Page 326 - Contribution To Phenomenology

Chapter 13

Alfred Schutz and the Project of

Phenomenological Social Theory

David Carr
Emory University

Abstract: A discussion of Schutz* phenomenological approach to
social theory leads me to some fundamental doubts about his
project. Is phenomenology's central concept, intentionality, conducive
to the task of understanding relations among persons? My doubts
are expressed through a historical account: I claim the concept of
intentionality was devised as a response to questions about the
relation between human experience and nature. Applying it to social
relations, I argue, may be a case of employing it outside its proper
sphere.

The work of Alfred Schutz is the most impressive and important effort
to date to establish a philosophical social theory on phenomenological
foundations. His most likely rivals in this effort are probably Sartre and
Merleau-Ponty, but their sources of inspiration are not only phenomenolo-
gical, and it can be argued that social theory is not the true focus of
their thought. Schutz' inspirations are not exclusively phenomenological
either, of course—think of the importance of Bergson and Weber in his
work—but there is no doubt that phenomenology, especially Husserl's, is
dominant. And it is clear that social reaUty is the sole focus of Schutz'
efforts. In several places he expUcitly brackets the concerns and
investigations Husserl called "transcendental," and which we might also
call epistemological or metaphysical, in favor of the more modest and
well defined goal of understanding the social world.^

^ Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, translated by G. Walsh and
F. Lehnert (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 97. (Hereafter PSR)
Collected Papers II: Studies in Social ReaUty, edited by A. Broderson (The Hague: M.
Nijhoff, 1964), 25. (Hereafter CP II).

319
M. Daniel and L Embree (eds.), Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines, 319-332.
© 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.