How is Society Possible? : Intersubjectivity and the Fiduciary Attitude as Problems of the Social Group in Mead, Gurwitsch, and Schutz

How is society possible? In Die Krisis der europiiischen Wissenschaflen und die transzendentale Phiinomenoiogie, I Edmund Husserl is found with a pathos send­ ing out pleas for belief ("Glauben") in his transcendental philosophy and tran­ scendental ego. The traditional idea of theoretical reflection instituted in ancient Greece as the suspension of all taken for granted worldly interests has, through a partial realization of itself, forsaken itself in the one-sided development of the objective mathematical-natural sciences as they themselves have become so taken for granted, with the method and validity of their results held as so self-evident, that they appear as resting self-sufficiently on their own grounds, while pursuing an increasingly abstract mathematization of nature. The sciences are left without a foundation and their meaning within the world consequently unintelligible, while their objective and valid abstract concepts continually tend to supercede the everyday life-world and render it questionable. In the end, these of belief in the everyday life-world or reflective evolving and exchanging attitudes doubt (science) ultimately leads to a disbelief in both, and a search in one direction for idol leaders and in the other for the cult of experience. This collapse of Western belief systems becomes particularly threatening as it turns into nihilism which is the development of beliefs in societal forms which employ 2 natural and social science for the liquidation of humanity and nature. Society starts becoming impossible.

One: Mead’s Theory of Intersubjectivity.- I. Intersubjectivity as a Problem of the Social Group.- 1. The Social Group of Determinate Interobjectivity: The Invertebrates.- 2. The Social Group of Indeterminate Interobjectivity: The Vertebrates.- 3. The Social Group of Creative Intersubjectivity and its Evolution: The Human Beings.- a. The Development of Non-Instinctual Gestures of Adjustment.- b. The Constitution of the Other as a Social Object.- c. The Constitution of Oneself as a Social Object: The Social Self or “Me”.- d. The Constitution of the “Organized Me” and “Generalized Other”.- e. The Creative Intersubjective Group.- 4. The Social Evolution of the Creative Intersubjective Group.- a. The Development of the Primitive Group into Modern Society.- b. The Ideal Democratic Group of Creative Intersubjectivity.- c. The Artistic and Scientific Groups.- Notes.- II. Critical Remarks to Mead’s Theory of Intersubjectivity.- 1. Practical Intersubjectivity and the Social Group of Creative Intersubjectivity.- 2. Mead’s Conception of the Social Group and its Limitations.- 3. The Rational Character of Mead’s Conception of the Social Group, its Intersubjective Presuppositions, and Required Revisions.- Conclusion.- Notes.- Two: Gurwitsch’s Theory of Intersubjectivity.- III. Intersubjectivity as a Problem of Context and the Milieu-World.- 1. The Reflective Context of a Phenomenology of Consciousness.- 2. The Reflective Context of Science.- 3. The Context of the Milieu-World.- a. The Milieu.- b. The Radically Implicit and Relatively Impertinent Knowledge of an Intersubjective Milieu-World.- c. The Three Fundamental Modes of Organization of Milieux and their Intersubjective Relevancy.- 4. The World as a Development of Different Contexts: The Fundamental Question Concerning the Relationship between the Reflective Context of Science and the Milieu-World.- Notes.- IV. Critical Remarks to Gurwitsch’s Theory of Intersubjectivity.- 1. Intersubjectivity as a Transcendental Problem: The Relationship between the Transcendental Order of Existence of Science and the World of Everyday Life.- 2. The ‘Intersubjectivity’ Dialogue: The Correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch.- a. The Critique of Objective Time and the Transcendental Analysis of Intersubjectivity.- b. Intersubjectivity as Ultimately a Mundane Problem and the Constitutive Function of Consciousness.- c. Scientific Intersubjectivity and the Life-World as Exclusively a Foundation.- d. The Transformation of Lived Experience in the Phenomenological Analysis of the Life-World.- 3. The Limitations of Gurwitsch’s Theory of Intersubjectivity and the Social World.- Conclusion.- Notes.- Three: Schutz’s Theory of Intersubjectivity.- V. The Fundamental Levels to the Problem of Intersubjectivity.- 1. The Three Fundamental Levels and the Phenomenology of the Natural Attitude.- 2. Knowledge of the Dasein of the Other: The Fundamental Structures and Stratifications of the Life-World.- 3. Knowledge of the So-Sein of the Other: The Relative Natural World View of a Group.- 4. Knowledge of the Concrete Motives of the Other’s Action: A Theory of Social Action.- Notes.- VI. Towards an Integrated Theory of Intersubjectivity: The Person and The Social Group.- 1. The Theory of Relevance.- 2. The Theory of Signs and Symbols.- 3. The Person in the Social Group 110 Notes.- VII. Critical Remarks to Schutz’s Theory of Intersubjectivity.- 1. The Luckmann Position: Intersubjectivity as a Problem of the Division of Labor.- 2. The Practical Attitude as the Foundation of Intersubjectivity and Everyday Life.- 3. Intimacy and Anonymity.- 4. The Person.- 5. The Social Group and Taken for Granted Symbols.- Conclusion.- Notes.- Four: Intersubjectivity and the Social Group.- VIII. A General Program for Any Future Analysis of the Problem of Intersubjectivity.- 1. The Phenomenological Reduction: Intersubjectivity as a Transcendental or Mundane Problem.- 2. The Other as an ‘Immanent Transcendence’, or Transcendent Immanence’ and Responsible Social Actor.- 3. Intersubjectivity as an Egological or Group Problem.- 4. Intersubjectivity as a Constitutive Product, or as Taken for Granted and Accomplished.- Conclusion.- Notes.- IX. Reflections on the Problem of Intersubjectivity and the Social Group.- 1. The Social Group and the Fiduciary Attitude.- a. The Adduction of Social Meaning to the Practical Attitude.- b. The Fiduciary Attitude and the Practical Attitude.- c. The Fiduciary Attitude.- d. The Clarificatory Potential of the Fiduciary Attitude.- e. The Fiduciary Attitude and Relativism.- 2. The Everyday Life-World.- 3. The Milieu.- 4. The Affiliatory Group.- 5. The Institution.- 6. The Symbolic Cosmos.- Conclusion: The Person and the Social Group.- Notes.- Name Index.