Alfred Schutz’ Theory of Communicative Action

This paper addresses the notion of communicative action on the basis of Alfred Schutz’ writings. In Schutz’ work, communication is of particular significance and its importance is often neglected by phenomenologists. Communication plays a crucial role in his first major work, the Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt from 1932, yet communication is also a major feature in his unfinished works which were later completed posthumously by Thomas Luckmann: The Structures of the Life World (1973, 1989). In these texts, Schutz sometimes refers to “communicative action,” and he comes to ascribe a crucial role to communication within the domain of the life world he calls everyday life. Based on Schutz’ texts, I shall first attempt to critically reconstruct the defining features of his notion of communication and communicative action. As a result, it emerges that Schutz’ notion of communication, particularly in its early incarnation, seems to be, at first glance, characterized by a dichotomy between virtual communication, that is communicative action in a narrow sense, and non-virtual communication. As I want to show with respect to the seemingly established dichotomous distinction between “mediated” and “immediate social action,” Schutz himself started to overcome this dichotomy. Based on this thesis, I will try to sketch a basic outline of a theory of communicative action, a theory less formulated by Schutz’ than built on Schutz’ writings. As the idea of communicative action, and particularly the transgression of the distinction between mediated and immediate action, affects the very structures of the life-world described by Schutz and Luckmann, I will ultimately demonstrate that any mundane phenomenology of the life-world requires a triangulatory method.     

Dionysian Spirit as “The Social Self”: Alfred Schutz’s Insightful (Mis)use of Nietzsche

ABSTRACT

Recent publications on Alfred Schutz suggest the importance of his musical thought for understanding his general viewpoint on intersubjectivity. Developing this proposition further, my article focuses on one aspect of Schutz’s writings on music: his attempts to amalgamate the aesthetic oppositions of the Dionysian/Apollonian by Friedrich Nietzsche and inner duration/spatialized time by Henri Bergson. Despite the seeming distortion of the initial meaning of the Dionysian impulse, I suggest that Schutz’s employment remains faithful to the aesthetic and cognitive theory of early Nietzsche. To substantiate this, I draw a link between Nietzsche’s early theory of aesthetic cognition and the neurophysiology of the mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, the way Schutz applied the Dionysian/Apollonian opposition to the problem of musical communication made his musical thought prefigure some neuro-scientifically inspired discussions of the present-day, like the one on joint attention. Schutz tackled the key paradox: why the experience of music can be shared but not directly communicated.     

SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE THEOLOGY OF DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

The German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer is not widely known for engaging with scientific thought, having been heavily influenced by Karl Barth's celebrated stance against natural theology. However, during the period of his maturing theology in prison Bonhoeffer read a significant scientific work, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker's The World View of Physics. From this he gained two major insights for his theological outlook. First, he realized that the notion of a "God of the gaps" is futile, not just in science but in other areas of human inquiry. Second, he felt that an infinite universe, as considered by science, would be self-subsistent and could exist as if there were no God. Bonhoeffer replaced Barth's radical critique of religion with the even more extreme view that it is a mere passing phase in history that grown-up humanity can dispense with. At the same time Bonhoeffer began an important critique of Barth's reaction, namely, the latter's retreat to a "positivism of revelation." While Bonhoeffer did not go quite as far as one might like, his approach opened up hopeful avenues for an answer to "the liberal question" and even a revived place for some kind of natural theology.     

RE-SITUATING SCOTIST THOUGHT

In "Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance", Catherine Pickstock presents several levels of a critique against Scotist thought. My response focuses upon the assumptions that ground her critique. In sum, I think that Pickstock's argument errs on two counts. While her contemporary critique may be better lodged upon the interpreters and not the Franciscan himself, her much more elaborated critique of Scotus is not well founded. I conclude my essay with a few comments about the danger of historical categories such as "voluntarism" or "intellectualism" for any authentic retrieval of a medieval thinker.     

