Abstract
Alfred Schutz’s theory of the social world, often neglected in philosophy, has the potential to capture the interplay of identity and difference which shapes our action, interaction, and experience in everyday life. Compared to still dominant identity-based models such as that of Jürgen Habermas, who assumes a coordination of meaning built on the idealisation of stable rules (primarily those of language), Schutz’s theory is an important step forward. However, his central notion of a “type” runs into a difficulty which requires constructive criticism. Against the background of Schutz’s theory of meaning inspired by Bergson and Husserl, his idea of types “taken for granted until further notice” is shown to express a primacy of identity which, in the final analysis, leads into the implausible scenario of ‘ubiquitous tunnel vision’. This makes it necessary to go beyond Schutz and assume an inherently motivated tendency towards difference in meaning termed ‘spontaneity’. Where spontaneity and the opposed tendency towards identity of meaning work together in the application of types, they enable embodied subjects to interact with the world and with each other in the routine yet flexible and sometimes innovative ways which we all know.
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Notes
There is a tension in Schutz’s use of the concept of meaning (see Srubar 1988). From the 1930s on, Schutz tends to restrict the term to reflexive, conscious meaning revealed in retrospection (1967: §12; 1962d: 210f). But especially in the early and often neglected Bergsonian manuscripts, the term is wider and includes bodily and affective phenomena. My reading of Schutz is based on the wider concept which remains valid even in the later texts.
On the status of normativity in a Schutzian theory, see “Conclusions” below.
Similarly, according to John Searle, the “background” common to all individuals of a group which provides the “glue that holds society together” is structured by “institutions” (including the shared language) all of which rely on a “formal linguistic mechanism” of “rules” (2010: 7ff.). Habermas’s view of language was strongly influenced by Searle.
By “structures of the lifeworld” or “meaning structure,” Schutz refers to phenomenological (rather than concrete social) structures. Central among these “structures” is the typicality of all social phenomena.
An infinite number of possibilities is a case of potential infinity in Aristotle’s sense (Physics III 4–6, 204a ff.), which avoids the paradoxes of actual infinity. Likewise, in the case of language, “the context” relevant to understanding a particular utterance is selected from an infinity of possible contexts (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995: 132ff.).
This is one reason why Schutz distinguishes the ongoing process of “acting” from the “action” as initially projected or as observed in retrospect (1967: §10).
See also the similar role of a clause like “no other disturbing factors being present” in a formal system described by Waismann (1951).
Schutz reserves the word “crisis” for severer instances of a “problem” (2011a: 164).
The English translation (Schutz 1967: 64) renders Abweichungen (i.e., “deviations”) as “the variables are given values,” which is something quite different; also, the reference to spontaneity is left out.
If interpreted within the scenario of tunnel vision, the “general thesis of reciprocal perspectives,” qua “typification taken for granted” until “counterevidence” (Schutz 1962b: 12), would explicitly describe such an attitude of stubbornly ignoring interindividual differences.
See Heidegger (1996) for an existential analysis of boredom.
For the reference to Leibniz see already Schutz (2013b: 227). Schutz also makes largely uncritical use of Husserl’s concept of “spontaneity” in earlier works (e.g., 1967). In several other places, he uses the predicate “spontaneous” to characterise a freedom and activity of actors to be distinguished from “imposed relevances” (e.g., 1964b: 126f., 1966a: 122); but as his account stands, this sits odd both with his theory of choice and with his closer analyses of “intrinsic” relevances (see the previous two sections). A reconstruction of ‘spontaneity’ along the lines suggested here might help clarify and support his characterisation.
The distinction between anxiety and fear introduced by Kierkegaard and taken up by Heidegger is not explicitly made by Schutz, but he repeatedly refers to both authors when writing about “fundamental anxiety” and distinguishes “anxiety” from the “systems of hopes and fears” founded upon it (1962d: 228).
This is not to exclude ethical and political criticism or questions of normativity from social theory; on the contrary. Both tendencies together constitute all concrete social phenomena which we may then either support or criticise. And both are involved even in our expressions of support or criticism. So if we want to reach a critically reflected basis for normative claims, this abstract level of social dynamics should not be normatively invested. Schutz makes a similar remark on his theory of relevance in a letter to Eric Voegelin on October 10, 1952: “I fell out of the habit of speaking of values or intrinsic values or of thinking in these terms […]” (2011b: 224). (The translation is inaccurate here: “I have consciously broken the habit” would be closer to the original Ich habe es mir bewusst abgewöhnt.) The reason is not, Schutz explains, that he wants to “exclude these ideas from the sphere of a scientific analysis,” but that he believes “that the category of relevance is the broader one, in which the value systems […] can and have to be located” (2011b: 224).
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Acknowledgments
Part of the research for this article was funded by a Travel Grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for an extended stay at Waseda University. For insightful comments and criticism related to earlier versions of the paper, I am especially grateful to two anonymous reviewers as well as to Hisashi Nasu, Nobuo Kazashi, Gunter Gebauer, Hubert Knoblauch, Michael Barber, Jochen Dreher, and Holger Straßheim.
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Straßheim, J. Type and Spontaneity: Beyond Alfred Schutz’s Theory of the Social World. Hum Stud 39, 493–512 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9382-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9382-8