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Persons and Acts – Collective and Social. From Ontology to Politics

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The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality

Part of the book series: Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality ((SIPS,volume 6))

Abstract

This paper orchestrates a confrontation between the social ontology, social and political philosophy of Searle and the views on these matters of the earliest phenomenologists. According to Searle, social objects depend on declarations and on collective acceptance or recognition of the results of declarations. After first (§2) drawing attention to some distinctions and claims which go back to Reinach and which will be important in what follows, I then (§3) consider what Reinach and Searle have to say about declarations. Since collective acceptance is a type of collective intentionality I examine what Searle and the phenomenologists have to say about collective intentionality and the subjects or bearers of this type of intentionality (§4). I then look at the relation between states and social acts (§5), the relations between what Searle calls deontic powers and Reinach jural powers and some possible roles of such powers (§6) and conclude with a brief sketch of the role of primitive certainty in social ontology (§7).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Searle rejects the label “social philosophy” as a description of the project he pursues in the two books mentioned (Searle 2010, 5).

  2. 2.

    The present paper justifies some of the claims made in an earlier paper on Searle and phenomenology (Mulligan 2003).

  3. 3.

    Austin 1984, 19.

  4. 4.

    Reid 1969, 437–438; emphases mine – KM.

  5. 5.

    Reinach 1989, 170 (my trans. – KM).

  6. 6.

    Reinach 1989, 164–5, 167.

  7. 7.

    Reinach 2012, 85. On Reinach on proxy social acts cf. Brown 1987.

  8. 8.

    “Jural” is the translation of “rechtlich” and is used, for example, by Hohfeld.

  9. 9.

    Reinach 2012, 85.

  10. 10.

    Reinach 2012, §7, 86; emphases mine – KM.

  11. 11.

    Searle 2010, 27–8.

  12. 12.

    Reinach 1989, 244 (my trans. – KM), cf. 341.

  13. 13.

    Reinach 2012, 104 emphases mine – KM.

  14. 14.

    Reinach 1989, 161 (my trans. – KM).

  15. 15.

    Searle 1995, 34.

  16. 16.

    Searle 2010, 13, 12.

  17. 17.

    Reinach 2012, 104.

  18. 18.

    Searle 2010, 97.

  19. 19.

    Reinach 2012, 105 (trans. mod).

  20. 20.

    Searle 2010, 69.

  21. 21.

    Reinach 1989, 159 ff.

  22. 22.

    Reinach 2012, 107.

  23. 23.

    Reinach 2012, 110–11; emphases mine – KM.

  24. 24.

    Reinach, §9 2012, 115–6; emphasis mine – KM.

  25. 25.

    Reinach 2012, 106.

  26. 26.

    Reinach 2012, 109.

  27. 27.

    Reinach 2012, 108.

  28. 28.

    Reinach 2012, 110.

  29. 29.

    Reinach 2012, 110.

  30. 30.

    Reinach 2012, 109.

  31. 31.

    Reinach 2012, 116.

  32. 32.

    Reinach 2012, 109–10. One of Reinach’s predecessors seems to be Suárez, who argues that there are jural entities which are in time and are neither physical nor logical entities; cf. Lutz-Bachmann 2011, 115–6.

  33. 33.

    Cf. Stein 1970, 310.

  34. 34.

    Scheler 1973, 526. According to Reinach, if two or more people make a promise together “each knows of the participation of the other” (Reinach 1989, 164, my trans. – KM).

  35. 35.

    Searle 2010, 50.

  36. 36.

    Walther 1923, 70.

  37. 37.

    Stein 1922, 120–1.

  38. 38.

    Cf. Baldwin 2013.

  39. 39.

    Stein 1922, 121.

  40. 40.

    Cf. Scheler 1966; Denninger 1967. Scheler’s distinction between social and intimate persons and social and intimate selves is a development of William James’ eloquent account of the distinction between social and non-social selves. On corporate or collective persons cf Scruton 1989. Reinach (1989, 266–7) is agnostic about collective persons.

  41. 41.

    Cf. Baldwin 2013.

  42. 42.

