Hermeneutic Philosophy and the Sociology of Art

An Approach to Some of the Epistemological Problems of the Sociology of Knowledge and the Sociology of Art and Literature

Janet Wolff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351621625
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art général

This book, first published in 1975, is an examination of the theoretical foundation of the sociology of art and literature and an in-depth study in the sociology of knowledge. In discussing and clarifying some of the important philosophical issues in this field, the constant underlying reference is to the creative and artistic-expressive areas of knowledge – so that the better understanding of the social nature and genesis of all knowledge may point the way towards a similar comprehension of art and society.

1 The sociology of art and the sociology of knowledge

The sociology of art and literature is an ill-defined and amorphous discipline, comprising numerous empirical studies and various attempts at rather more general theory, all of which have in common merely the fact that they are somehow concerned with the relationship of art and society. Thus, the sociologist of literature may investigate the social basis of authorship (Laurenson 1969), the sociology of production and distribution of works of literature (Escarpit 1968), literature in primitive society (Radin 1960; Leach 1967), the relationship of values expressed in literature and values of society (Albrecht 1954 and 1956), and historical data relating to literature and society (Goldmann 1964; Altick 1957; Lowenthal 1967; Watt 1967; Webb 1955). Sociologists of art have studied primitive art (Smith 1961; Wingert 1962), art at different historical periods (Antal 1947), the social background of artists (Pelles 1963), the relationship of class and artistic taste (Kavolis 1965), and more general problems of art in society (John Berger 1969; Fischer 1964; Francastel 1951; Hauser 1951; Read 1967). Most of this work consists of empirical studies. On the other hand, attempts have been made to provide a general theory of art in society (Sorokin 1947) or Marxist theories of art (Hauser 1951; Fischer 1964). But what now seems to be needed is a sociology of art at the level of meaning. Such a sociology of art would be equipped to deal with many of the problems in the field which most of the other methods and approaches have to ignore and leave unexplained. One of the most important advantages of the approach I am suggesting is that the content of the works of art will be considered as relevant to the question of the sociology of art; the works will not then merely be taken as the data for social science, a procedure which necessarily (although often with some unease) overlooks the question which is surely crucial, namely: what is a work of art? The argument here, of course, runs that this question is one of aesthetics, of the philosophy of art, and of the history of art. The reply, in any case, is normative, and involves, in part at least, evaluation of the products. And social science, in so far as it is social science, cannot evaluate anything. This is why it has to take as given those objects defined by others as art, and investigate their relationship to other social facts. The trouble is that by accepting uncritically a rather arbitrary definition, sociologists may be overlooking other material, or ignoring distinctions, which could be relevant. Furthermore, others’ definitions of what counts as art are far from unanimous, which presents the sociologist with the initial problem of what to take as his data. A sociology of art at the level of meaning should be able to talk about the works of art themselves, in discussing their place in social life.

Before I consider the other advantages of a ‘Verstehen’ sociology, I should like to make clear my position on this well-worn methodological issue. The anti-positivism, anti-behaviouralism which I advocate and defend is more the result of choice than of methodological conviction. I have come to this conclusion during readings and discussions on methodology, when I have found myself resisting the arguments of anti-positivists, and insisting that they have taken their case too far. Verstehende, or phenomenological, sociology is a way of doing sociology; it has certain advantages over its alternatives, and (for non-sociological reasons) it is the approach to which I am committed. But positivistic sociology achieves its own results. At its best, it proceeds in a perfectly valid manner, and can often work in areas to which there is little access for Verstehen. Thus, I cannot accept the final step of the argument of those sociologists who, after demonstrating the uniqueness of the phenomenological approach, reject positivism as totally misconceived.¹ (The epistemological naivety of what Parsons calls ‘radical positivism’, on the other hand, is clearly not to be endorsed.)²

A longer discussion of this particular methodological issue is probably necessary for me to defend the position I have taken, but as it is not essential to the main argument of this chapter, it will have to be omitted here. What is required is a brief exposition of the method I am advocating, since there will be reference to ‘phenomenological sociology’ and the method of Verstehen throughout the following pages. (In a later chapter, I shall consider some of the inadequacies of phenomenological sociology itself, and suggest that these might be supplemented by hermeneutic philosophy and ideology-critique.)

