Schütz's principal task was to develop the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl as a basis for a philosophy of the social sciences. Although Schütz was never a student of Husserl, he, together with a colleague, Felix Kaufman, studied Husserl's work intensively in seeking a basis for a "sociology of understanding" derived from the work of Max Weber. This work and its continuation resulted in his first book, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (literally, The meaningful construction of the social world, but published in English as The phenomenology of the social world). This work brought him to the attention of Husserl, with whom he corresponded and whom he visited until Husserl's death in 1938. In fact, he was offered the position of assistant to Husserl at Freiburg University in the early 1930s, but declined.
Schütz is probably unique as a scholar of the social sciences in that he pursued a career as a banker for almost his entire life, teaching part-time at the New School for Social Research in New York and producing key papers in phenomenological sociology that fill three volumes (published by Nijhoff, The Hague).
SchutzÂ’s project as a philosopher was then to reflect on the practices of the cultural sciences, asking intelligent questions and learning from the scientists themselves, and then interpreting for them what they do, thereby possibly eliminating some difficulties in the foundations of the edifice of science that they seldom inspect.
Overall, AlfredSchutz's work is a model for the philosophical analysis of science that begins from reflective observation on scientific practices as relating to the objects of their provinces and, correlatively, on such objects as theorized about and observed in those practices.
Schutz agreed with Nagel on several counts, namely that social scientists needed to validate theoretical beliefs, that lack of predictability in the social sciences did not disqualify their scientific character, and that Weber would have been wrong if his method of “subjective interpretation” implied empathy with unobservable, introspective states.
Schutz, usually the value-free describer of social reality, in his conclusion endorses a normative notion of democracy in which it is a duty and a privilege, frequently not available in non-democratic societies, for well-informed citizens to express and defend opinions that often conflict with the uninformed opinions of the man in the street.
Schutz challenged this sense-transfer, however, since one experienced the other's body from the outside, unlike one's own, which was given interiorily (but might the similarities suffice for the transfer?), and he suggested that verification through what was “congruent” behavior drew on social-world presuppositions of how bodies ought to behave.
Feeds |
Contact