Page 23 - Contribution To Phenomenology

16 LESTER EMBREE

Schutz's notion is thus broader than that of "social sciences" usual in
North American usage, which typically excludes the psychological as well
as the historical sciences. Nevertheless, while Schutz's authority can be
used to defend the concept as well as expression "cultural sciences,"
there are more than the cultural sciences in the cultural disciplines,

III. Three Species of Cultural Discipline

There seem to be three species of cultural disciplines. This is best
recognized by considering the combinations of cultural practices that make
them up teleologically or, in other words, by asking what the overall
effort in the discipline culminates in. This needs to be done carefully.
Thus, one might hold that lawn mowing culminates in having a mowed
lawn, but a modicum of reflection can show that having a mowed lawn
is more than merely a matter of perception and indeed that it is the
positive valuing colloquially called "liking" or enjoying that predominates
in "having a mowed lawn" and that the lawn thus "had" can then be
said to be "good," "beautiful," or at least "nice." One might go further
and ask "for whom" mowed lawns are valued and recognize that not only
the householder but also her neighbors value a mowed lawn positively,
which does not change it that the cultural practice of lawn mowing is
best classified as evaluational or axiodc, (Lawn mowing is thus not unlike
hair cutting.)
Lawn mowing is not predominantly an effort merely to know about
lawns, although some cognition at least in a broad signification, e.g., some
justifiable believing about the effects of lawn mowers on blades of grass,
is necessarily involved. Moreover, while the effort does have a real effect
in that many leaves and stems are cut, making that effect into a purpose
and even fulfilling it is also not the cuhnination. Perceiving the lawn and
how lawn mowers function may immediately justify believing in ways in
which to do it and mediatedly justify the valuing of a nice lawn, but it
is also not what lawn mowing overall culminates in.
Those operating the equipment or managing the company in the trade
or craft of lawn mowing or, more generally, **yard care" or gardening,
may be seeking as efficiently as possible to make money, which is useful
for paying bills, but that too is not what the practice overall aims at,
which is the pleasure or enjoyment, the valuing, that takes place in
suitably prepared people who encounter the mowed lawn and, along with
that, the pruned trees, weeded flower beds, etc. "Suitably prepared"