Between Pygmalion and Medusa

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to reconstruct the total image of A. Schutz' phenomenological sociology. For this purpose I take up two fronts of its ; one is the debate with T. Parsons, and the other is the criticism of E. Husserl and J.-P. Sartre. These two fronts seem to have no relation, but they have the same root. We can see the original figure of Schutz' theory clearly here. I try to measure the position of Schutz' phenomenological sociology by 'triangular surveying'. On the one hand, Schutz' phenomenological sociology identifies itself in contrast to the positivism. Parsons' action theory, because of his Neo-Kantian view of science falls into the myth of mistaking an ideal puppet for a living man. Contrary to Neo-Kantian positivism, Schutz returns to the subjective point of view of the living man in the prescientific life-world. In this sense Schutz' phenomenological sociology is first and above all projected as the 'critique of the knowledge'.On the other hand, Schutz' phenomenological sociology identifies itself in contrast to Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. Husserl's attempt to account for the constitution of alter ego in the transcendental ego's consciousness has its radical consequence in Sartre's theory of the 'conflict of gaze'. The transcendentalism falls into another myth of transforming a living man into stone. Contrary to the transcendental solipsism, Schutz remains in the social world of everyday life where men encounter men.Schutz' phenomenological sociology is 'phenomenologica' by its critique of the myth of positivism, and it is a 'sociology' by its negation of the myth of transcendentalism. Between the negation of positivism and that of transcendentalism appears the world of everyday life as the subjective and social reality, in Schutz' words, the sphere of 'mutual interaction in freedom'.