The Dual Vision

Alfred Schutz and the Myth of Phenomenological Social Science

Robert Gorman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134477289
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

This study, originally published in 1977, focuses on a critical examination of the life-work of Alfred Schutz, the most important and influential 'father' of several recent schools of empirical social research.

The author shows why Shutz and his followers fail in their attempts to 'humanize' empirical social science. The problems they encounter, he argues, are due to their attempt to achieve a methodological synthesis of self-determining subjectivity and empirical criteria of validation, based on Schutz's heuristic adoption of relevant ideas from Weber and Husserl. This is, in effect, an artificial union of subjectivity and objectivity – their 'dual vision' – that satisfies neither phenomenological nor naturalist perspectives. Dr Gorman suggests that the radical implications of phenomenology must lead to a consistent, socially-conscious method of inquiry, and, in a final chapter, he re-defines the methodological implications of phenomenology with the aid of existential and Marxist categories.

1 Phenomenology and methodology of social science: the origins

The problem of reconciling individuality with a rigorous scientific method, the prime motivation for all of Schutz’s published writings, has been an issue of scholarly concern since the mid-nineteenth century, especially among the German philosophers and sociologists who preceded Schutz and shaped his intellectual development. Schutz’s particular contribution to this dialogue is basically eclectic, assimilating important ideas of a number of these German scholars. His ability to abstract the central theses of relevant arguments and place them into an explicit intellectual framework developed primarily by Husserl gives his theory its character of being a magnified residue of a debate that was becoming increasingly ambiguous. Schutz’s eclectic approach, in other words, serves not only to crystallize the issues, but also throws into sharp relief the speculative intellectualizing that surrounds an issue of great practical importance.

1 MAX WEBER’S METHODOLOGY IN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In their historical context, Schutz’s writings are determined efforts at mediating the irreconcilable positions of the neo-Kantians and positivists, both active in German scholarship in the years preceding World War I, and the romantic, intuition-oriented reaction epitomized by the so-called Baden School, consisting of Dilthey, Windelband, and Rickert.(1) At issue in this debate is the applicability of scientific method, as described in the natural sciences, to the study of society, in particular to our understanding those individual actions constituting the substance of human history. The positivists contend social phenomena are analogous to things of nature in that both are studied according to a method outlined by physicists while uncovering natural laws governing the movement of inert matter. Natural science serves as a rubric within which social behavior is treated as a species of natural phenomena, amenable to a similar type of causal analysis. Responding to this argument, Wilhelm Dilthey develops his own ideas on the nature of social science, ideas which, filtered through the words of Windelband, Rickert, and Weber, exert a profound influence on Alfred Schutz’s social science.(2)

Dilthey contends there is a basic difference between studying nature (‘Naturwissenschaften’) and studying society (‘Geistewissenschaften’) because of the inherently different subject matter each discipline deals with.(3) With natural science, we uncover the kingdom of nature: objective, inanimate, existing entirely apart from humanity. Studying society, on the other hand, consists of investigating the kingdom of human mind, where all cultural phenomena are mental products of a human consciousness that is subjective and totally immersed in emotion and intellect. Social reality is distinct from natural reality, and the primordial differences between the two necessitate a different method of study for each. Whereas inanimate, material bodies are investigated in the hope of uncovering natural laws governing their movement, there are no causal, mechanistic, measurement-oriented models of cultural or historical behavior because the human spirit is not bridled by natural forces. There are no independent natural variables determining the cultural products of free human spirit.

Since human behavior is always value-imbued, the positivist’s emphasis on evolving a value-free, ‘objective’ social scientific method is of little or no use in our search for valid social knowledge. In its stead, Dilthey insists that reliable cultural and historical knowledge is gained only by identifying and isolating common ideas, feelings, and goals of a particular historical period. These metaphysical forms constitute the spirit of an age (‘Zeitgeist’), and determine social actions of spiritual creatures living and acting in their presence. Historians must orient themselves towards searching for, and discovering, these spiritual threads that unite a people to their culture and their historical era. Dilthey’s transcendent social ideas constitute the essence of social history, the broad spiritual categories that make each separate social act subjectively meaningful and fulfilling.