Max Weber (1947b, pp. 80ff) argued that the sociologist must be concerned with the meaning of social action—that is, with the meaning attached to his act by an actor, and by those around him. Action (as opposed to behaviour) is meaningful by definition, and sociology, in so far as it deals with social action, must operate at the level of meaning. Weber’s argument is the basis of other, more recent, attacks on positivistic sociology (for example. Jack Douglas’s (1967) critique of Durkheim). As a re-definition of the scope and method of social science, the introduction of this new approach has made possible many important works in this particular sociological tradition. It remained for Alfred Schutz to elaborate what Weber had taken for granted: namely the nature and origin of the actor’s ‘meanings’, and the epistemology of the method of Verstehen (Schutz 1972). Verstehen-sociology now appears as phenomenological sociology. (As Schutz maintains, this was implicit in Weber’s work, and is not something imposed or added by him.) Sociologists since Schutz (whose book, one of his early works, was first published in 1932) have used the term ‘phenomenological’ more or less rigorously, but, perhaps with the exception of Schutz himself, who started his academic career as a philosopher, and whose work was approved by Husserl at one stage, I think it would be fair to say that none of the sociologists calling themselves phenomenologists would have been recognised as such by the phenomenologists of pure philosophy. I shall be discussing the method of phenomenology and the phenomenological analysis of the social world later (chapter 2). Here, the point should simply be made that the so-called ‘phenomenological method’ in the social sciences is by no means the rigorous exercise developed by Husserl and other philosophers. This is not necessarily a criticism, of course. Weber’s more primitive notion of Verstehen has proved both methodologically acceptable and extremely useful in practice, without the philosophical justification of a phenomenological foundation. The simple, more intuitive, grasp of meaning and motive is adequate for the study of human action and behaviour (with the usual requirements of scientific method, of objectivity in dealing with even these subjective facts). What such a sociology is not, is a comprehensive theory of knowledge (Husserl’s ‘rigorous science’). It returns to the epistemological status of all the sciences— methodologically sound, but epistemologically as precarious as Descartes’s destruction of knowledge originally left them. The sciences, including the social sciences, can and do proceed perfectly well, oblivious of their uncertain foundation.

An essay by Tiryakian (1965) is an attempt to extrapolate from the sociological tradition an existential-phenomenological method. If it is admitted that these terms are imported from philosophy in a somewhat loose way, as I have argued, then it is clearly beside the point to criticise Tiryakian by insisting that one of the writers he mentions is definitely not a phenomenologist. I would dispute his inclusion of, for example, Parsons, Sorokin and Durkheim, however, for not only are they not phenomenologists, but it is hard to see how they are at all concerned with what Tiryakian calls ‘subjective realism’. His uncritical switch from talking about the phenomenological apprehension of individual meanings to that of cultural wholes or social groups is extremely dubious; certainly it requires justification, and cannot simply be presented as unproblematic. (The question of the possibility of grasping supra-individual and inter-subjective facts, such as ideologies, institutions and cultural products, by the phenomenological method, will be discussed below—chapter 4.) However, the significance of the article is that it makes explicit what is, in some ways, a common current amongst certain important sociologists. This is interesting historically; it would have been more useful to provide, as well as a historical survey, a description of the existential-phenomenological method in sociology—the ideal to which all these writers are said to approximate.

Rather than examine the differences and convergences of a number of theorists, I propose to define and describe the method first, and then see where the coincidences are with certain sociologists. The approach I envisage for the sociology of knowledge, and, more specifically, the sociology of art and literature, proceeds via the phenomenological understanding of the individual in his social situation, of the patterns of meanings which make up his reality, and of his definition of the situations in which he acts and interacts with others. Schutz, having got this far, thought he had to make the transition from psychology to sociology by introducing the notion of inter-subjectivity—a kind of joint experiencing, more or less immediate and direct, by two or more people. Although it remains the case (as he himself acknowledges) that there is inevitably a jump from the pure consciousness which alone can be investigated by phenomenology, to the experience of the other, his analysis is extremely lucid and enlightening. (Perhaps, indeed, by pointing out this one limitation, he has shown once and for all that sociology can never be phenomenologically pure.) However, as Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) work makes clear, even without this epistemological justification, phenomenological psychology is already part of sociology; those who accept the tenet of the sociology of knowledge will not deny that the very consciousness which the philosopher or psychologist looks at is social in origin and in content. The world of the individual is formed in and out of an essentially social context.

Thus it is clear that there are two kinds of problem in the application of phenomenology to society. The first, dealt with by Schutz, concerns the fundamental validity of inter-personal understanding; in this case, of the sociologist understanding his subject. The second, taking for granted this possibility of sociological understanding, concerns the object of this understanding; the question is how one can get beyond the individual social actor, to social groups and cultural products, still within the framework of a phenomenological method. It is the second problem which will concern us at various points in this book. For example, it will have to be discussed in relation to the concept of the Weltanschauung, when this is applied to a whole social group. For the moment. Berger and Luckmann’s example suffices to demonstrate the practicability of a phenomenological sociology of knowledge. It is restricted to a specific type of knowledge, namely the individual’s knowledge of society itself (i.e. a sociology of social knowledge). I hope it will prove possible to present an analogous programme for the sociology of art.