    Cf. Scheler 1990, 49.

  43. 43.

    Searle 2010, 27.

  44. 44.

    Searle 2010, 52–3.

  45. 45.

    Husserl 1988, 103, cf. 110.

  46. 46.

    Husserl 1973b, 194–5, cf. Stein 1970, 172–4.

  47. 47.

    According to Brentano, my judging contains a perception of my judging. The perception itself contains a presentation and the mode of perceiving. But this mode does not present or represent.

  48. 48.

    Searle 2010, 53, emphases mine – KM.

  49. 49.

    Searle 2010, 53.

  50. 50.

    Searle 2010, 79, emphasis mine – KM.

  51. 51.

    For Husserl’s account of intentional connectives and synthetic acts see, for example, Husserl Ideen §118, §121; on this account, cf. Mulligan 2010.

  52. 52.

    Thus in her account of the way in which associations and societies are founded Stein does not refer specifically to social acts such as declarations (Stein 1922, 230).

  53. 53.

    Stein 1970, 313, cf. 325, 348; on the orders and declarations of states, cf. 322; on conditional orders cf. 317. For Reinach’s account of conditional social acts, cf. Reinach 1989, 163. Conditional social acts are operations but, unlike the mental operation of conditional judging already mentioned, they are essentially linguistic operations.

  54. 54.

    Stein 1970, 325.

  55. 55.

    Stein 1970, 323.

  56. 56.

    Stein 1970, 325.

  57. 57.

    Stein 1970, 347.

  58. 58.

    Stein 1970, 348.

  59. 59.

    Stein 1970, 348, cf. 322, 347–52, 383.

  60. 60.

    “Abgrenzung der Vertretungsmacht der Staatsrepräsentanten durch den Sinn des Staates” Stein 1970, 347.

  61. 61.

    The category of acts in the spirit of x (dem Sinne gemäss) is closely related to but distinct from the category of rational lawfulness, the lawfulness of reason (Vernunftgesetzlichkeit) which Stein elsewhere distinguishes from essential lawfulness (Wesensgesetzlichkeit) – what holds in virtue of the essence of something:

    …there are rational laws (Vernunftgesetze) for feeling, willing, and acting…as well as for thinking. Axiology, ethics, and “Praktik” take their places beside logic. This rational lawfulness is to be distinguished from essential lawfulness. It lies in the essence of willing that willing is motivated by feeling (ein Fühlen). An unmotivated willing is therefore an impossibility (ein Unding). It lies in the sense of willing (which posits something as to be realized) that it is directed to what is possible, i.e. realizable, one can rationally only will the possible. But there are irrational people who do not care whether what they have recognized as valuable is realizable or not…who attempt to make the impossible possible. Pathological psychological life shows that what contradicts rational laws is in fact (real) possible for many people (Stein 1980, 108, cf. tr. 88)

    The distinction between what does and does not lie in the sense of e.g. willing is a distinction between what is and is not appropriate or rational. But appropriate and inappropriate willings are willings. A social act which purports to be in the name of x but is not in the spirit of x is not in fact a social act in the name of x. Thus Stein uses “sense” with two different meanings.

  62. 62.

    Stein 1970, 332.

  63. 63.

    Stein 1970, 334.

  64. 64.

    Cf. Stein 1970, 356, 358.

  65. 65.

    Stein 1970, 334, emphasis mine – KM.

  66. 66.

    Searle 2010, 8–9.

  67. 67.

    Searle 2010, 7, 97, 104, 123.

  68. 68.

    Reinach 2012, 33–4.

  69. 69.

    Reinach 2012, §7, 86 (my trans. – KM); on natural powers vs jural powers cf. Reinach 1989, 174, 2012, 33; on the relation between social acts and language cf Reinach 1989, 160, 177.

  70. 70.

    Reinach 2012, 80 f. Scheler makes the ability to promise an essential feature of personhood (Scheler 1966, 473–4).

  71. 71.

    Social persons have an axiological counterpart in value persons, not merely the types distinguished by Scheler – saints, heroes, statesmen….. – but also, for example, friends and hunks, fools, traitors and yobs.

