Schutz’s Theory of Constitution: An Idealism of Meaning

Alfred Schutz formulated his phenomenology with the aim of circumventing what he perceived to be the idealistic character of Husserl's theory of meaning constitution. Schutz contended that constitution for Husserl was idealistically creationistic in the sense that the meanings and very being of phenomena were merely the created products of the constitutive acts of consciousness itself. This article argues, however, that Schutz's theory of constitution is not without an idealistic character in that the meanings which consciousness constitutes and predicates to phenomena are simply created by consciousness itself. This argument is articulated through 1) a delineation of the basic principles of Schutz's phenomenology, 2) an explication of his theory of constitution, and finally, 3) an exposition of its idealistic character with, by way of contrast, a brief account of how and why Maurice Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology expunged all features of idealistic constitution. Most anyone familiar with Edmund Husserl's work is also aware of the criticism that Husserl's theory of constitution is epistemologically idealistic. Though this criticism is even today a debated issue in Husser lean scholarship, it was levelled against Husserl's theory by certain of his colleagues and students. Notable among them is Alfred Schutz whose own phenomenological project was in large part designed to overcome what he perceived as the radically idealistic character of constitution in Husserl's phenomenology. Schutz contended that Husserl's concept of constitution underwent a transformation in the course of its development. Originally, according to Schutz, "constitution meant clarification of the sense-structure of conscious life • . • tracing back all cogitata to intentional operations of on-going conscious life".1 But, this notion of constitution "changed from a clarification of the sense of being, into the foundation of the structure of being; it ... changed from explication into creation".2 In other words, for Schutz, Husserl's concept of constitution devolved from being a means by which the meaning of the being of the phenomena of the life-world could be explained into the means by which the meaning and the very being of life-worldly phenomena are created. However, although Schutz aimed to circumvent Husserl's creationistic approach, it will be argued in this article that Schutz's theory of constitution is not without an idealistic character. In particular, it will 64 THOMAS A. MICHAUD be shown that Schutz's theory suffers from an idealism of meaning. This term "idealism of meaning" implies that for Schutz the meanings that consciousness constitutes and predicates to the phenomena of the lifeworld are merely intrasubjectively produced. The constituted meanings are simply the products of subjective consciousness itself and are not derived from or based upon meanings that consciousness receives from the objective, intersubjective life-world. The articulation of this critical analysis of Schutz's theory of constitution will proceed according to the following topics. First of all, a general account of Schutz's peculiar program, his "constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude", will be presented. Secondly, a detailed explication of Schutz's theory of constitution, his notion of the genesis of meaning, will be offered. And, finally, Schutz's theory will be exposed as proffering an idealism of meaning, a critical flaw because it is not consonant with his general descriptions of the ways in which human subjects know the life-world. In addition, within this last topic, certain brief, general statements regarding the overcoming of Schutz's idealism through the existential phenomenological approach of Maurice MerleauPonty will be indicated. A. SCHUTZ'S CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE NATURAL ATTITUDE A major, if not the predominate, goal of Schutz's constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude was to ensure that his notion of constitution would not incorporate Husserl's creationism but would serve only as a conceptual framework for explicating the ways in which the meanings of life-worldly phenomena are correlated with the meaninggiving acts of a human subject. More simply stated, Schutz aimed to explain how and why, in terms of the conscious life of a subject, lifeworldly phenomena have the meanings that they do. The methodological program Schutz proposed in order to accomplish his aim involved a two step effort. In contrast to Husserl, Schutz in establishing his point of departure did not recommend the bracketing of the natural attitude, the attitude which accepts as given that the phenomena of the life-world have objective, and one might say, real being. Schutz emphasized that the objective being of what a subject ordinarily and naturally experiences as life-worldly phenomena should be "taken for granted".3 What this refusal to perform an epoche entails for Schutzean investigators is that they should commence their inquiries from within the natural attitude. They should conduct empirically oriented studies of the ordinary, natural experiences of everyday life; differentiating the meanings of such experiences, classifying them, evaluating their complexity and significance. In fact, as Schutz had it, an investigator's operative epistemological perspective should be an ordinary empirical realism, a realism which is typically characteristic of the epistemological mind-sets of social scientists when they undertake their studies of social life. The second step in Schutz's program is the description of the operations of consciousness itself and articulation of the ways in which those operations are correlated with a human subject's natural experiences of the life-world. Once again, however, Schutz does not suggest that this step should involve the bracketing of the objective being of SCHUTZ'S THEORY OF CONSTITUTION 65 the phenomena of the life-world; it does not require the reduction of being to the constitutive operations of consciousness. What this step does entail for investigators is that after having completed their empirically oriented study of an experience or set of experiences, they then should attempt to explain how or why, in terms of the operations of consciousness, that experience or set of experiences has the meaning it does.· In essence, for Schutz, inquiry into the operations of consciousness provides the foundation, the ultimate explanatory basis, for any sort of social scientific study. Indeed, Schutz's insistence that the empirical social sciences will find their foundations in a constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitudeS reflects his firm conviction that it is eminently possible to explain the meanings of ordinary social experiences by describing the operations of consciousness which are correlated with