A social mind: The context of John Turner’s work and its influence

We review John Turner’s contribution to social psychology and his ongoing influence on the field. We provide an account of his research and theorising framed by the two major theoretical frameworks which he developed: social identity theory (together with Henri Tajfel) and self-categorisation theory. We elaborate the contribution of his work in developing an understanding of intergroup relations (in social identity theory) and specifying the social nature of the self, the salience of social identities, and of the importance of social identity for social influence, stereotyping, power, and leadership (within self-categorisation theory). We then locate these research programmes within Turner’s broader meta-theoretical goal of addressing major problems, issues, and themes within social psychology. These centre on (a) a critique of the pervasive anti-collectivism within much of social psychology, (b) a normative/political agenda for social change, and (c) a commitment to the social nature of the individual mind. These themes explicitly or implicitly infused his research and continue to inspire much of the work in the theoretical tradition that he pioneered.     

Linguistic Archipelago and (Its?) History

In this article I examine Jean–François Lyotard's conception of history, its philosophical presuppositions, and its implications. As his conception's most crucial implicit assumptions I consider Lyotard's account of language and his notion of agonistics and dissent. Concerning its implications, I consider the nominalist and relativist conclusions Lyotard's theory may engender if thought through to its end, as well as the possibilities it opens up for ethics and justice for alterity, or otherness, via a new notion of human history. My aim is to show how Lyotard advances philosophical thought about history and to examine whether he succeeds in delivering the goods he promises. I conclude with suggestions for an alternative approach. The main thesis of the article is that Lyotard's metacritique of past accounts of human history is pertinent and apposite but, because of some negative implications of certain implicit assumptions on which he relies to articulate this critique, it appears inadequate in some respects. I argue that it is possible to promote a critique of older notions of human history along Lyotardian lines and to preserve the merits of Lyotard's critique for a sensitive and nonlogocentric approach to otherness via another route, one that is not committed to Lyotard's agonistics and incommensurability of language games.     

Approaches to the study of the world of everyday life

Conclusion I have only begun to sketch out some of the differences between the work of Harold Garfinkel and Alfred Schutz. As the work of ethnomethodology accumulates and as other commentators begin to explore their similarities and differences, a clearer picture will, I am certain, emerge. For now, I shall only conclude with the following brief summary. As Natanson (1966, p. 152) has noted, “for Schutz, mundane existence is structured by the typifications of man in the natural standpoint. Common sense is then an achievement rather than something simply given.” The main issues with which Schutz was concerned were how to investigate social reality and comprehend it (Natanson, 1966): …in terms which do not violate its character. How is warranted knowledge possible of the experiential world defined by the natural standpoint? The answer Schutz offers is by way of a reconstruction of the typifications of mundane life, but the underlying theme he is exploring is the intentional nature of consciousness in its abstractive and ideational modalities. Typification as such, rather than types and constructs, is the underlying concern. By tracing out the phenomenological genesis of typification from its prepredicative grounds to its self-conscious activity in generalization, he has provided an approach to an epistemology of the social world. [p. 154] Garfinkel, on the other hand, seeks to trace out the genesis of the perception, interpretation, and accomplishment of social occasions and their settings by members of society as they live and operate within the natural attitude in the world of everyday life. Their activities are taken without question as whatever social reality is for them. The processes whereby they accomplish these activities so as to make them recognizable become his main concern and it is the discovery and reconstruction of these processes, under the ethnomethodological reduction, of which his findings consist. By describing the methods used by members, he provides an approach to the methodology of the social world, that is, an ethno or members' methodology, for the construction, interpretation, and recognition of the social world. Presented to the Sheffield Conference—“Theorising Language and the Life World” sponsored by the British Society for Phenomenology. An earlier version of this paper has been published in German in R. Grathoff and W. Sprondel (eds)Alfred Schutz und die Idee des Alltags fur die Sozial wissenschaften, Enke Verlag, Stuttgart, 1976. I am grateful to D. Laurence Wieder, Jeff Coulter and Neil Wilson for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Mysticism,Reality, Illusion,and the Freudian Critique of Religion