Berger and Luckmann show how society exists as subjective reality in the individual consciousness, and how it subsequently, through a process of objectification and reification, appears as objective reality. Like society, art is a creation of individual members, who, in their turn, are in many ways formed by society. Thus it should be feasible to examine the social content of art. (The question of art as an individual creation, and therefore subject-matter only for psychology, versus art as, in some sense, an inter-individual creation, in the way Berger and Luckmann show society to be, and thus the object of sociology, will also be discussed below. The social element in even an individual creation, however, is to be emphasised here.) I am less concerned with the way in which something which was originally a human product takes on the false appearance of an objective fact (social customs, rules, institutions), than with the primary process of its creation. That is, in the context of art and literature, the social origin of works of art must be taken into account, as well as the way in which their content can be said to relate to social life, without considering the question of how works of art, or styles of art, become removed from their source, and impose themselves as eternal, or at least permanent modes of expression. (Clearly such an analysis would deviate in many ways from that of the objectification of social knowledge. The specific acts of creation are much more available for observation, and thus less hypothetical; the products themselves are material objects, and so, again, observable in a way in which institutions are not; and finally, tradition in art is much more easily recognised as tradition than in the case of social knowledge, at least in a society where diverse traditions co-exist, and new styles are created.) Like Berger and Luckmann, then, my intention is to describe the origin and creation of cultural products in social life, from the methodological perspective of the social individual, and of the phenomenology of the social world.

Although none of the phenomenologically-orientated sociologists has so far turned to the sociology of the arts, there are a number of hints in some of their writings on the manner in which they would have proceeded. Schutz’s essays are most suggestive here. Some of these, indeed, are in fact small-scale studies of art in social life: not a theory of the sociology of art, but a sociology of art in practice. From these, one can extract the elements of the theoretical orientation. (See, for example, ‘Making music together: a study in social relationship’, and ‘Mozart and the philosophers’, Schutz 1964.) More important, in the theoretical essays themselves, there is mention of art and its place in society. In the book referred to above (Schutz 1972), Schutz suggests how his method of sociological understanding, via the extension of inter-subjectivity in the direction of more and more indirect experience and ideal typification, can extend also to cultural products. These are merely objectivations, in which the other’s subjective experiences manifest themselves (op. cit. p. 133). Thus, besides considering their objective meaning (i.e. disregarding their production), we should be able to study their subjective meaning. As Schutz phrases it, to do so would be ‘to run over in our minds, in simultaneity or quasi-simultaneity, the poly-thetic acts which constituted the experience of the producer’ (p. 133).

It is obvious that the closer one is in experience to the producer, the easier this will be. From a cultural context further removed, the possibility of re-creating his polythetic acts is diminished. Furthermore, at this existential distance it becomes clear that considering the man simply as artistic producer is not only inadequate but impossible. It is necessary to re-create also what can be taken for granted in a more immediate context; that is, the person’s art can be understood only in the wider situation of his total experiential structure. It might be argued that this is by definition the task of the sociologist of art. The fact is, though, that it has in most cases been thought sufficient to relate the two disparate areas of the arts on the one hand, and some other specific factor of social life (class, for example) on the other. I would maintain that this is the reason why most sociology of art to date is unsatisfactory and limited in explanatory power, not only on the level of meaning, but on any level.

As long as we do not abandon the existential-phenomenological level, it will be impossible to forget the intrinsic relevance of all aspects of the actor’s world of meaning. In the next chapter, the constitution of this world will be discussed in detail, together with the place of artistic creativity in the existential reality. In anticipation of that discussion, it is perhaps worth raising here the related question of how different provinces of meaning co-exist in the individual consciousness, and in a society. Again, it is Schutz who provides the best account (On multiple realities’ and ‘Symbol, reality and society’, Schutz 1967). He had argued in The phenomenology of the social world that the various provinces of meaning must cohere in the overall meaning-structure of the individual’s world, and he explains these different provinces of meaning as ‘multiple realities’. The difference between the various realities lies in the nature of the epoché (or bracketing) performed. For example, the natural attitude, that of everyday life, suspends doubts about the world; the province of scientific thought, on the other hand, examines these doubts, but suspends subjectivity, the thinker’s own bodily existence and pragmatic relevances. We move from one reality to another with a ‘leap’ or ‘shock’. This is a ‘radical modification in the tension of our consciousness, founded in a different attention à la vie’ (‘On multiple realities’, p. 232). Throughout, however, the paramount reality is that of everyday life (‘Symbol, reality and society’). If we carry this type of analysis into the province of artistic creativity, not only will we have a way of explaining it, but we are also half-way towards solving the old problem of the philosophy of art, of what it is to see (hear, etc.) an object (product) as art; of what the artistic content is, for example, of a religious painting; of what the relationship of function to aesthetic quality is; and of whether Duchamp was right when he claimed that anything is art if it is put forward as art, and exhibited a bicycle wheel as a work of art. If, as Schutz says, the province of art is defined by the mode of attention applied to the objects, then indeed anything can be art. Other phenomenologists of aesthetics appear to concur, in slightly different terms, with Schutz. (See, for example, Bensman and Lilienfeld 1968; N...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The sociology of art and the sociology of knowledge
• 2 The constitution of knowledge
• 3 The problems of the sociology of knowledge
• 4 The sociology of art and the concept of a world-view
• 5 Concepts of collective consciousness
• 6 Concepts of collective consciousness (continued)
• 7 Hermeneutic philosophy and the sociology of knowledge
• 8 Conclusion: towards a hermeneutic sociology of art
• Bibliography
• Index