A distinctive requisite of all cultural disciplines, for Dilthey, is that the observer, as a human being studying other human beings, has access to the inner world of others’ experiences. By ‘re-living,’ or imaginatively reconstructing, the other’s experience in terms of our own, and identifying the two by a vaguely described type of analogical inference, we achieve a ‘sympathetic understanding’ (‘Verstehen’) of a particular actor and culture. Ultimately, Dilthey hopes to understand cultural phenomena ‘from within’ by empathetically reconstructing that spiritual form which prescribes the meaning each act has for the actor. It is clearly impossible to accomplish this task within the logic of natural scientific method. The study of nature is therefore absolutely distinct from the study of society, and the latter is ‘objective’ in a spiritual sense totally alien to natural science.

Dilthey’s ideas fix the course of all future investigations into the methodology of social science. At one pole stands the positivist viewpoint, identifying society as one element of nature, and declaring natural scientific method suitable to its study and explanation. At the other pole is the intuitionist perspective of Dilthey, in which society is a product of unique subjective intentions of spiritual actors, explainable only by an abstract process of creative understanding not permitted by natural scientific method. To the former, social actors are conceived as entities reacting to external stimuli just as inanimate phenomena do; the latter proclaims individuality to be essentially spiritual and creative. Here are two organic interpretations of human nature and the methods of social inquiry. The character of ensuing methodological controversy will be shaped by representatives of one or another of these views trying to ‘include’ or synthesize the other approach in their own.

The first such attempts are performed by Dilthey’s contemporaries, Wilhelm Windelband(4) and Heinrich Rickert.(5) Whereas Dilthey concludes reality is fragmented into spiritual phenomena, expressed in culture, and natural phenomena of the inanimate world, Windelband and Rickert postulate instead that reality is indivisible and always the same. Such a conclusion appears to support the positivist thesis. In fact, Windelband and Rickert are not prepared to admit this, siding instead with Dilthey in declaring natural science inadequate for explaining culture and history. They reconcile their seemingly opposing positions by stating that differences between methods of social and natural inquiry are based on logic rather than abstract metaphysical speculations concerning the dichotomy of reality. Cultural acts take place within the same reality as natural phenomena, but, because of their particular character, logically require an alternative explanatory method. In other words, the quality of subject matter determines, for observers/ what type of explanation will suffice.

There are, for Windelband and Rickert, two methods of investigation: that which explains phenomena by laying down broad covering laws of universal applicability; and the opposing method of explaining unique phenomena according to characteristics which make the phenomena unique in the first place. The former method, which Windelband terms ‘nomothetic’ and Rickert ‘generalizing,’ uncovers the general laws of natural science. It is applicable only when studying the general, repeatable regularities that concern physical and natural scientists. In contrast, the latter method, which Windelband calls ‘ideographic’ and Rickert ‘individualizing,’ focuses on describing unique events in their concreteness and individuality. It is a feature of historical inquiry that we, as observers, find significant primarily those unique historical events or particular cultural phenomena somehow relevant to our own interests, and consider such events and phenomena important in themselves. In submerging them under generalizing laws we lose the distinctive qualities that make these phenomena important for us as objects of study. It is therefore imperative that subject matter of history and culture should not be confused with that of natural science. By distinguishing the two, it becomes logically necessary to utilize different explanatory methods to preserve the integrity of both. ‘Thus, a distinction is made between the natural sciences which seek to establish general laws, and the cultural sciences which isolate individual phenomena in order to trace their unique development.’(6)

