Fenomenologie en sociologie. Schets van de geschiedenis

Samenvatting

A historical study aimed at working out the essential contributions of phenomenology to sociology compares the initial intentions of E. Husserl, founder of phenomenology, with the actual course that phenomenologically-oriented sociology took in the work of A. Schutz, P. L. Berger, & T. Luckmann--the ethnomethodologists. The mutual interest of phenomenology & sociology in each other originated in the objectivistic interpretation that dominated 19th century sociology. One of the first attempts to overcome this objectivism was made by M. Weber, however the philosophical basis of his methodology was not altogether sufficient. This task could only be fulfilled by a philosophy as radical as Husserl's phenomenology, ie, that the role phenomenology should play for empirical sociology could be defined as epistemological. It had to answer the basic questions of how to know the social world & where to find the central concepts for its description & explanation. On the general basis of the principle of the intentionality of human consciousness & action, more specific answers to these questions were to be given in a "regional ontology of the social world" &, as Husserl formulated it later in his career, in the "eidetic analysis of the lifeworld" (Lebenswelt). In the work of Schutz, this latter notion of "lifeworld" played an important part. He used it, however, in a different context & with a different meaning: lifeworld was the specific outlook or reality-interpretation of a concrete group or individual, that could serve as the explanation for this group's or individual's action. By reducing lifeworld to subjects' knowledge, Schutz stood at the origin of that development in the contact of phenomenology & sociology which took form especially in Berger & Luckmann's "social construction of reality" on the one hand, & H. Garfinkel & A. Cicourel's "ethnomethodology" on the other. This development can best be described as a SofK. 2 critical points are made: (1) modern phenomenologically-oriented sociology seems to neglect the collective or superindividual dimensions in social life, & (2) its conception of phenomenological sociology as a SofK--although very fruitful--leaves unanswered the fundamental epistemological questions that were focused by Husserl, & thereby makes sociology once again susceptible to the old danger of objectivism. Modified AA.