Alter Ego and Intersubjetivity in Schutz and Luhmann

PIGNUOLI OCAMPO, SERGIO

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; II Conference of The International Alfred Schutz Circle for Phenomenology and Interpretive Social Science; 2014

The International Alfred Schutz Circle for Phenomenology and Interpretive Social Science

In this work we approach for the dialogs between the systemic and phenomenological traditions of Sociology, and we focus on both convergences and divergences of the post-husserlian phenomenological motives used by Alfred Schutz and Niklas Luhmann in their respective solutions to the problems of alter ego and intersubjectivity. The observation of our object in a comparative perspective offers an opportunity to discuss the role of the standard systematic interpretations in Sociology. From whose prejudices, any kind of dialog between Luhmann and Schutz would be impossible, because there would be not in our discipline neither two traditions (phenomenology and systems theory) nor two authors (Schutz and Luhmann) more confronted and distant. According to systematic standards, Schutz would belong to the subjectivist and microsociological side, and Luhmann, to the objectivist and macrosociological ones. However, in spite of these restrictive prejudices, in the specialized literature in Luhmann and in Husserl and Schutz (Paul, Knudsen, Nassehi, Lewkow, Arnoldi, among others) there is strong evidence to suggest that things could be otherwise: the dialog, presumed impossible by the standards, has been proven. On this basis, we propound our question: what kind of reception gave Luhmann to Schutz´s work in the solution of the problem of the phenomenological intersubjectivity? Our hypothesis is that Luhmann brings down the phenomenological problem of intersubjectivity in its concept of double contingency, in whose framework, and in privileged dialog with the schutzian concept of reciprocity of perspectives, he develops an original phenomenological line of argument, properly post- husserlian, alternative to the paradoxes of the analytical realism of Parsons and to the paradoxes of the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl. The analysis has two cores: 1) the concept of experience of the other, because it articulates the significative constitution and the phenomenology of otherness, and 2) the concept of social unit of meaning, because it articulates otherness and social constitution. To avoid fallacies or incomplete links, we opted for a comparative methodology, with two specific objectives: (a) compare the concepts of empathy from Husserl, significative constitution of ?you? from Schutz, and understanding from Luhmann, for observe the first core; (b) compare the concepts of inter-monadological community from Husserl, reciprocity of perspective from Schutz and double contingence from Luhmann, for observe the second one.