Alfred Schutz's Influence on American Sociologists and Sociology

Alfred Schutz's influence on American sociologists and sociology in the 1960s and 1970s is traced through the examination of the work of two of his students, Helmut Wagner and Peter Berger, and of Harold Garfinkel with whom he met and corresponded over a number of years. The circumstances of Schutz's own academic situation, particularly the short period of his academic career in the United States and his location at the New School, are examined to consider how and in what ways he was constrained from exerting an even wider influence. The two major areas of influence in American sociology that are examined are the sociology of knowledge and the early development of ethnomethodology.     

Alfred Schutz: Transcendence, Symbolic Intersubjectivity, and Moral Value

This article uses the writings of Alfred Schutz as catalysts to analyze three distinctive modes of transcendences operative in human experience. Particular attention is given to the role symbolic awareness plays in the formation and embodiment of moral value. I argue that Schutz's theory of symbols is helpful in illuminating the way shared horizons of value meaning and collective moral purpose can occur in relation to cultural and geographical anonymity. I then draw upon the moral theory of H. Richard Niebuhr to highlight the positive role that symbolic value horizons play in preventing ethnocentric world-views and in promoting common centers of discourse and visions of wholeness.     

Systematic innovation and social philosophy

Corbett's “Europe and the Social Order”; makes two claims: that industrial societies are marked by “systematic innovation”; and that, as a consequence, our inherited social doctrines are obsolete and must be replaced. The first claim is true, but the second is false: it is not the case that social doctrines are “consistent”; only with certain kinds of social order: we cannot therefore say that innovating societies either preclude or compel any particular social doctrines. They do not invalidate a priori doctrine, though they undermine belief in it. It is therefore less important to attack such doctrine than to study innovation empirically.     

Henri Bergson: Evolution,time and philosophy

Evolutionary theory is hindered by the conflict between the apparently antagonistic principles of its two founding figures, Darwin and Lamarck. Bergson's Creative Evolution outlines the means of transcending this impasse. If the evolutionary process is conceived as enduring then the atomistic model of static genetic states is never fully realisable. In the light of this, Bergson considers the germ‐plasm to be essentially “fluid.” If there is to be influence on the germ‐line it will be primarily in terms of the manner in which the genetic data is unfolded. In order to designate this influence Bergson introduces the concept of the “tendency.” The tendency will be explicated in relation to contemporary evolutionary biology. However, as the concept signifies that which is given only in the duration in which information is elaborated, it is precluded from representation. Bergson demonstrates that it is the evolutionary principle of continuous transformation which constitutes the limit to any scientific of view. For this reason, science needs to be complemented by a philosophical account of the duration of process.     

Intersubjectivity and interaction in the analytic relationship: a mainstream view

The authors conceptualize intersubjectivity as a meta-theory that reflects the inherent nature of human relatedness and is conceptually independent of any particular theory of mind or school of psychoanalysis. Their view of intersubjectivity joins the emotional life of the analyst to that of the patient and places the analytic relationship at the center of the analytic process. They contrast intersubjectivity with traditional classical conflict theory so as to clarify the relevance of intersubjectivity for psychoanalytic clinical theory and therapeutic practice. In so doing, they hope to direct analysts more firmly toward the study of the unconscious dyadic contributions to the affective, inactive, and interactive dimensions of the analytic situation and their impact upon the patient's actions within and experience of the analytic relationship. To illustrate their thesis, two hours from an analysis are presented in detail.     

Active music classes in infancy enhance musical, communicative and social development

Previous studies suggest that musical training in children can positively affect various aspects of development. However, it remains unknown as to how early in development musical experience can have an effect, the nature of any such effects, and whether different types of music experience affect development differently. We found that random assignment to 6 months of active participatory musical experience beginning at 6 months of age accelerates acquisition of culture-specific knowledge of Western tonality in comparison to a similar amount of passive exposure to music. Furthermore, infants assigned to the active musical experience showed superior development of prelinguistic communicative gestures and social behaviour compared to infants assigned to the passive musical experience. These results indicate that (1) infants can engage in meaningful musical training when appropriate pedagogical approaches are used, (2) active musical participation in infancy enhances culture-specific musical acquisition, and (3) active musical participation in infancy impacts social and communication development.     

The relationship between personal philosophy and effectiveness in counsellors

This study investigates the relationship between the effectiveness of counsellors and their personal philosophy, beliefs and attitudes. There is a review of the relevant literature concerning the qualities and attributes of effective counsellors, with a detailed examination of studies of counsellor philosophy. Two groups (n = 14 and n = 19) of counsellors on training courses were studied. Each participant wrote an account of a ‘Helping Relationship Incident’ which was rated on the 12 dimensions of counsellor ‘perceptual organization’ developed by Combs & Soper (1963). Course tutors gave ratings of the counselling effectiveness of their students. Rank order correlations between judgements of counsellor effectiveness and ratings of perceptual organization/philosophy were made. In both groups statistically significant results were found, adding weight to the hypothesis that a ‘person-centred’ perceptual organization or belief system is an important factor in counsellor effectiveness. The implications for counsellor selection and training are discussed, and suggestions are made for further research on this topic.     

Some open problems in the philosophy of space and time

This article is concerned to formulate some open problems in the philosophy of space and time that require methods characteristic of mathematical traditions in the foundations of geometry for their solution. In formulating the problems an effort has been made to fuse the separate traditions of the foundations of physics on the one hand and the foundations of geometry on the other. The first part of the paper deals with two classical problems in the geometry of space, that of giving operationalism an exact foundation in the case of the measurement of spatial relations, and that of providing an adequate theory of approximation and error in a geometrical setting. The second part is concerned with physical space and space-time and deals mainly with topics concerning the axiomatic theory of bodies, the operational foundations of special relativity and the conceptual foundations of elementary physics.     

Revival and significance of political philosophy at present time

Taking a panoramic view on the history of modern philosophy, we can learn that political philosophy, a new arena for modern philosophy, has become an important field in philosophical studies since the later half of the 20th century. As far as the problem domain of political philosophy is concerned, political philosophy is only a special form of philosophy. The revival of political philosophy, however, indicates that philosophical inspection of political matters has regained legitimacy, and also means the restaging of philosophy as a knowledge type at modern times. In one sense, we can view the newly-revived political philosophy as typical modern philosophy, because its problem domain, its unique angle of looking into the life world and its ideal concern about the actual world make it one of the best ways in which we can reflect the existence of mankind in modern times. __________ Translated from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Studies), 2005 (6) by Teng Jianhui