Freud's critique of religion cannot be fully understood if his ontogenetic perspective is explored outside of his phylogenetic perspective. The former allows for illusionistic thought processes that are orthogonal to reality claims. The latter requires consideration of empirical claims to truth within a social psychological perspective. It is only the phylogenetic perspective that allows Freud to maintain that religion is delusional, whether or not it is also illusional. Freud's rejection of "as if" philosophies as exemplified by Vaihinger is based upon his refusal to allow religious truth claims to escape their empirical, social foundations. Recent efforts to revive psychological theories of religion rooted only in illusionistic thought, as exemplified in the use of Winnicott's conceptualization, must confront social psychological issues similar to those articulated within Freud's phylogenetic view. A mystical reading of Freud is suggested in which claims to truth within psychoanalysis, science, and religion can be confronted in an empirical and inherently social manner.     

Modern and postmodern challenges to game theory

Equilibrium game theory borrows from neoclassical economics its rationality concept which it immediately puts to work in order to produce the basic results it needs for building an elaborate narrative of social interaction. This paper focuses on some recent objections to game theory's use of rationality assumptions in general, and of backward induction and subgame perfection in particular, and interprets them in the light of the postmodern critique of the grand meta-narratives which social theorists often rely on for social explanation. The paper presents a defence of game theory which seeks to accommodate the postmodern critique. However, it goes on to show that such a defence is illegitimate and claims that the problem lies with the faulty conceptualisation of the main concept on which game theory rests: that of Reason. Having established the nature of the problem, it considers three alternative interpretations (Humean, postmodern and Hegelian) of why the problem resists logical solutions and of its significance for social theory.I am indebted to Bob Sugden for introducing me to rational deviance, to Roberto Finelli for some important associations, to Shaun Hargreaves-Heap for the time we spent arguing about the postmodern condition, and to Joseph Halevi for his dialectical intransigence. Nonetheless, this paper should be blamed entirely on me.     

Attachment Theory, Religious Beliefs, and the Limits of Reason

This paper takes a new look at Freud’s critique of religious beliefs and wishes from the perspective of current attachment theory, particularly with reference to Peter Fonagy. By reconceptualizing Freud’s critique, it can be argued that he anticipated some current empirical studies in religiosity and attachment, and that his critique accurately describes the religiosity of insecurely attached individuals. The paper argues that current social theories, especially as represented in the work of Jürgen Habermas, about religion and its role in politics and the public sphere could benefit from incorporating insights from attachment theory.     

Paranoia or Persecution: The Case of Schreber

Many psychoanalysts base their understanding of paranoia upon Freud's analysis of Schreber. Freud thought Schreber became paranoid as a "defense" against homosexual love. Freud, and those who analyzed Schreber after him, neglected an important source of data — the writings of Schreber's father about child-rearing. The father had been an eminent German pedagogue.
I show some striking similarities between the father's methods of rearing children and some of the son's strange experiences for which he was considered paranoid.I infer from reading the father's writings that he persecuted Schreber. Schreber did not imagine he was persecuted; he was persecuted.
I propose a transactional theory of paranoia to explain Schreber's experiences. I link his experiences with his father's behavior. I part company here with all previous analyses of Schreber's paranoia. If my theory also explains other cases of paranoia, its effects could, and should be widespread.     

Critique,Finitude and the Importance of Susceptibility: A Rossian Approach to Interpreting Kant on Pleasure

In this paper, I take Philip Rossi’s robust interpretation of critique as an interpretive guide for thinking generally about how to interpret Kant’s texts. I reflect first upon what might appear to be a minor technical issue: how best to translate the term Fähigheit when Kant utilizes it in reference to the human experience of pleasure and displeasure. Reflection upon this technical issue will, however, end up being a case study in how important it is when we are interpreting Kant’s texts to have Rossi’s focus on human finitude in the background. The terrain for these reflections on human finitude will be the realm of feelings of pleasure and displeasure. And the result will be that, counter to recent interpreters, like Elizondo (2014), who have suggested that Kant could welcome a thoroughly active conception of rational feeling, we must instead, as guided by Kant’s commitment to human finitude (and really his commitment to Transcendental Idealism itself), remember that every feeling for Kant—even the most rational of feelings, like the moral feeling of respect, or the pleasure he notes that we take in the proper functioning of one’s virtuous rational self—must be understood within the purview and constraints of the finite and sensibly-affected human being. I hope, then, that this brief reflection can be taken as one small piece of that larger story Rossi so aptly describes in his book, the story which answers the question of “What is critique?” in a way that insists upon but also simultaneously celebrates the centrality of finitude in human existence.

