Abstract
The aim of this article is to make a contribution to the reflection on the “interpretive turn” within Austrian economics going back to Alfred Schutz’s notion of life-world sketched out in his first book The Phenomenology of the Social World. In the context of the discussions on how hermeneutics can enrich economics, the problem of objectivism in the production of knowledge is emphasized, i.e., the danger of substitution of social reality upheld by social scientists. Although Schutz’s links with the Austrian School are well known, specialized literature, has not found in Schutz’s work comprehensive solution to the problem that objectivism sets forth regarding the production of knowledge in social sciences. In this article we aim to recover the radical character that Schutz granted his project on phenomenological foundation of social science concepts based on a thorough philosophical analysis of the features of the life-world. We will argue that Schutz sets off based on the problem objectivism in the production of knowledge and offers an answer geared towards the epistemic claim to the life-world. In this regard Schutz draws up a solution that brings together both at the life-world level and at the scientific reflection level, the subjective and objective, the aprioristic and the historical aspects of experience in a phenomenologically based continuum. Finally, and deeply connected to these considerations, new conceptual elements are brought forth to think of the problem of social order.
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Notes
The original title of the book was Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert translated the phrase “Der sinnhafte Aufbau” as “Phenomenology” (Wilson 2005: 20). An appropriate translation should be The Meaningful Structure of the Social World.
The challenge that the hermeneutical reflection sets to the Austrian theoretical approach is related to “three principles or tenents of the school: subjectivism, methodological individualism, and unintended consequences and spontaneous order” (Boettke 1998; Lavoie 1994). The problems present in the Austrian tradition mainly refer to atomism and objectivism.
One of Alfred Schutz’s most important contribution to the methodology of social science was his introduction of a scale of ideal types based on their degree of anonymity (Knudsen 2004: 49).
See also (Boettke et al. 2001).
Although the inquiry on the reasons behind which many authors usually overlook an analysis of the notion of the life-world in Schutz’s work is not the objective of our reflection, it is possible to recover some of the observations that could lead to an answer. For example, Mote (2001) recovers Gorman’s vision who argues that “the foundation of Schütz’s phenomenological approach is the Lebenswelt, which Schütz considers a first-order construct. Since we cannot experience the Lebenswelt directly, Schütz merely assumes its existence and proof of its existence is its manifestation in social reality—a quite tautologous solution” (Mote 2001). In this sense, Boettke and Koppl (2001) point out to the difficulty in economic theory to deal with topics such as inner time consciousness, durée, etc.: “In it, we read of Husserl’s ‘inner time consciousness’ and Bergson’s ‘durée,’ of the ‘essence of meaning in its primordial sense’ and the ‘reflective glance’ that ‘constitutes’ a portion of life’s ‘elapsed flow’ as meaningful. What economist could feel at home here?” (Boettke and Koppl 2001).
In his letters to Parsons, Schutz points to the possible “confusion among three essential categories of the epistemology of sciences: First: facts and phenomena as they are given to the human mind. Secondly: interpretation of these facts and phenomena within the framework of a conceptual scheme. Thirdly: statements about the facts and their interpretation” (Schutz and Parsons 1978).
“I think that a much more appropriate understanding of the work of Alfred Schutz will emerge if we view him as a long-standing member of the Austrian School in Economics. In fact, Schutz became a member of the Ludwig von Mises’ seminar group as early as 1922 and remained an active member for more than 10 years” (Knudsen 2004: 54). See also Barber (2004), Kurrild-Klitgaard (2001, 2003), Boettke (1998), Koppl (1997), Foss (1996) and Prendergast (1986).
See Antiseri (2006) for an insightful analysis of the dualism between economic theory and the practical activity of economic agents.
“The praxeology (…) is theoretical and systematic; it is a non historical science. Its scope is the human action as such, no matter the individual circumstances of the acts. It is purely formal and general. Its statement does not derive from experience. They are like the statements of logics and mathematics, a priori, they are not subject to verification or falsification based on experience (…) Praxeological cognition is conceptual, it is cognition of ‘universals and categories’ (…) All that is needed for the deduction of all the praxeogical theorems is knowledge of the essence of human action” (Scarano 2004: 6).
“Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action”.
“Biographical and textual evidence shows that Schutz’s methodological goals for his first book, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (published in 1932), were shaped by the epistemological debates within the Austrian School of Economics, rather than some abstract and unmotivated attempt to ‘synthesize’ Weber and Husserl” (Prendergast 1986: 1). “The field of both arguments [Henri Bergson and Edmund Husserl] should not be sketched out only by this philosophical horizon but, beyond that, by Schutz relationship with the Ludwig Mises’s Circle and by the Austrian School of Economics represented there” (Srubar 2007: 151). [Unless otherwise indicated translations are my own]
In his Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience (1889), Bergson proceeded from space-time conceptions to inner duration. Schutz reversed the procedure and began with pure duration (Wagner 1977: 189).
These can be variously identified: e.g. ‘inner’ and ‘outer’; ‘consciousness’ as non-discrete flow and ‘social actor’ constrained to discrete achievements by space and time. On the theoretical level, the disjunction to be bridged was that between introspection, claiming (or at least, seeking) a description of subjectivity from the actor’s perspective; and observation, claiming (or, again, at least seeking) an explanation from the sociologist’s viewpoint (Langsdorf 1985: 318).
