Abstract
This paper points to two little-discussed interrelated features—among sociologists—about the nature of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt): that the experience of transcendence is an essential component of human actions, and that lived experience (Erlebnis) is founded on the non-discursivity of the lifeworld, i.e., the pre-predicative background expectancies from which the discursive arises. I examine the intellectual route of Alfred Schutz who developed his mundane lifeworld theory from appropriating Edmund Husserl’s notions of appresentation and apperception. Harold Garfinkel later extended Schutz’s concept of lifeworld to the empirical investigations of constitutive social orders. By way of conclusion, I warn against a strain of constructionism in sociology, which tends to ignore the two said features of lived experience and inaccurately conceives social realities as essentially the actor’s discursive accomplishments.
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Notes
Schutz (1980) admits that his “interpretation of the experiences of consciousness [as] related intentionally to the other self does not completely fulfill the requirements of Weber’s definition [of social action]” (p. 145).
According to Schutz and Thomas Luckmann (1995), the six experiential categories are: (1) a “specific tension of consciousness,” (2) a “specific epoch,” (3) a “dominant form of spontaneity,” (4) a “specific form of sociality,” (5) a “specific form of self-experience,” and (6) a “specific time perspective” (pp. 24–28).
It should be noted that the transcendental character of the lifeworld and the non-discursivity of experience have also been vital to Gurwitsch’s account of social interaction. Attempting to locate intersubjectivity in Husserl’s “natural attitude” of everyday life, Gurwitsch further suggests that we are always dealing with a “equipment totality” (Zeugganzheit) in a particular “milieu.” It is by building a shared history and tradition around the shared “equipment” (das Zeug), a group sense of “partnership,” “membership,” is formed in relation to a common milieu. For a fuller exposition, see Gurwitsch (1979).
The term originated from the Cartesian formulation of “ego cogito cogitatum” (Descartes 1996).
Rodemeyer (2006, p. 48) reminds us that the notions of appresentation and apperception are sometimes used interchangeably by Husserl.
To Schutz (1982), “the We-relationship itself, although originating in the mutual biographical involvement, transcends the existence of either of the consociates in the realm of every life” (p. 318). In interpreting Schutz’s social phenomenology, Kim (2005) rightly states that, “‘We,’ the basic relationship of the social world, is the first and most original experience given by the very ontological condition of my being in the world” (p. 207).
It should be noted that the meaning of “science” here is not restricted to natural science and technology, but takes the boarder connotation of systematic knowledge equivalent to the German term: Wissenschaftlich.
Husserl calls this the transcendental reduction and second epoche; this is also the most controversial concept among contemporary scholars. In his fifth Cartesian Meditations (1988), the transcendental reduction has been already performed, whereby the existential belief in the world as a whole including myself as a psycho-somatic unity, is suspended so as to disclose a pure transcendental field of consciousness. Having then shown that the real existents attain sense only through the operating intentionality of my consciousness and in constitutive syntheses, Husserl carries out his second epoche. From within this egological sphere, all intentional activities and the results, referring immediately or mediately to other subjectivities, are excluded (pp. 89–92).
Husserl (1970) is lucid on this point: “Things: that is, stones, animals, plants, even human beings and human products; but everything here is subjective and relative, even though normally, in our experience and in the social group united with us in the community of life, we arrive at ‘secure’ facts; within a certain range this occurs of its own accord, that is, undisturbed by any noticeable disagreement; sometimes, on the other hand, when it is of practice importance, it occurs in a purposive knowing process, i.e., with the goal of [finding] a truth which is secure for our purpose. But when we are thrown into an alien social sphere, that of the Negroes in the Congo, Chinese peasants, etc., we discover that their truths, the facts that for them are fixed, generally verified or verifiable, are by no means the same as ours” (pp. 138–139).
Schutz (1980) makes his stand most indicative in the following text: “[In the ‘basic We-relationship,’] the experience of the We (die Erfahrung vom Wir) in the world of immediate social reality is the basis of the Ego’s experience (die Erfahrung des Ich) of the world in general. [Original footnote: For a treatment of these questions cf. Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, IV and V.] Of course we do not have the space in the present study to deal with the difficult phenomenological questions of how this We is constituted from the transcendental Subject… In fact, however, we can for our purposes leave these questions aside. We can begin with the assumptions of the mundane existence of other people and then proceed to describe how our experiences of them are constituted from the pure We-relationship” (p. 165).
