Alfred Schutz’s in his work The Phenomenology of the Social World in Germany in 1932 used intersubjectivity in a larger sense to mean a concern with the social world, especially the social nature of knowledge. Phenomenologists see the ‘social’ world in even more relative terms than the physical world. While objects in the physical world do physically exist, ‘objects’ in the social world do not. Concepts like crime, love and family are entirely human creations, entirely dependent on human perception, interpretation and meaning for their existence. There is, for example, no such thing as a crime; it all depends on human interpretation of a particular act in a particular situation (e.g. killing someone may be self-defence, an accident or heroism as well as murder). All human knowledge is, therefore, relative.

Positivism aims at understanding the world as cause and effect relations that can be observed. It draws from –

o Empiricism (what is seen or observable)

o Inductivism (supremacy of facts)

o Naturalism (influence of external environment on actions)

Rejection of positivism by phenomenologists

• The naturalistic paradigm, the countermovement of the positivist paradigm, presumed that reality was not fixed but based on individual and subjective realities. The philosophy of phenomenology allied closely with the naturalistic paradigm.
• Phenomenologists assumed that knowledge was achieved through interactions between researchers and participants. Therefore, phenomenological research was considered subjective, inductive, and dynamic.
• Phenomenology will be seen to play the role of constantly modifying the ‘discoveries’ of positivism:
• According to Edmund Husserl, objectivity or mind is never value-free or disembodied. All objectivity is value-laden or occurs as worldly, social, cultural. This view contrasts with the positivist notion that objectivity is the sole reality, and value-free.
• Further, Husserl believed in mind-body continuum, hence rejecting two extremes: thinking alone or objectivism, and mere embodiment or subjectivism.
• Phenomenologists argue that the subject matter of the social and natural sciences is fundamentally different. As a result, the methods and assumptions of the natural sciences are inappropriate to the study of man.
• While natural sciences deal with matter and to understand and explain the behaviour of matter, it is sufficient to observe it from the outside.
• Unlike matter, man has consciousness- thoughts, feelings, meanings, intentions and an awareness of being. Man cannot simply observe action from the outside and impose an external logic upon it. He must interpret the internal logic which directs the actions of the actor.
• A lot of sociologists argue that the positivist approach tends to portray man as a passive responder to external stimuli rather than an active creator of his own society. Man is pictured as reacting to the various forces and pressures, to economic infrastructures and the requirements of social systems.
• Peter Berger argues that society has often been viewed as a puppet theatre with its members portrayed as ‘little puppets jumping about on the ends of their invisible strings, cheerfully acting out the parts that have been assigned to them.’
• However, from a phenomenological perspective man does not merely react and respond to an external society, he is not simply acted upon, he acts. In his interaction with others he creates his own meanings and constructs his own reality and therefore directs his own actions.
• The phenomenologists attack an ontological basis which the positivists do not believe exists.
• Phenomenologists claim that acceptance of the basis of their theories entails rejection of causal explanation.
• Alfred Schutz comes from the perspective of applied phenomenology. He considers sociology as the study of “lived history,” or human institutions within which we find chronological or day to day history. He points out that human beings see, hear, and move within value parameters. Social structures comprise “lived history,” and are the context within which “chronological history” makes sense.