Alfred Schutz: Appraisals and Developments

153 Pages·1984·7.91 MB·English

by  Helmut R. Wagner (auth.)

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
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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
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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