Abstract
In contemporary social theory, social reality is generally conceived as a meaningful construction. Hence, despite the criticism exercised in Derrida’s deconstruction and in postmodern thought in general, hermeneutics represents an indispensable methodological tool in the social sciences since it aims at basic constitutive processes of society. Relying on the Schutzian constitutive theory of the life-world, this paper deals with the main steps of this constitution, reveals their pragmatic motivation, and elaborates on the methodological consequences for hermeneutic practices in the social sciences.
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Notes
- 1.
TN: The German word “Wirken” has various connotations. It could also be translated as the working or the acting of the body, in the sense of having an effect on and interacting with the world. Kurt H. Wolff, in his review of Ilja Srubar’s Kosmion, translates it as “gearing into the world” Wolff 1991: 498.
- 2.
TN The German fremd or Fremde is usually translated as strange, alien or foreign. Even though fremd here certainly also has connotations of these latter expressions – connotations which we might perhaps refer to as those of the uncanny –, it is in the first instance a more neutral or objective description of that which is simply external to myself. We could say that when we experience the alienness of the world distinct from our self, we have become strangers (On the special case of the experience of being a stranger facing a foreign human community with its constitutive “truisms” (501), cf. the abovementioned Schutz-essay “The Stranger”).
- 3.
TN: For a detailed discussion of these concepts cf. chapter III (“Knowledge of the Life-World. Relevance and Typicality”) of vol. 1 of Schutz’s The Structures of the Life-World (Schutz and Luckmann 1973).
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Srubar, I. (2014). Pragmatic Theory of the Life-World and Hermeneutics of the Social Sciences. In: Staudigl, M., Berguno, G. (eds) Schutzian Phenomenology and Hermeneutic Traditions. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 68. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6034-9_6
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