An Approach to Social Context

Abstract

Contemporary phenomenology has not had much to say about the twin themes of science and technology. Although there are exceptions, most major phenomenological writers have preferred to concentrate on the more general problem of culture as such. Speaking broadly, with the exception of Husserl’s discussion of the rise of modern physical science, comparatively little attention has been directed to science as such. On the contrary, there has been wide discussion of the social context, although not from the quasi-Marxist perspective in which the phenomenon is to be understood in terms of its genesis. Examples here are Husserl’s later study of the life-world, which has been influential both within phenomenology - for instance, in Schutz’s discussion of multiple realities - and in Marxism - e. g.,in the theory of the everyday world associated with Léfebvre as well as the members of the Budapest School (Markus, Heller, Feher, et al). Culture has further been studied in a more concrete sense in terms of the problem of freedom, where related, but largely divergent, analyses are to be found in existential phenomenology, tinged with Marxism to a variable degree, in the thought of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.