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Alfred Schutz: Appraisals and Developments PDF

153 Pages·1984·7.91 MB·English
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Alfred Schutz: Appraisals and Developments Alfred Schutz: Appraisals and Developments Edited by KURT H. WOLFF Reprinted from Human Studies, Vol. 7(2), 1984 1984 MARTINUS NIJHOFF PUBLISHERS a member of the KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER Distributors jor the United States and Canada: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, USA jor the UK and Ireland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, MTP Press Limited, Falcon House, Queen Square, Lancaster LAI lRN, UK jor all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, Distribution Center, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands ISBN-13: 978-90-247-3114-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-6228-6 DO I: 10. \007/978-94-009-6228-6 Copyright © 1984 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht. Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st Edition 1984 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, P.O. Box 163, 3300 AD Dordrecht, The Netherlands. CONTENTS· Preface by Kurt H. Wolff [VII} Helmut R. Wagner, Schutz's Life Story and the Understanding of his Work [ 1] Jonathan B. Imber, The Well-Informed Citizen: Alfred Schutz and Applied Theory [ 11] David M. Rasmussen, Explorations of the Lebenswelt: Reflections on Schutz and Habermas [ 21] Kurt H. Wolff, Discussion of Wagner, Imber, and Rasmussen [ 27} Ingeborg Katharina Helling, A. Schutz and F. Kaufmann: Sociology Between Science and Interpretation [ 35} Ilja Srubar, On the Origin of 'Phenomenological' Sociology [ 57] Kurt H. Wolff, Surrender-and-Catch and Phenomenology [ 85} Judith Feher, On Surrender, Death, and the Sociology of Knowledge [l05] Funmilayo M. Jones, The Provisional Homecomer [121} Review Section Helmut R. Wagner. Alfred Schutz: An Intellectual Biography (David M. Rasmussen) [143] Burke C. Thomason. Making Sense oj Reification: Alfred Schutz and Constructionist Theory (Timothy Casey) [146] Helmut R. Wagner. Phenomenology oj Consciousness and Sociology oJ the Life-world: An Introductory Study [149] • The page numbers within square brackets indicate the pagination of this book edition. PREFACE This issue of Human Studies is dedicated to Alfred Schutz on the twen ty-fifth anniversary of his death. It also is meant as a fond and admiring salute to one of Schutz's most outstanding students and his intellectual biographer, Helmut R. Wagner, on the occasion ofhis eightieth birthday. The first paper, by Wagner himself, is the first of three that were presented at the session in honor of Alfred Schutz, which was chaired by George Psathas, at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society on March 9, 1984 in Boston. It is based on Wagner's intel lectual biography of Schutz, reviewed in this issue by David M. Ras mussen, and shows how Wagner found the main conceptual tools of this biography in Schutz's own theoretical work. The second paper, by Jonathan B. Imber, presents a fresh and far-reaching interpretation of Schutz's "The Well-Informed Citizen," and the third, by David M. Rasmussen, compares Schutz with Habermas, especially Habermas's most recent major work, Theory of Communicative Action. The dis cussion of these three papers by the present author tries to show that they all touch, despite differences in focus and perspec,tive, on a prob lem in Schutz's conception of phenomenology and social science. In Ingeborg Katharina Helling's essay, the relationship between Al fred Schutz and Felix Kaufmann, and thus the interplay between phenomenology and the positivism of the Vienna Circle, is analyzed. Ilja Srubar's paper, which follows, gives a history of those currents in German social thought that converge on a phenomenological approach to social science, most explicitly presented in Schutz's work. The pa pers by the present author and by Judith Feher do not have Schutz as their central focus but could not have been written without him. The present author attempts to articulate similarities and differences be tween phenomenology, particularly in its Schutzian version, and the idea of "surrender-and-catch." In "Surrender, Death, and the So ciology of Knowledge," Feher also moves in this direction, showing affInities with the idea of "surrender" in Schutz's "we-relation," especially as analyzed by Arthur S. Parsons. The final article by Funmilayo M. Jones is based in Schutz's "The Homecomer," which dates back to the time when he also wrote "The Stranger" and "The Well-Informed Citizen" - and Imber's discussion of the latter well serves Jones's. This discussion develops Schutz's presentation by articulating several types of homecomers and, on the basis of her own experiences, carefully describing some of the stages that one of these types goes through. 