D. La Rochelle ::
A. Crawshaw ::
D. Johnston ::
A. Sanabria
Influences
"Upon closer consideration the question shows itself to have different aspects:
First of all the specialist in the empirical sciences of man, he who is interested in individuals and groups as originators and organizers of their respective 'worlds', obviously must include his own science in these 'worlds', for it is evident that noone escapes the deep influence of modern psychology, sociology, and the political sciences. Such an inclusion, however, means that the man who studies the human sciences changes his own subject matter while he studies it and because he studies it to the extent that we must ask the question: Where, then, is the firm foundation needed for the pursuit of a supposedly 'objective' study?
Moreover, the scholars involved here argue, is not the creation and organization of a world an expression of human freedom? Although the life of an individual and the 'culture' of a group reveal definite styles, one must know whether there is a possibility of empirically investigating free activities. If 'being free', for instance, should mean 'to be able to do whatever one wants', or even if it should mean 'being able to be unreasonable, immoral, unsocial, unjust, and inhuman,' how would it be possible to describe these changeable beings, to compare their behaviour, to characterize their realizations, and to discover general laws applying to them?
Individual human beings as well as social groups are sensitive to values, they are attached to purposes, and they make projects. But how is it possible to 'measure' values? And even if we accept an 'objective hierarchy of values,' and believe that the appreciation of values gives rise to the motives which determine man's action, how do we know what an inidvidual man or group is going to decide and to choose? Are we not here fully in the realm of the purely subjective where no real science is possible?
On the other hand, it is equally unscientific in all those cases where the lack of clarified concepts of the psychical as such leads to an obscure formulation of problems and consequently to merely apparent solutions. The experimental method is indispensable, particularly where there is a question of fixing intersubjective connections of facts. But this does not alter the fact that it presupposes what no experiment can accomplish, namely, the analysis of conscious life itself.
Furthermore, the life world is arranged into fields of different relevance according to one's current state of interest, each one of which has its own peculiar center of density and fullness, and its open but interpretable horizons. In this connection the categories of familiarity and strangeness and the very important category of accessibility enter into consideration. This last category refers to the grouping of one's environment according to (1) that which actually lies within the extent of one's reach, seeing and hearing, or has once been lain there and might at will be brought back into actual accessibility; (2) that which is or was accessible to others and might thus potentially be accessible to one if one were not here but there; (3) the open horizons of that which in free variation can be thought of as attainable.
To this it should be added that one assumes everything which has meaning for oneself also has meaning for the Other or Others with whom one shares this life world as an associate, contemporary, predecessor, or follower. This life-world presents itself also to them for interpretation.
On the other hand, one can examine everything which, as a product of Others, presents itself for meaningful interpretation as to the meaning which the Other who has produced it may have connected with it. Thus, in these reciprocal acts of positing meaning, and of interpretation of meaning, a social world of mundane intersubjectivity is built; it is also the social world of Others, and all other social and cultural phenomena are founded upon it."
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