In dialogue with theorists of reading (Iser, Rogers) in the Schutzian tradition of phenomenology, this paper focuses on social relationships in novels, between the author and the reader (as a relation of Predecessor to Successors), and especially the relationship between reader and characters of the novel. The lack of the reader’s bodily engagement with the characters contrasts with everyday life, in which one can bodily affect one’s interlocutor, resembles “direct social observation” and can function as a kind of epoché, initiating (...) one into reading as a finite province of meaning. Within such a province, beyond the features of sociality and the epoché and like the epoché, the other features (form of spontaneity, tension of consciousness, experience of self, and temporality) all affect the reader‑character relationships, which in turn evoke adaptations in how these features are experienced in pragmatic everyday life. (shrink)

This paper examines Felix Kaufmann’s ideas on the methodology of social sciences through the example of the Marshall Society at Cambridge University and on how these ideas spread. The scope of the study includes his correspondence with the Marshall Society and his unpublished text prepared for a lecture held in 1936. Connections are established between the main theme of Kaufmann’s Methodenlehre der Sozialwissenschaften (1936) and the unpublished text of his lecture, where he highlighted the problems that the naturalism‑antinaturalism dichotomy posed (...) for the methodology of the social sciences and the promising advances in the exact sciences to overcome these problems. Kaufmann avoided adopting a totally rejectionist and adaptive attitude, emphasized that natural and social sciences may have common and different methods, and argued that some methodological conflicts could be reconciled. Kaufmann’s unpublished text serves as an English précis of his 1936 book and facilitates the dissemination of his ideas through the Marshall Society. (shrink)

Drawing partly on unpublished materials from the Sozialwissenschaftliche Archiv Konstanz (Alfred‑Schütz‑Gedächtnis‑Archiv), in this paper I attempt to reconstruct Schutz’s barely explored reception of Marx and Marxism. To this aim, I proceed in four steps. First (1), I trace the very few references to Marxian thought in Schutz’s published work. Second (2), I review Schutz’s mentions of the topic in his correspondences with his friends and colleagues Aron Gurwitsch and Eric Voegelin. Third (3), I give an overview of the books by (...) Marx and other Marxist literature that Schutz had in his personal library. Finally (4), I analyze Schutz’s unpublished lectures on “Dialectics” and “Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge,” two of the only documents where he extensively discusses Marx and Marxism. The reconstruction carried out in the paper is not an end in itself but an effort to contribute to the contemporary ‘critical turn’ in phenomenology. (shrink)

This essay explores the theme of individuation in existential phenomenology, focusing on the contributions of Alfred Schutz and Maurice Natanson, one of Schutz’s students during his tenure at the New School for Social Research in New York. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Social Science Archive in Konstanz, I reflect on the theory of multiple realities and its application to issues of mobility and isolation. Following a lead given by Natanson in his critique of “life‑world optimism” sketched in a (...) letter to Schutz, I delve into Natanson’s theory of individuation and his use of the phenomenological method by emphasizing his critical elaboration of Sartre’s non‑egological conception of consciousness and theory of the other. I demonstrate how the existential dimensions of anguish, aloneness, and loneliness, as raised by Natanson, restate the theory of multiple realities, in part through his engagement with phenomenological psychiatry. (shrink)

Alfred Schutz’s Constitutive Phenomenology of the natural attitude was completed under the influence of Edmund Husserl Phenomenology, Henri Bergson’s Vitalism and William James’ Psychology. Schutz used James’ psychology mainly to analyze acts, their intentional modifications and the modifications found in finite realities of meaning. While the phenomenology of Husserl was important for the topics discussed, Schutz’s appreciation of James’s psychology is due to the fact that he makes these analyses without resorting to reduction, i.e. he explores worldly consciousness. Despite these (...) differences, Schutz values the contact points between the two theories. Indeed, the first one of these contact points refers to the election of perception as the privileged act in the experience of the world. Such coincidence originated in Brentano’s basis that sustains both theories, particularly in relation to the concept of intentionality. On the other hand, the second contact point can be noticed in the use of the term “horizon” in Husserl and “fringes” in James. These notions influenced the Schutzian theory of Multiple Realities and provided significant support for that theory. This paper is intended to stress the coincidences that Schutz analyzes in detail in “William James’s ‘Concept of the Stream of Thought Phenomenologically Interpreted” contained in CP III, and also as an exegesis of the way these authors cooperated with the Schutzian notion of “the world of everyday life” or “world of working” (Wirkwelt). (shrink)

This article aims to develop a comparison between Alfred Schutz’s and José Ortega y Gasset’s social theories. By examining the annotations found on the copy of Ortega’s Man and People, located in Schutz’s Hand‑Bibliothek at the Sozialwissenschaftliches Archiv Konstanz, the paper focuses on the way in which the two authors conceptualized themes such as empathy, lifeworld, and taken‑for‑granted, highlighting elements of continuity and divergence. This comparative analysis reveals the significant role that intersubjectivity plays for both thinkers, through which it is (...) possible to read in filigree their comparison with other eminent voices of the phenomenological landscape, with whom Ortega and Schutz did not confront directly, and to redefine their complex relationship with Husserl’s perspective on the topic. (shrink)