105/ [VII] 106 [VIII] This issue contains two reviews of books on Alfred Schutz: Rasmus sen's afore-mentioned article on Wagner's Alfred Schutz: An Intellec tual Biography, and Tim Casey's analysis of Burke C. Thomason's Making Sense of Rei/ication: Alfred Schutz and Constructionist Theo ry; and it concludes with David Rehorick's review of another recent work by Wagner, Phenomenology of Consciousness and Sociology of the Life-world: An Introductory Study. All contributors to this issue hope that this issue will promote inter est in Alfred Schutz's work even further - an interest which has been much stimulated by Helmut Wagner's efforts. Kurt H. Wolff Human Studies 7: 107-116 (1984). © Martinus Nijhotf Publishers, Dordrecht. Printed in the Netherlands. SCHUTZ'S LIFE STORY AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF HIS WORK HELMUT R. WAGNER Hobart and William Smith Colleges I In this paper, I will deal with two issues. The first is an exposition of the general reasoning behind its title; the second is an attempt at showing that this reasoning is significant for the specific objective announced in the title. In other words: I will speak about the matrix I developed while writing Schutz's biogra phy in order to show that it served its purpose not only technically but also theoretically. For the purpose of setting up my agrument, I will reduce my title to a tentative but not exhaustive hypothesis: The biography of Schutz is relevant for the comprehension of his scholarly life work. This assumption links biography, a descriptive account of the course of an individual's life, to the intellectual comprehension of the work a scholar has done during his lifetime. I take 'course of life' and 'lifetime' as references to the same span of calendar time between the dates of birth and death of the person in question. An auxiliary base line for both biography and life work is formed by selected dates in chronological order, e.g., the date of marriage or the publication of a book. Of course, scholarly dates will occur only within a section of a scholar's biographical chronology. But, by definition, a chronology makes not a biography; yet, a scholarly chronology, essential dates for which are contained in the bibliography of an author, suffices for an account of the intrinsic development of his thinking. I will refrain here from dealing with either the hermeneutic approach 108 [2] for which such an account is irrelevant, or with the 'naive' tendency of American intellectuals to read a scholar's works 'flat,' that is, in a completely a-historical fashion. It is clear, then, that an 'intellectual biography,' like the one which I did of Schutz, is more than an attempt at gaining a comprehension of his lifework in the 'historical' perspective of the time sequence in which its components originated. This 'more,' first of all, consists of providing a context of a historical, social, and cultural nature. If contrasted with the intrinsic context of a bibliographic chronology, it must be called extrinsic. For the moment, I will assume that this context forms a background to the account of the course of one person's scholarly development. At the worst, it is a 'literary' embellishment; at best, it is an indirect help for the compre hension of the lifework in question. Any biography paying attention to this historical-social-cultural context, may be called a piece of micro-history. Being a sociologist steeped in the classical German tradition of placing a given sociological subject matter into its historical context, I decided to treat the biogra phy of Schutz not only but also on the micr<rhistorical level. In his case, this entailed both biographical features and such, being charac teristic of his lifetime, and the socio-geographical places at which he came in contact with 'the world at large.' Placing these features on top of the one truly universal feature of any biography, the biological growing and aging processes of any individual as species being - I specify them here as: the given and relatively 'permanent' cultural patterns of age-related social institutions; the much less stable patterns of occupational careers and economic changes of 'making a living' ; more or less violent interruptions of the precarious routines of 'life as usual' through events of macro-historical and macro-social consequences: wars, breakdowns of the economy, political upheavals - all disrupting the lives of millions, bringing death to great many of them; and finally the social, economic, and geographical mobility factors occurring in the lives of modern individuals. They may be co-determined by personal decisions in reaction to possibilities and exigencies, and as such link up to flexible occupational patterns - or else spring from ruthlessly imposed emergencies, converting masses of 'citizens' of countries into refugees who, when lucky, find a new existence in another