These ideas of Windelband and Rickert are first steps in the attempt to transcend the positivist-intuitionist debate. The ambiguity surrounding Dilthey’s metaphysics is rejected, as is the positivists’ efforts at equating cultural behavior and natural phenomena. Yet the new position is still incomplete and unclear. Dilthey bases his method on the objectivity of metaphysical ‘Zeitgeisten.’ Studying history and society is no less scientific than studying nature, but it is clearly a different kind of science: founded on spiritual rather than empirical criteria of objectivity. Windelband and Rickert are not abandoning Dilthey’s desire to establish a new ‘cultural science,’ but they are rejecting his criteria of valid, objective, knowledge. If studying society implies dealing with the unique and particular, in what sense is this study ‘objective’ if we ignore Dilthey’s concern for universal spiritual forms guiding particular human occurrences? The only alternative is admitting the absolute uniqueness of each social act, and the total lack of criteria for establishing a cultural science, or even studying culture objectively. With no underlying criteria of objective historical knowledge to build on, anything – including an observer’s speculative or ‘unreasonable’ assertion – qualifies as valid knowledge. If the regression to metaphysics is admitted, how do we logically contend there is only one aspect to reality without assuming the empirically unverifiable premise that natural phenomena are also manifestations of spiritual forms? If this assumption is made, then the ‘objectivity’ of nomothetic, or generalizing, explanations is based on spiritual criteria – but this is definitely not what Windelband and Rickert mean when they contend these types of explanations are valuable only to physical and natural scientists. In brief, Windelband and Rickert have failed to explain how we can scientifically explain aspects of cultural behavior apart from either the metaphysical assumptions of Dilthey or the positivists’ demand for criteria of objectivity based on empirically confirmed regularities of nature. Their attempts to avoid both metaphysics and empirically verified causal explanation has left them with nothing at all. Schutz recognizes the dilemma, and for this reason devotes much of his early career to constructively criticizing the ideas of Max Weber. For it is Max Weber who first directly confronts these issues.

The influence of Windelband and Rickert is obvious even in a brief perusal of Weber’s early ideas.(7) He accepts the logical separation of natural and cultural sciences Windelband and Rickert prescribe, but rejects their contention these sciences are classified by different methods. Instead, Weber feels every science can and does use both (i.e. nomothetic or generalizing, and ideographic or individualizing) methods, the choice at any time depending on the discipline’s research goals. This is so, Weber claims, because there is no significant difference between subject matters of the natural and social sciences. Uniqueness and historicity are manifest in nature as well as humanity, while general covering laws can explain human behavior and natural phenomena. In practical terms, this means sociology has recourse to generalizing method in its empirical research, and biology or astronomy occasionally studies unique aspects of particular phenomena. Social reality is much more complex and inexhaustible than either Windelband or Rickert suspected. Their facile separation of social and natural science is not justified, given this complex nature of reality, nor is their insistence on two distinct, isolated methods related to two distinct subject matters. For Weber, there is nothing in the nature of reality that requires our abandoning one explicit scientific logic of inquiry for all types of social and natural investigation.

How, then, does Weber distinguish his position from that of the positivists? In effect, he does not reject the theories of Windelband and Rickert as much as he re-evaluates their significance. The latter’s two methods, while inappropriate to the actual nature of reality, do abstract two different types of behavior patterns from the complex whole. In this sense, both methods depart from reality for conceptual purposes, and neither is in any epistemological sense ‘higher’ than the other. However, this does not mean they are not useful. On the contrary, our interest in the social world focuses on exactly those aspects of it that are unique, qualitative, and individual, while our interest in the natural world focuses on more abstract phenomena, those exhibiting quantifiable empirical regularities. Weber assigns a new vitality to the methods of Windelband and Rickert: though each is utilized to study either natural or social phenomena, neither implies the existence in the world of qualitatively different subject matters requiring alternative methods of explanation. We adopt one or the other method because we ask different questions and want to know different things about natural and social phenomena.

Weber’s concept of ‘value-relevance’ (‘Wertbeziehung’) illustrates his approach to this complex issue.(8) Whereas in the natural sciences we investigate abstract concepts which are quantitatively measured, in the study of human affairs what we define as significant – objects deemed worthy of study – is constituted by values we implicitly or explicitly accept. The former is objective, the latter necessarily value-oriented and subjective. What we choose to study in society, and why we study it, are selected from the infinite flux of historical happenings within which we find ourselves, and determined by relevant socially conditioned values. The needs of people, expressed in the values of their society, largely determine what is considered relevant or significant knowledge in the social sciences. Put simply: the contrast between social and natural science occurs because in the social sciences alone are humans both the subject and object of inquiry. Knowledge of society is therefore self-knowledge. We are more intimately concerned with our own motives, customs and values, however, than with physical objects of natural science, and will consequently utilize these social characteristics in defining what social phenomena we find worthy of explanation. Ultimately, in studying society we hope to clarify the meaning our own conduct – inseparable from these motives, customs and values – has for ourselves. For this reason the self-defined uniqueness and individuality of concrete cultural and historical phenomena are more important to us than the general laws uncovered by a method more appropriate to natural scientific inquiry.

