Lester Embre on "collective subjects"

CARLOS BELVEDERE

Schutzian Research

Zeta Books

Lugar: Bucarest; Año: 2017 vol. 9 p. 79 - 84

2067-0621

Embree claimed that Schutz did not remain a methodological individualistduring all of his academic life since he came to consider the individualas an abstractum abstracted from a concrete collective life. In this view, thesocio-historical world cannot be understood as a mere structure of individualsbecause it also contains groups that are related one to another in diverse waysand which are the concrete subject of the social world. I stress three major contributions of Embree to social phenomenology: to have shown the deficienciesof methodological individualism because it conceals that the social world is aworld of groups; to have found a phenomenological way to speak of collectivesubjects not involving metaphysical mystifications; and to have found a differentway to access phenomena by re-specifying the first person perspectiveas ?first person plural.?