In his Intellectual Biography, Helmut Wagner (1983) describes how Schutz begins his contact Husserl’s work. According to Wagner, “during the Bergsonian period, Kaufmann had repeatedly reminded Schutz that he would have to turn to Husserl for a reliable foundation for his endeavor. But it was only in 1928, after he had to put the project of the life forms aside, that he agreed to do so. The latter’s Vorlesungen zur Philosophie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (Lectures on Inner Time-Consciousness) had just been published, and he and Kaufmann decided to study them together. From this book, they reached for the Formale und trancendentale Logik (Formal and Transcendental Logic), which was published in 1929. In 1930, Schutz went back to Ideen I (Ideas I) and the Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations). Altogether, the friends spent two years in their most intensive study of Husserl’s work” (Wagner 1983: 35).
The critique to Bergson allows us to point out the unfounded character of the analysis proposed by Gorman (1977), since the existence of the Lebenswelt is not a tautology merely assumed and detached from experience. Based on the Husserlian categories, Schutz seeks the origin of this world in the subjective correlations by means of the notion of intentionality.
It is important here to recover Footnote 65 on PSW, “We have translated Akt as “Act.” It is to be contrasted with Handlung, which we have translated as “act” and which has the sense of completed deed, and with Handeln, which we have translated as “action,” in accordance with Schutz’s later English usage.” “First a project is sketched out in an intentional Act. Then the project is brought to fulfillment by action. The result is an act or completed deed. This act is itself a meaning-context, for it gives unity to all intentional Acts and all the actions involved in its performance” (PSW: 75–76. Italics in the original).
Intersubjectivity is a fundamental moment of the life-world (Backhaus 2005: 385).
“The phenomenologically described structures of the life-world represent a kind of matrix, which serves as a tertium comparationis for intercultural comparisons. They are aprioris on a very basic level (…) But there is no proposition whatsoever as regards the contents of these formal features; the contents can vary substantially in different social, cultural and historical contexts and have to be explored empirically” (Eberle 2009: 502. Italics in the original).
And just as in the cases of the Thou-orientation and the We-relationship, so also with the They-orientation can we speak of different stages of concretization and actualization.
“He [Schutz] explains how the types constructed by life-world actors to understand their Contemporaries, Predecessors, and Sucessors anticipate the social-scientific ideal types of the social scientists whose task is to construct an objective, observer’s meaning context out of the subjective meaning-context of everyday actors” (Barber 2004: 31).
“The insight that life-worldly or mundane typifications are the foundation of all sociological typifications is one of Schutz’s most significant contributions” (Wagner 1980).
Schutz shared with Mises “the search for aprioris, however in quite a different sense. It is in this point where the life-world analysis and praxeology have major differences” (Eberle 2009). Schutz questioned the aprioristic character of the propositions of praxeology since he considered it merely hypothetical. As a consequence, he replaced Mises’s aprioristic conception with a Husserlian concept of a priori: “Aprioris can not be formulated in the form of propositions, such as laws and principles, but are to be found on a much more fundamental level, namely in the constitutive features of the life-world” (Eberle 2009: 501. Italics in the original).
According to Prendergast, Schutz “substituted Husserl’s theory of generalization and formalization for direct intuition (…) real essences are replaced by heuristic principles of great generality placed at the head of a deductive chain” (Prendergast 1986: 12). Here it is important to mention Kaufmann’s important roll in shaping Schutz’s interpretation. He had established the distinction between phenomenological conception of the a priori from the Aristotelian in a way that directly mirrors Schutz’s interpretation of the a priori character of marginal utility. However, although Prendergast lays out the importance of the processes of generalization and formalization, he overlooks the meaningful structure of the life-world. As stated by Srubar (2007), Prendergast understands the phenomenological approach merely as a theory of “generalization and formalization.” From there it comes as no surprise that he thinks that Schutz had eliminated Weber’s Wertbeziehung (value relation) as a principle for the methodology of concept formation in the social sciences, instead of seeing Schutzian phenomenological turn towards the structure of relevance of the life-world (Srubar 2007: 167).
“(…) in his Phenomenology of the Social World, he [Schutz] identifies the principle of marginal utility as part of the system relevancies of economics” (Eberle 2009: 510).
“The search for aprioris in Schutz’s life-world analysis is therefore different in character than the search for aprioris in Mises’s praxeology” (Eberle 2009: 502).
“Schutz here reflected in phenomenological style on the enterprise of economic theorizing and situated it with reference to its own non theoretical horizon, namely, the life-world out of which it arises and from which it abstracts. Ironically, Mises, for all his reflection on the a priori epistemological status of his own economic claims, fell short of adequate self-reflection insofar as he neglected this life-world ground of economic theory. By marking off the life-world from theory, Schutz was also able to offer an alternative definition of economic theory” (Barber 2004: 56).
“Is the whole problem of relevance, which has kept cropping up again and again in the present study. The definite clarification of this problem will be possible only through an over-all phenomenological analysis, which nevertheless can be begun within the field of the social sciences” (PSW: 249).
Here Schutz refers to the apperceptual, appresentational, referential and contextual or interpretative. For a detailed description of the four schemes, see Schutz (Schutz 1962: 269–270).
See (Srubar 2009).
In the context of his discussion with Parsons regarding the problem of normative order, Schutz states that “in my opinion the whole problem group of ultimate ends, norms and values disappears when we introduce the conceptual scheme of subjective life plans, subsuming it under the principle of relevance” (Schutz 1996: 19).
See (Dreher and López 2014. Forthcoming).
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López, D.G. The epistemic claim to the life-world: Alfred Schutz and the debates of the austrian school of economics. Rev Austrian Econ 29, 177–203 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-014-0280-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-014-0280-x