     

‘The Egg of Columbus’?How Fourier's social theory exerted a significant (and problematic) influence on the formation of Marx's anthropology and social critique

In scholarship on the history of philosophy, it is widely assumed that Charles Fourier was a utopian socialist who could not have exerted a significant influence on the development of Karl Marx's thought. Indeed, both Marx and Engels seem to have advanced this view. In contrast, I argue that in 1844 when Marx was developing his anthropology and social critique, he relied upon Fourier's thought to supply a key assumption. After establishing this connection, I explain why Marx's tacit reliance on Fourier creates a problematic undercurrent in his thought.     

Crossing the Finite Provinces of Meaning. Experience and Metaphor

Schutz’s references to literature and arts in his theoretical works are manifold. But literature and theory are both a certain kind of a finite province of meaning, that means they are not easily accessible from the paramount reality of everyday life. Now there is another kind of referring to literature: metaphorizing it. Using it, as may be said with Lakoff and Johnson, to understand and to experience one kind of thing in terms of another. Literally metapherein means “to carry over”. Metaphorizing in this view is then a specific kind of border-crossing between different provinces of meaning. That poses two questions: 1. What means finiteness of those provinces of meaning, what kind of border crossings are possible? What is the ground for metaphorizing meaning? 2. Could this concept used for founding a theory of the constitution of the societal and of society, that overcomes the dichotomy of structure/agency? These questions will be answered with one example in view: Schutz’ report to Kaufmann of his first visit of Husserl describing his experience as feeling like Wilhelm Meister at the Society of the Tower. In a first step this metaphor is presented together with some crumbs of metaphor theory. In a second step these crumbs will be connected to Husserl’s concept of experience. After developing a short overview over Schutz’ “finite provinces of meaning,” the relation of experience, metaphors to the intersubjectivity of these provinces in their dependence from writing and printing is discussed.     

CHRISTIANITY AND POSSIBILITY: ON KEARNEY'S THE GOD WHO MAY BE

Abstract: This essay interprets and responds to Richard Kearney's metaphysics of possibility and hermeneutics of religion against the background of Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God and the theodicy problem. Kearney's work is thus read as an interesting but ultimately problematic attempt to preserve or perhaps reinstate religious thought after the modern critique of idols. In addition, his positions are compared and contrasted with some of authors with whom he seems to be in limited agreement (for example, Plotinus, Hillesum) as well as some with whom he clearly breaks (for example, Girard, Sölle).     

Reading Derrida with Daya Krishna: Postmodern Trends in Contemporary Indian Philosophy

In his published lectures Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia (2012), Daya Krishna criticizes postmodern thought and especially the writings of Jacques Derrida. By outlining similarities between the two, I would claim that, indeed, it was Daya Krishna’s unexpected proximity to Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’ project that triggered his scathing critique of the latter. Moreover, Daya Krishna’s response to Derrida reveals an ongoing inner conflict in his own thinking. On the one hand, he provides us with a harsh critique of Derrida the ‘postmodern’; on the other hand, he concedes that the ‘modern’ notion of knowledge has been totally transformed, and the ‘deconstruction’ of its old formulations was the major catalyst that provoked and directed his own philosophical enterprise in the last years of his life, reformulating knowledges (in the plural). Reconstructing in this way, the dialogue which never happened might prove beneficial, not only for understanding the distinctive works of its participants, but also for carrying their writings and us one step further towards a productive, ‘relevant’ philosophical discourse in the twenty-first century.     

