Alfred Schutz on the Apories of Husserl's Approach to Transcendental Intersubjectivity

ALEXIS EMANUEL GROS

Copenhague

Workshop; Copenhagen Summer School in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind.; 2012

Center for Subjectivity Research. University of Copenhagen

Empathy, one of the main topics of the Copenhagen Summer School in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, refers necessarily to the broader issue of intersubjectivity. In my presentation I intend to reconstruct the ?classical? debate between Schutz and Husserl on transcendental intersubjectivity, a controversy which is still instructive for today´s phenomenological thinking on this fundamental question. Schutz started to study Husserl´s work in the late 1920s not as an end in itself, but as a way to achieve his sociological project, which consisted in the foundation of Weber´s interpretative sociology (verstehende Soziologie). Husserlian Phenomenology acted in this context as a sort of ?methodological equipment,? (Methodisches Instrumentarium) (Endreß, 2006: 38) which enabled Schutz to trace back the fundamental facts of social life to the essential structures of individual consciousness. This instrumental reception of Husserlian thought determined Early Schutz´s position on Husserl?s approach to transcendental intersubjectivity. Given that Schutz´s theoretical aims in Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt were merely sociological, he decided to abstain from expressing a stance on the philosophical problem of the transcendental ?constitution of the alter ego in the consciousness of the solitary ego? (Schutz in Wagner, 1983: 313) and decided to stay in the natural attitude practicing ?constitutive phenomenology of natural attitude? (konstitutive Phänomenologie der natürlichen Einstellung) (Schutz, 1981). It is important to point out, however, that in this period he recognized the importance of the problem of transcendental intersubjectivity for the social sciences, and, having not yet systematically studied the V. Cartesian Meditation, hoped that Husserl would be able to solve it (Schutz, 1981; Schutz in Husserl, 1993; Wagner, 1983; Hamauzu, 2010). During the second half of the 1940s, Schutz´s modest position on Husserl´s account of transcendental intersubjectivity changed drastically (Wagner, 1983; Hamauzu, 2010). This modification resulted mainly from the fact that he had now thoroughly studied the V. Cartesian Meditation and the recently published Ideas II, Ideas III and the Krisis. After reading these works, Schutz lost his hope that Husserl could solve the problem within the reduced sphere and started to criticize him (Ibid.). However the change was also due to the fact that now Schutz was no longer merely a social scientist but also a well-known figure of the American phenomenological movement. He stayed in close contact with some of the most important Husserl scholars of the period and published critical papers on Sartre and Scheler. This means that Schutz achieved a stage of intellectual and phenomenological maturity which enabled him to define his own philosophical approach to intersubjectivity, a mundane account of intersubjectivity formulated in terms of a philosophical anthropology (Srubar, 1988). He could now justify philosophically his early methodological decision of staying in the mundane sphere. ?Das Problem der Intersubjektivität bei Edmund Husserl,? presented in April of 1957 in the Colloque international de phénomenologie á Royaumont, is Schutz´s ?frontal attack? on Husserl´s approach to intersubjectivity (Wagner, 1983: 314) and his definitive farewell (Abschied) to transcendental phenomenology (Schutz in Schütz and Gurwitsch, 1985). Schutz´s critique of Husserl´s stance on intersubjectivity in that paper is perhaps one of the most radical and deep and has become an unavoidable challenge for Husserl scholars who want to defend the founder of phenomenology against the accusation of being a solipsist. In light of the importance of this critique, I will try in my presentation to reconstruct Schutz´s objections to Husserl´s approach to intersubjectivity and to present the defenses of the Husserlian account carried out by both Husserl scholars contemporary to Schutz, like Cairns and Spiegelberg, and by current scholars, like Zahavi and Hamauzu. I will start from the hypothesis that in Schutz´s Royaumont paper there are two different kinds of objections to Husserl´s account of transcendental intersubjectivity: a) immanent objections, which do not question the formulation of the problem of the constitution of the other in the consciousness of ego, but instead criticize the single steps (Schritte) that Husserl takes to solve it, highlighting the difficulties (Schwierigkeiten) that underlie them (Schutz, 2009). Schutz states that the pairing (Paarung), the passive synthesis which makes empathy (Einfühlung) possible, is not viable because of the extreme difference which exists between the phenomenon of my own living body (Leib) and the manifestation of the other?s physical body (Körper), and also claims that the constitution of the other in my consciousness is inconceivable without a presupposed intersubjective normality (Normalität) (Ibid.). And b) fundamental objections, which call into question the very problem of transcendental intersubjectivity. The Viennese thinker criticizes the speculative and idealist character of Husserl´s account to intersubjectivity, saying that the concept of constitution (Konstitution) has become a sort of creation (Kreation), and, therefore, that by asserting that I constitute the other, Husserl makes an ?exaggerated use? (überschwenglicher Gebrauch) of the transcendental ego. Schutz expresses his doubts concerning Husserl´s assumption of a multiplicity of transcendental egos, arguing that the transcendental ego is a ?singulare tantum? (Schutz, 2009: 250). Correlatively, there are two kinds of defenses of Husserl which try to protect the founder of phenomenology against each of the above mentioned objections. a) The first one, carried out by Cairns and Spiegelberg,1 defends Husserl against Schutz´s immanent objections by stating that the pairing of the own living body with the other´s physical body is possible because I experience myself both as Leib and as Körper. This would mean for Cairns that the constitution of the other in my primordial sphere would be achievable without the need for a precedent normality. b) The second defense, executed by Zahavi and Hamauzu, disputes with Schutz´s fundamental objections. For Zahavi, Husserl accomplished a radical transformation of transcendental philosophy, widening the transcendental sphere to include historicity, corporality and intersubjectivity, and for this reason the word ?transcendental? has for Husserl a very different meaning than for Kant. Husserl thinks that there is not only a single transcendental ego but a multiplicity of them and that transcendental intersubjectivity, and not the transcendental ego, is the ground of absolute being (absoluter Seinsboden) (Zahavi, 2009). If this is taken to its final conclusion, Husserl´s phenomenology would be not a transcendental egology but a transcendental sociology (Ibid.). On the other hand, Hamauzu criticizes Schutz´s interpretation of the concept of constitution. Husserlian constitution, he says, is not a creation of the world by the transcendental ego and thus it is wrong to assert that for Husserl ego fabricates alter ego (Hamuzu, 2010). Hamauzu points out that Husserl uses the concept in a reflexive rather than an active way: he does not say that ego constitutes alter ego but that alter ego constitutes itself in ego´s consciousness. For Husserl, my transcendental subjectivity is merely the field where the other can appear (Ibid.). As a conclusion for my presentation, I will point out that if one accepts the new interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology developed by scholars like Zahavi and Hamauzu and leaves aside the different theoretical aims of Husserl´s and Schutz´s accounts of intersubjectivity, it is possible to say that both Husserl and Schutz share a similar conception of the interplay and tension which exists between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Indeed, both Husserl´s egological approach and Schutz´s methodological individualism take as a starting point the first person perspective and stress the fundamental meaning of subjective lived experience. But, on the other hand, both Husserl and Schutz think that subjectivity is from the outset embedded in an intersubjective world; that is to say, that the individual subject is what it is only as a member of a social group. This means that both thinkers conceive intersubjectivity as inter-subjectivity (Zahavi, 2009), i.e., not as an undifferentiated collective ?e.g. Herder?s Volksseele?, but as a bond among socialized subjects