Abstract
In this paper I deal with Schutz’s approach to intersubjectivity. First I present his concept of the mutual tuning-in relationship as a polythetic constitutional process. Then I retrieve some of Zaner’s criticisms about Schutz’s characterization of the thou-orientation as an appresentational and symbolic relation. Then I go back to Scheler’s perceptual theory of the alter ego sketching out a number of differences with Schutz’s theory, contesting some of the criticisms posed by Zaner. After this I take Luckmann’s description of the process of mirroring as a key concept to understand how the tuning-in relationship is established. Finally, I go back to try and answer Zaner’s criticisms.
I am indebted to Michael Barber and Jochen Dreher for their acute criticism of a previous version of this article, and to Martin Endreß for his insightful remarks on the paper on which it is based. I am also grateful to Clare Huish for helping me improve the writing of it. My stay during j-July 2010 at the Sozialwissenschaftliches Archiv Konstanz/Alfred-Schütz-Gedächtnis-Archiv was indispensable in writing this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
Martin Endress notes that Schutz makes distinctive statements “that he is not concerned with ontological questions but with the analysis of (subjective) meaning constitution.” (Endress 2009, p. 2) Even though, with some particular issues such as the “wakening” or “evocation” of the appresented member of the pair by the appresenting one, his claim is that it can “be clarified only ontologically, but not phenomenologically.” (Schutz and Luckmann 1989, p. 270; see also p. 276) These kinds of statements should allow us to speak of an ontology in Schutz’s latest work, especially if we take into account that the question of appresentation is crucial in understanding Schutz’s stance on music and intersubjectivity. Also Richard Zaner notices that “intersubjectivity was for Schutz ‘the fundamental ontological category of human existence in the world and therefore of all philosophical anthropology’.” (Zaner 2002, p. 4)
- 2.
Besides the paper we are discussing here (“Making music together”), we can find Schutz’s ideas on this subject in “Fragments toward a Phenomenology of Music” (1996, pp. 243–275), where he describes musical experience in accord with the ideas herein exposed.
- 3.
In his new translation, Fred Kersten rephrases the paragraph quoted above in these words: “I would like to modify somewhat Fink’s thesis that it is impossible to bring another’s appresented inner life to perceptual presence by saying that I can apprehend the Other’s inner life only by means of indicative symbols (the Other’s gestures, facial expressions, language, actions), that I can apprehend the Other’s inner life only by appresentations. Indeed, it is a peculiarity of symbol-relationships in general that the symbol alone is present, whereas that which is symbolized is only appresented. In this sense I said that Husserl’s theory of appresentation, especially in its application to the theory of sign and symbol relations, remains indubitably important.
“That the constitutions of the transcendental experience of the Other cannot be reduced to appresentation alone is indeed likewise indubitable.” (Schutz 2010a, pp. 49–50)
- 4.
As will be seen later (in point 6a.), this non-conceptual, pre-linguistic conversation takes place by means of a passive synthesis of our mind. At this point in our discussion, all we know is that, from a phenomenological descriptive point of view, it is a “datum” of the natural attitude that the other is given in a pre-conceptual form of perception.
- 5.
Michel Henry addresses a similar objection to Husserl (Cfr. Henry 1990).
- 6.
By this we do not mean the shallow descriptions of perception undertook by a narrow minded positivism nor the account for a restricted sense of “sensible intuition,” but a profound and multi-faceted description including not only sensorial data but also, and particularly, the types and categories that shape our perception of things.
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Belvedere, C. (2014). The Tuning-in Relationship: From a Social Theory of Music Towards a Philosophical Understanding of Intersubjectivity. In: Barber, M., Dreher, J. (eds) The Interrelation of Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 69. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01390-9_15
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