Max Eitingon and a Question of Politics

Max Eitingon is thought not to have left behind original theoretical work, despite the fact that he wrote some 40 articles and a dozen psychoanalytic congress reports. He has been almost forgotten over the years, even though he occupied an important political place in the history of the psychoanalytic movement. In recent times, he has again become a subject of attention. In this article the author takes a look at Eitingon as an activist who was intensely involved in the social and political struggles of his time. He represents the political aspect of psychoanalysis on two counts: first, within the psychoanalytic movement, where he had a particular role in the institutionalizing of psychoanalysis, and, second, in relating it to wider social and political ends.     

Appresentation and Simultaneity: Alfred Schutz on Communication between Phenomenology and Pragmatics

In his theory of communication Schutz exhibits a significant tension between two fundamental perspectives, phenomenology and pragmatism, and in the long run he fails to reconcile the contradictory implications these perspectives have with regard to his model of interaction.The main problem seems to be the notion of sense-constitution. Schutz develops two distinguishable accounts of constitution: an egological one and a model based on the phenomenon of direct interaction of empirical subjects. Two key concepts are related to these different modes of constitution: the model of appresentation with regard to language, symbols and signs, and the model of synchronisation as triangulation of streams of consciousness and outward action sequences. They are analyzed as significant for two different methods and two different theories of communication. I propose some reasons for Schutz's insistence on a phenomenological account of the ego and the constitution of sense, and offer a brief sketch of an alternative strategy that is implicit in Schutz's theory.     

Erikson's General and Adult Developmental Revisions of Freudian Thought: “Outward,Forward, Upward”

In this paper I explore Erik Erikson's revisions of Freudian thought and reasons for his conceptual departure. I show Erikson as the second stage psychoanalytic theorist who shifted thought upward in consciousness, outward to the social world, and forward throughout the complete life span. I explore Erikson's dispute of Freud's reductionism and predeterminism, and illustrate Erikson's movement afield of a model of mental illness, fragmentation, and negation. I explore Erikson's view that the social world is both inside and outside the psyche, rather than solely external to the person as Freud had held. Addressed is Erikson's conversion of Freud's notions of adult morality to a developmental view of the adult as a potentially moral–ethical person, and Erikson's revision of Freud's concepts of the potentially rational adult to a view of the adult with rational and emotional attributes. These words are Erikson's (1975, p. 39) terms for his theoretical focus. Erikson said that he had felt compelled to alter Freudian views, for the second stage psychoanalytic thought in which he participated required a focus on healthy development instead of attention to deviations from health. Such thought also required analysis of the importance of consciousness and of engagement in the social world, as well as a theory of adult development that extends throughout the mature years to chart the person's psychosocial growth and the development of principled behavior. To Erikson, Freud's views were reductionistic due, in part, to their placement within Newtonian and Darwinian thought. Further, Freud's thought was based on the assumption of an invariably moral person, and of the human who would eventually rise above the irrational powers that he found to govern the self. In this paper, I take up these points. I look to Erikson's revisions of Freudian thought, emphasizing the ways in which he made us think differently about psychological life and about adults in their ongoing development. This synthesis adheres to the points Erikson himself made about his departure from Freud, thoughts that appear in Erikson's (1987b) Harvard notes and marginalia, in his audiotapes, and in portions of his published writings.     

Irrationality and egoism in Hegel’s account of right

ABSTRACT

Many interpreters argue that irrational acts of exchange can count as rational and civic-minded for Hegel – even though, admittedly, the persons who are exchanging their property are usually unaware of this fact. While I do not want to deny that property exchange can count as rational in terms of ‘mutual recognition’ as interpreters claim, this proposition raises an important question: What about the irrationality and arbitrariness that individuals as property owners and persons consciously enjoy? Are they mere vestiges of nature in Hegel’s system, or do they constitute a simple yet valid form of freedom that is not only a part of Hegel’s rational system of right, but its necessary starting point? I will argue the latter: The arbitrary, purely egoist self-definition of property owners is the simplest possible type of freedom for Hegel, which he dissects in order to show how the very arbitrary self-definition implicitly relies on an identity between persons, and hence foreshadows the more social forms of freedom Hegel will discuss later in his book. I make this argument by highlighting Hegel’s references to his discussion of atoms and freedom in his Logic of Being.