country. [3] 109 II Some may treat these factors as 'accidentals' having no effects on dedicated philosophical-theoretical thinkers. Others may consider them the determining causes of all philosophizing and theorizing. Being neither a modern Platonist nor a neo-Marxist, I prefer a third position. When I said that I am a socialogist steeped in the classical German tradition, I implied that I consider myself indirectly a student of Max Weber and directly a student of Alfred Schutz. This means that, beyond all socio-historical interests, I am an exponent of Weber's sociology of understanding. Thus, it should not come as a surprise when I declare that I saw 'doing the biography of Schutz' also as an exercise in the sociology of understanding - and that in the 'radicalized' consistency it had gained in the work of Schutz. This decision is responsible for the shift from the label, biography, to that of life story. The first hints of an account written from the perspective of the biographer, the second at one written from the perspective of the subject of the biography. Taken literally, a life story would have to be written by the person who lived and lives it. Its basic literary forms would be either an extensive and continuous diary or else a conscientious autobiography. By the same token, diary-like or autobiographical statements of this person are the only genuine sources for his or her biographer-to-be. The attempt at doing as much justice as possible to the inside per spective of a life story, the biographer will have to pay attention to his subject's in-order-to and because motives, to imposed and intrinsic relevances, to subjective definitions and interpretations of situations, to meaning and meanings; and he will have to approach the subject's social involvements in terms of concrete interactional ties and in terms of situational intersubjectivity in its potential recicprocity, its chance of mutual motivational - and possibly emotional - understanding. I will add to these points the notion that the subject did enter any of the uncountable situations who formed the links of his lifestory with the unique combination of his experiences in all preceding situations which, in a sense, determine his comprehension of and his conduct in the Now and Thus of each of these situations. With this, you will have guessed, I have indicated some essential progammatic points for preparing an outside account of the inside life story of any individual, points which we find in Schutz's own writing. At least, I felt at times that he had provided me with extensive instruc tions for writing his life story. 110 [4] Basically, I executed the biography of Schutz as a combination of the socio-historical expositions, as indicated in my initial considerations, with that attempt of reconstructing his life story along the lines I have just pointed out. This said, I can now restate the central thesis of this paper: The mundane life which Schutz lived was relevant for the forming of the forming of his scholarly life plan as well as for the actual content of its execution in the successive phases of his life story. One may grant the plausibility of what I have said about life stories and even about the possibility of their reconstruction by an outside biographer but discard the presupposition of my central thesis: that the life story of a scholar is essential for his intellectual biography. I hope that my expositions in the second half of this paper will lend plausibility to this thesis. At the moment, I will only add one meta-sociological remark: Most social acientists, not to mention philosophers, are keenly aware of their 'scientific' objectives and their cognitive operations but ignore or take for granted the fact they they - prior to and outside of being scholars - grew up, lived and live in an everyday world and ever return to it or temporarily enter other 'provinces of meaning.' They grew up in 'their' socio-cuItural world and accumulated crucial life experiences in it, like 'everybody else,' before they decided to study a specific 'discipline' and 'become' a sociologist, or whatever. This decision itself is made for extra-sociological, etc.-, reasons. And when they d9 not aspire to be technicians in their field, but turn into scholars, they will select problems and topics for their investigations which spring from their life experiences in general. If, in their scholarly work, they adhere to an ethical rule of objectivity, so only after they have made subjective decisions concerning problems and direction of their scholarly endeavors. III How did changing historical-social conditions enter into Schutz's life story, and how were his basic scholarly decisions influenced by the com bined of both? Schutz came from a Viennese middle-class family, grew up in the rich musical-cultural tradition of the city, and went through

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