Abstract
The social sciences have to include also the field of the political. Since Plato both the social and the political order, even though seen as different, are considered as grounded in the human nature, but the emergence of the political from the primary social order and the relatively natural attitude attached to it has never been explained in a satisfactory way. The Schutzian approach to mundane phenomenology in general and his analysis of the relationship between in-groups and out-groups in particular helps to bridge this gap.
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References
Schutz includes action, in which life is reproduced, in his definition of primary means that overcome the “fundamental anxiety” which stems from the experience of one’s own finiteness in light of the transcendency of the world. See Schutz, “Das Problem der Personalität der Sozialwelt, ” in Werkausgabe, Band V/2. Frankfut a.M.: Surkamp, 1998.
Alfred Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen Welt” (“Equality and the Meaning Structure of the World”), in Gesammelte Aufsätze II. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971, 203
Tomoo Otaka, Die Grundlegung der Lehre vom sozialen Verband. Wein: Springer, 1932, 135 f.
Plato, Republic,368 c-d; see also Eric Voegelin, Die neue Wissenschaft der Politik. München: Pustet, 1965, 93. (Original: The New Science of Politics.)
Hannah Arendt, Vita Activa. München: Piper, 1971. (Original The Human Condition.)
Aristotle, Politics,1252a, 10–20; 1253a-1254a, bl, f
Arendt, Vita Activa,op. cit., 35.
Voegelin, Die neue Wissenschaft der Politik, 17.
Arendt, Vita Activa,op. cit., 34, 38.
Arendt, Vita Activa,op. cit., 44.
Ferdinad Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 1979. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tübigen: Mohr, 1971, 20 f.
Weber’s philosophical and scientific-theoretical orientation towards Neo-Kantianism certainly played a role here. This orientation does not stand in contrast to constitutional processes of social reality, but rather tries to understand them through an ideal-type reconstruction (Schutz, Der Sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Wein: Springer, 1932, § 2, 3 and 4).
Voegelin, Die neue Wissenschaft der Politik, op. cit., 84; Alfred Schutz, “Symbol, Wirklichkeit, Gesellschaft” (“Symbol, Reality, and Society”), in Gesammelte Aufsätze I. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971, 410.
See Helmuth Plessner’s essays “Macht und die menschliche Natur” and “Die Grenzen der Gemienschaft,” both in Gesammelte Schriften V. Frankfurt a.M.: Surkamp, 1981. 24Plessner, “Macht und die menschliche Natur,” op. cit., 201.
Plessner, op. cit., 232. “Plessner, op. cit., 191.
Plessner, op. cit., 194. 31Plessner, op. cit., 194.
Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen Welt,” op. cit.
Schutz, “Das Problem der Personalität in der Sozialwelt,” op. cit.; “Symbol, Wirklichkeit, Gesellschaft,” op. cit.; Der Sinnhafie Aufbau der sozialen Welt,op. cit.; “Über die mannigfaltigen Wirklichkeiten” (“On Multiple Realities”), in Gesammelte Aufsätze I,op. cit.
I1ja Srubar, Kosmion. Die Genese der pragmatische Lebenswelttheorie von Alfred Schutz und ihr anthropologischer Hintergrund. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988.
Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen Welt,” op. cit., 206f.
Schutz, “Das Problem der Personalität in der Sozialwelt,” op. cit. ‘Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen Welt,” op. cit.
Peter J. Opitz, Briefwechsel über “Die neue Wissenschaft der Politik.” Freiburg: Alber, 1993, 100
Schutz, “Die Gleichheit und die Struktur der sozialen Welt,” op. cit., 236
Compare the characterization of the political in the polis as a consciousness of performance (Könnens-Bewusstsein) in Christian Maier, Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1995, 435 f.
Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1963.
This is not the appropriate place to go into detail about the curtailment of the political to the nationalistic friend-foe perspective that can be illustrated by the situation in Germany between WW I and WW II. Above all the attempt to de-emotionalize the political and to separate it from the transcendent, i.e. the “simply moralizing or ideologizing” dimension of its legitimation, which we have seen in Plessner’s and particularly in Schmitt’s theories, shows, among other things, how upset educated German citizens were when they found out that the Allies’ propaganda in World War I defined them as being primitive, blood-thirsty barbarians. Compare here Emile Durkheim, “Deutschland über alles. ” Die deutsche Gesinnung and der Krieg. Paris: Libraire Armand Colin, 1915.
This background function can also be found in Carl Schmitt’s writings, who sees wars as being apolitical when the enemy’s human dignity is morally denied, so that the war does not serve to expel the enemies but rather to eradicate them (Schmitt, Der Begrii f des Politischen,op. cit., 37).
Karl Mannheim, Über den Gegenstand, die Methode, und die Einstellung der Soziologie. Manuskript. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1930.
Ulrich Beck, Reflexive Modernisierung. Frankfurt a.M. ( Held in Sozialwissenschtliches Archiv Konstanz ), 1996.
An example of this is the interplay between Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe during the 17th through 19th centuries. The genesis of nationalism as a reaction to the universalisation of modem conditions of life through the industrial revolution is another example (Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988 ).
Talcott Parsons, The System of Modem Societies. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1970.
Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997. ‘Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave. Democratization in Late Twenieth Century Norman/London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
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Srubar, I. (1999). The Origin of the Political. In: Embree, L. (eds) Schutzian Social Science. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 37. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2944-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2944-4_2
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