Before continuing, we must emphasize how Weber has succeeded in separating his own view from that of the positivists. If, as Weber’s methodology implies, it is at least theoretically possible to study society nomothetically, why not concentrate only on that social knowledge which is scientifically validated according to the norms of natural science, and consider all other knowledge speculative? His answer: by utilizing natural scientific method to study society we neglect precisely those issues important from a social point of view, concentrating instead on the regular, mechanistic-type behavior we regularly perform in our daily lives but rarely think or care about. This is an important point, one we shall return to in our critique of Schutz’s method. Weber feels that natural scientific method, when transplanted to the study of human behavior, will produce knowledge which is epistemologically valid, but largely irrelevant, explaining generalizable, unimportant (at least from our own subjective perspectives), mundane activities.

We have thus far examined Weber’s critique of intuitionist and positivist approaches to methodology. It is not yet apparent how Weber proposes to study unique, particular behavior scientifically. How, in other words, will Weber traverse the gap separating Dilthey from the positivists without sacrificing invaluable elements of both arguments? Weber’s response lies in his general sociological method, constructed primarily in his massive, unfinished, ‘Economy and Society.’(9)

The concept of ‘Verstehen,’ or ‘interpretative understanding,’ is the key to understanding how Weber proposes to explain an event in terms of its uniqueness rather than in terms of a general law, without sacrificing the explanation’s scientific validity.(10) This process, as Weber means it, permits social observers a way of investigating phenomena that does not distort what is actually occurring to the people involved. Its goal is to recreate the meaning observed actors experience at the moment of action. Weber thus makes it clear that, in scientifically studying society, we direct ourselves towards social actors and, in particular, the meaning observed social acts had for them.(11) ‘Verstehen,’ as a means of understanding social behavior, is the link between Weber’s early views concerning the value of positivist and intuitionist approaches to methodology and his own sociological method. The concept of ‘Wertbeziehung’ detailed the subjective origins of any meaningful social science. ‘Verstehen’ extends this thesis by describing a method that clarifies how values of social actors are made the focal point of social investigation. Since the essence of social reality lies in the interaction of individuals, all valid social analysis refers back to individual behavior, and this behavior is shaped by the subjectively intended meaning of the agent. Action is defined ‘by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual (or individuals),’(12) while ‘the term “social behavior” … is reserved for activities whose intent is related by the individuals involved to the conduct of others and is oriented accordingly.’(13) The basic attribute of a social act is its subjectively meaningful relatedness to the actions of others. Those attempting to scientifically explain society must be certain their ‘object of cognition is the subjective meaning-complex of action.’ (14)

Implications of Weber’s ‘Verstehen’ thesis appear, for some, to suggest social science aims at uncovering psychological causes of behavior, determinants that are subjective and not necessarily related to empirical fact. This viewpoint is often held by psychology-oriented methodologists who contend Weber’s use of terms such as ‘reliving’ (‘Nacherleben’) and ‘empathy’ (‘Einfuhlung’) in relation to the operation of ‘Verstehen’ involves investigating an actor’s ‘inner’ psychological states. The profundity of Weber’s theory, however, is most explicit in his ingenious contributions to the positivist-intuitionist debate, his developing a method giving equal consideration to the subjective uniqueness of human action and the necessity of understanding such behavior ‘scientifically,’ as th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Phenomenology and methodology of social science: the origins
• 2 Phenomenological social science
• 3 Phenomenology, free action, empirical social science: some theoretical and practical problems
• 4 The 'objectivity' of empirical social science: a philosophical perspective
• 5 Epilogue: an alternative phenomenological approach to social inquiry
• Appendix
• References
• Bibliography
• Index