Schutz (1982) remarks that “it is in no way established whether the existence of Others is a problem of the transcendental sphere at all … or whether intersubjectivity and therefore sociality does not rather belong exclusively to the mundane sphere or our life-world” (p. 167).
Early in a letter to Aron Gurwitsch dated January 1, 1956, Schutz had written: “The life-world as a common world, as historical civilization, as a special group of contemporary secret counselors, as the community of intersubjectivity, as the common substratum, as a product of collective activity, as the spiritual acquisition (that is revealed in reflection)—all that is so confused that it does not deserve the phenomenological method” (Grathoff, 1989, p. 397).
At one point, Schutz explicitly translates Thomas’ terminology and applies it to his own thesis of relationship towards the Other in the taken-for-granted everyday world by writing: “if an appresentational relationship is socially approved, then the appresented object, fact, or event is believed beyond question to be in its typicality an element of the world taken for granted” (1982, p. 349).
This example is also seen in Schutz (1980, p. 165).
Because of the pre-constituted-ness of the stock of knowledge, Schutz (1982) claims that “only a small fraction of man’s stock of knowledge at hand originates in his own individual experience” (p. 348).
In formulating this example, I am indebted to Reviewer A of Human Studies for his/her valuable comments.
Schutz’s notion of the “unknown” in his theory of lifeworld is complex and incomplete. Schutz brings forward three meanings to the notion. What have examined here only involves the first two which are: (1) the “unquestioned world as the realm of attainable knowledge”; and (2) the “world as the realm within restorable reach” (Schutz 1970, p. 149). However, Schutz formulates the third meaning of “unknown” of the lifeworld which “resist[s] any interpretation” and “cannot be brought into any relation with our stock of knowledge at hand” (p. 151); Schutz calls it: “the unknown in the midst of the unknown” (pp. 151–152). This third meaning, however, is not within the scope of the present paper.
Here, it is worth noting that an important line of critique of Schutz’s theory of the lifeworld lies in the inadequacy of fully understanding the experience of apperceiving my fellowman’s cogitations. Perinbanayagam (1975) remarks that there is no indication that Schutzian actors “say anything of significance to each” as they “are merely present to each other” (p. 507).
The most relevant quote here is the definition of “social fact” in The Rules of the Sociological Method; Durkheim (1982) wrote, “A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint; or: which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations” (p. 59; original emphasis).
In one of his last and probably one of his least discussed papers “The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conductions,” Durkheim (1960) lucidly states that, “our inner life has something that is like a double center of gravity. On the one hand is our individuality—and, more particularly, our body in which it is based; on the other is everything in us that expresses something other than ourselves” (p. 328).
Garfinkel (2007) claims that the phenomenal field properties are best studied empirically with “formatted queue”; he writes that, “[p]henomenal field properties of formatted queues are perspicuous research sites in which beginning students along with early authors of ethnomethodological studies learn to witness and recognize an open unrestricted list of formal properties of Durkheimian Things. These orderlinesses are produced and exhibited by all parties to the line that appears. The orderlinesses are easily observed but are best observed in tours” (p. 15).
Garfinkel reminds us that the “bracketing marks and italicized words have been inserted … to mark the places for the reader to read with appropriate words the Missing-What-in-its Details …” (Garfinkel & Livingston, 2003, p. 25).
For more recent examples of ethnomethodological studies which inquire into the non-discursive background expectancies of everyday life, one may refer to Garfinkel (2002) for studies inverting lenses, Helen’s kitchen, orienting with occasional maps, and freeway traffic flow.
Therefore, I am more hesitant than Mclain (1981) to say that the term “dialogue” can be employed to capture the immediacy and reciprocity of the Schutzian We-relationship (p. 122).
This book later spurs a broader discussion of the epistemology involved in CSP. See Holstein and Miller (1993).
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Acknowledgements
I must acknowledge a special debt to Mr. Lui Ping Keung. Without his guidance, I would not have developed the idea of the “non-discursivity” of the lifeworld during my MPhil study (1996–1998). Besides, I am also deeply indebted to the two anonymous reviewers whose critical reading and constructive suggestions have helped me revise some of the perspectives I had formed in the early draft of this paper.
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Ho, WC. The Transcendence and Non-Discursivity of the Lifeworld. Hum Stud 31, 323–342 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-008-9098-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-008-9098-5