  72. 72.

    Reinach 2012, §7, 87.

  73. 73.

    Searle 2010, 91.

  74. 74.

    Stein 1970, 386.

  75. 75.

    Reinach 2012, 109.

  76. 76.

    Reinach 1989, 221–2 (my trans. – KM). Cf. Hildebrand 1954.

  77. 77.

    Reinach 1989, 188–9 (my trans. – KM).

  78. 78.

    Cf. Searle 1968.

  79. 79.

    Husserl, for example, says of a group which is a “higher-order person” that it is “a bearer of functions”, “a system of duties and rights” (Husserl 1973a, 104, 105), a connexion of “functions and duties” (Husserl 1973b, 182).

  80. 80.

    Reinach may seem to be objecting to something like this account at (Reinach 1989, 188–9) but in fact he is here objecting to introducing anything inessential to promising, e.g. that the promisors are human beings, into an account of the essence of promising. There is an alternative to all the views mentioned of the nature of the relation between promises and obligations: the Moore-Fine view that promising normatively necessitates an obligation. Whatever the merits of this view it is not compatible with Reinach’s claim that promising necessitates obligations in virtue of its nature since normative necessitation is not rooted in the nature of anything (cf. Mulligan 2009).

  81. 81.

    Hayek 1966.

  82. 82.

    Scheler 1966, 533.

  83. 83.

    Stein 1970, 99.

  84. 84.

    Hartmann 1962, 420, tr. Hartmann II p. 229, tr. modified.

  85. 85.

    Reinach himself never says anything about the relation between the theory of right and justice. See his passing mentions of justice at (Reinach 1989, 146, 237, 255, 269).

  86. 86.

    Reinach 1989, 143 (my trans. – KM). On Reinach on property, cf. Massin 2016, forthcoming.

  87. 87.

    Schmitt 1914, 20, 76. Schmitt refers in his diaries to someone called „Reinach“. His editor thinks the person referred to might be Théodore Reinach (Schmitt 2003, 249). Hermann Kantorowicz, the great historian of jural entities, was also an early reader of (Adolf) Reinach.

  88. 88.

    Stein 1970, 342.

  89. 89.

    Right, Schmitt asserts, is not natural law. It is “a natural law without naturalism” (ein Naturrecht ohne Naturalismus) (Schmitt 1914, 76).

  90. 90.

    Schmitt, once again, agrees: Right and ethics (Sittlichkeit) “cannot contradict one another since they have nothing to do with one another” (Schmitt 1914, 67, cf. 56–60, 60–66).

  91. 91.

    Hume says that what he call rules or laws of justice may be called “Laws of Nature; if by natural we understand what is common to any species, or even if we confine it to mean what is inseparable from the species” (Treatise/Green II 258).

  92. 92.

    “So once we have an explicit language in which explicit speech acts can be performed according to the conventions of the language, we already have a deontology. We already have commitments, in the full public sense that combines irreversibility and obligation” (Searle 2010, 82, cf. 86). On Searle’s views about the relation between language and social objects, cf. Tieffenbach 2011.

  93. 93.

    Stein 1970, 123, 120.

  94. 94.

    Stein 1970, 168.

  95. 95.

    Walther 1923, 85, cf. 71.

  96. 96.

    Searle 2010, 54.

  97. 97.

    Cf. Mulligan 2006.

  98. 98.

    Stein 1970, 310, cf. 314–5, 326, 340, 362.

  99. 99.

    Ortega 1985a, 151.

  100. 100.

    Ortega 1985b, 105 ff.

  101. 101.

    Ortega 1989, 147. Cf. Ortega 1996.

  102. 102.

    Searle 2010, 163, 161 fn. 12.

  103. 103.

    Searle 2004, 105, emphases mine – KM Cf. Searle 2003.

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  1. University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Kevin Mulligan

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  1. Center Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Alessandro Salice

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Bernhard Schmid

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Mulligan, K. (2016). Persons and Acts – Collective and Social. From Ontology to Politics. In: Salice, A., Schmid, B. (eds) The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27692-2_2

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