values an d Valuing. 1997 ISBN0-7923-4491 -X F. Kersten: G alileo an d the “Invention” o f Opera. A Study in the Phenomenology of Consciousness. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4536-3 E. Stroker: The H usserlian Foundations o f Science. 1997

ISBN 0-7923-4743-9

L. Embree (ed.): Alfred Schutz’s “S ociological A spect o f Literature” . Construction and Complementary Essays. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4847-8 M.C. Srajek: In the M argins o f Deconstruction. Jewish Conceptions of Ethics in Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4953-9 N. Rotenstreich: Synthesis an d Intentional O bjectivity. On Kant and Husserl. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4956-3 D. Zahavi (ed.): Self-awareness, Temporality, an d Alterity. Central Topics in Phe­ nomenology. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5065-0

Contributions to Phenomenology IN C O O P E R A T IO N W IT H

THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY

35.

R. Cristin: H eidegger an d L eibniz■Reason and the Path. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5137-1

36.

B.C. Hopkins (ed.): Phenom enology: Japanese an d Am erican P erspectives. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5336-6

37.

L. Embree (ed.): Schutzian Social Science. 1999

ISBN 0-7923-6003-6

Further information about our publications on Phenom enology is available on request.

Kluwer Academic Publishers - Dordrecht / Boston / London

LE S TE R E M B R E E (E D ITO R )

Schutzian Social Science

Timed for the centennial of Alfred Schutz (1899-1999), this set of original essays documents the continuing relevance of his thought in economics, geography, sociology, philosophy, and political science and indicates the continuing interest in his thought in East Asia, Western Europe, and North America. The authors of these essays are leading authorities in their coun­ tries and disciplines. Schutz is the pre-eminent phenomenological philos­ opher of the social sciences. New materials from his Nachlass concerning barriers to equality of opportunity, including a report co-authored with the political scientist Harold Lasswell, are also included.