Abstract
What are social objects and what makes them different from other realms of scientifically studied reality? How can sociology theoretically account for the relationship between objects of social reality such as norms and social structures, and their existence as objects of experience for living human actors? Contemporary sociology is characterized by a fundamental dissensus with regard to this question. Ironically, this is the very problem Alfred Schutz tackled in his phenomenological critique of Max Weber’s sociological theory. As Schutz demonstrated nearly a century ago, phenomenology’s egological method is indispensable to a non-reductionist theory of intersubjectivity, namely, one that does full justice to embodied conscious life while demonstrating the relative independence of the intersubjective (social) sphere. In the process, Schutz’s mundane phenomenology results not only in a thorough rejection of all kinds of philosophical solipsism but also warns of the dangers, one that Husserl himself succumbed to, of granting collective structures transcendental status. Through a critical reading of Schutz’s early theory in the Phenomenology of the Social World, alongside key texts by Husserl, this paper shows the continued relevance of Schutz’s phenomenological theory of intersubjectivity to serve both as ontological grounding of “the social” and a method for investigating and describing concrete social objects in their transformation into theoretico-analytical objects amenable to empirical observation.
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Notes
I speak here of sociology for the sake of convention and convenience, but the remarks apply to social science more generally.
The capitalized “Ego” here refers, as in Schutz, to the ego of Husserl’s egology, rather than any psychological meaning of the term.
Section 3 offers a more sustained discussion of Husserl’s concept of intentionality.
Schutz refers to this theoretical formulation as the “general thesis of the alter ego” (1967[1932]: 97–102).
As Scheler writes, “only a part of our total mental and cognitive existence is capable of becoming an object for us, and only a very small proportion of that part can itself be observed and repeated” (2008: 223). While Scheler’s criticism was directed against experimental psychology, it is consistent with Schutz’s view of the limits of introspection and the possibility of fully explicating inner lived experience. Such a view speaks against criticisms which suggest that phenomenology rests on the Cartesian belief of the full transparency of one’s subjective mental life to oneself.
Because existence is personal, that does not mean that it is therefore “private” in the traditional Western metaphysical sense of Descartes and Locke, which constitute the tradition behind the psychologism which Husserl turns against. For a classic statement on the personal self in philosophy and its ethical implications, see Taylor (1989). Taylor however draws from the Heideggerian rather than Husserlian phenomenological tradition in his study. In sociology, Smith (2010) has more recently argued for the need for a “thick notion of persons,” as has Archer through her notion of the “internal conversation” (2012). Ethically and methodologically, social phenomenology has much to contribute to the dialogue between realist social science and philosophical and moral understandings of the person.
One might notice parallels here with the Freudian unconscious. Though there are similarities between the phenomenological and the Freudian theory of the structure of consciousness, phenomenologists do not necessarily subscribe to the Freudian interpretation of the constitution of the unconscious, especially the latter’s determinative function in conscious life. Moreover, in the psychoanalytic understanding, the unconscious can, in principle, in the course of psychoanalytic treatment, be brought into consciousness, since it reflects sedimented, but at one time sensibly experienced moments of the subject’s past psychic life (as in Freud’s Oedipal drama). By contrast, for many phenomenologists, moments of the pre-phenomenal flux are forever foreclosed to the possibility of proper meaning and thus do not perform the same function as the Freudian unconscious (thus only finding “poetic” expression in modern artistic forms).
This highlights problems with critiques (e.g., Pendergrast 1986) that Schutz followed Austrian economics’ recipe of “methodological individualism”. Schutz’s method is instead better described as “methodological egologism”.
In the same passage, Schutz adds, “Of course, within this total coherence of experience, contradictory experiences can occur without impairing the over-all unity”. In other discussions Schutz describes the possibility of an experience referencing incongruent schemes. An experience may also “explode” a scheme when its anticipations become unfulfilled.
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Mathieu Desan and the participants of the Sociological Theory panel at the 2021 ASA (virtual) Annual Conference for their valuable feedback on the original draft of this paper. The author would also like to thank the journal’s two anonymous reviewers for critical suggestions that have greatly improved the quality of the paper.
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Pula, B. What Does a Phenomenological Theory of Social Objects Mean?. Hum Stud 45, 509–528 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-022-09636-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-022-09636-4