MAX WEBER Born on April 12, 1864, in

Erfurt, Germany, Weber was raised in Berlin and stud­

ied 1aw and economics at Heide1berg and Berlin. He

became professor at Freiburg in 1894 and professor of

HUMAN SCIENCES ( Geisteswissenschaften) at Heidelberg

in 1896. After 1897, recurrent and serious problems

with his physica1 and psycho1ogica1 health prevented

him from teaching regularly. He resumed teaching at

Berlin in 1919 and died on June 14, 1920, in Berlin.

The re1ationship between Max Weber and the first

generation of phenomenologists was for the most part

indirect. Weber's basic methodological tenets were

formed independently ofhis acquaintance with EDMUND

HUSSERL, and, though in contact with GEORG SIMMEL,

Husserl seems to have taken practically no notice of

Weber. Other prominent figures from the first genera­

tion ofphenomenologists, such as MAX SCHELER, ADOLF

REINACH, and ALEXANDER PFĂNDER, are not mentioned

in Weber's methodological writings. It is nonetheless

important to note that both Husserl and Weber can be

seen as responses to and in many cases extensions ofthe

work of common sources that include FRANZ BRENTANO,

WILHELM DILTHEY, Wilhelm WindeJband (1848-1915),

and most especially Heinrich Rickert ( 1863-1936).

Moreover, for at least two of the second generation of

phenomenologists in the broadest sense, Weber's work

was a crucial source of inspiration, namely ALFRED

SCHUTZ and KARL JASPERS. ln the former case, the influ­

ence concerns questions ofmethodology, since Schutz

sees the methodological tenets advanced by Weber and

CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY not onJy as compatibJe,

but even as complementing one another and as provid­

ing in their combination the proper foundation for a

phenomenological human science. For Jaspers, on the

other hand, it was primarily the personal example of

his close friend and mentor Weber that, according to

Jaspers' own account, provided inspiration for his own

work concerning the proper kind of Existenz in today's

world.

Weber's reflections on the methodology of the hu­

man and expecially the social sciences appeared for the

most part in essays during the first decade ofthe 20th

century, i.e., in the period following the publication

of Husserl 's Logische Untersuchungen (1900-190 1 ),

but preceding Husserl 's move to transcendental pheno­

menology in the Ideen zu ei ner reinen Phănomenologie

und phănomenologischen Philosophie I (1913 ). The

exceptions are two essays written for the journal Lo­

gos, on whose advisory board Husserl was a mem­

ber, and the first few paragraphs of the posthumously

published Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economics and

society, 1922), which are entitled "Basic Categories in

Social Science." These were published !ater, but do not

seem tobe affected by any developments in Husserl's

thinking. There are important parallels between Husserl's

work and the methodological reflections in Weber's

essays. Both were seeking a new model for their re­

spective sciences, in Husserl's case for a pure LOGIC

that could hold for ali sciences, and in Weber's case,

for the HUMAN SCIENCES. Neither was satisfied with the

predominant and overwhelming influence ofthe model

of NATURAL SCIENCE, i.e., NATURALISM, nor- for very

different reasons - was either of them satisfied with

the model of HISTORY as the alternative that had been

proposed by Dilthey, Winde1band, and Rickert. Both

objected to the idea of science as a strictly nomoth­

etic discipline, restricted to discovering the unchanging

patterns, the universal 1aws, of externally observable

phenenoma. Husserl's rejection of PSYCHOLOGISM and

an epistemology oriented only toward the empirica!

classification and explanation of natural events is cited

by Weber with approval. For Weber, the social sciences have as their subject

matter not merely externally observable patterns ofbe­

havior, but rather social "ACTION," human behavior that

involves a subjective "MEANING" that is inaccessible to

the methods of the natural sciences. Social science has

"understanding" ( Verstehen) as its aim, for it is directed

at what is "meaningful," at that which is given only in

interna! experience, e.g., human motivations, beliefs,

and EMOTIONS. The attempt to uncover the "meaning­

ful" component in human behavior, Weber terms, in

"Soziologische Grundbegriffe," "interpretation" (Deu­

tung); "understanding" is the result of successful inter­

pretation. A point often overlooked in the literature is

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Iose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, 72 9 Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

730 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

that Weber, following Rickert, does not limit the non­physical objects ofunderstanding to the psychological, but also includes, in accord with Husserl, ideal objects such as VALUEs and mathematical or logica! relation­ships that are not themselves interna! states, but are nonetheless given only in what Weber calls "interna! experience."

Thus, for example, intellectual understanding at­tributes a person 's correct answer to a mathematical problem to an insight into the mathematical relation­ship that provides the answer. This is a species of un­derstanding something "meaningful" since the person who is seeking the meaning must ha ve insight into this relationship him- or herself in order truly to "under­stand" the behavior, yet this insight is not primarily an insight into a psychological state, but rather into an ideal, mathematical state of affairs that we assume the other understands as well. Weber himself, however, does not make the distinction between the meaning­ful qua psychological states such as emotions and the meaningful qua ideal states of affairs (including the va­lidity ofvalues) as clearly as does Rickert ( or Husserl), and this failure has led to a grea! deal of controversy and misunderstanding in subsequent literature on We­ber.

Husserl rejects the historical method as a basis for philosophy because it too is oriented upon "facts" that can never provide the kind of necessity Husserl seeks for philosophical knowledge by means of his EIDETIC METHOD. By contrast, Weber's repudiation of histori­cal method amounts to a rejection of the nea-Kantian view of history as a model for ali the HUMAN SCIENCES. The latter distinguish themselves from the natural sci­ences because, like history, they are "idiographic," i.e., they seek to understand the individual case instead of searching for universallaws. But Weber does not wish to restrict the domain of social scientific knowledge to understanding individual instances. He wants rather to leave the possibility open that the social sciences could come to discern general regularities and patterns in human actions, and he believes that a recognition of such patterns and regularities will be an essential com­ponent ofunderstanding even the concrete and individ­ual social institution or event. Nor does he think that the interes! in the individual is necessarily restricted to the historical or cultural disciplines. For example, the astronomer might want to understand the causes

of the specific solar system in which we live, or a geologist might want to understand how a specific ge­ological formation such as the Alps arose. Thus the difference between the natural and the social sciences cannot be made simply along the lines of the nomo­thetic/idiographic distinction. What distinguishes the two kinds of science is that the natural sciences do not consider their phenomena in terms of categories of "meaning," and the social sciences, along with other disciplines in the human sciences, such as certain kinds ofpsychology, do.

Two other features of Weber's methodology of the social sciences parallel aspects of phenomenology. First of ali, Weber sharply distinguishes empirica! re­search from, on the one hand, the conscious method of constructing meaningful concepts and types and from a priori foundations of values and other ideal entitities on the other. This is quite consistent with the phenomenological distinction between facts and essences and with phenomenology's insistence that questions ofvalidity cannot be solved through empiri­ca! research or through any science that has empirica! foundations. But different consequences of these dis­tinctions are stressed in Husserl and Weber. In the first place, Husserl's concern with philosophy as an abso­lute science of ref!ection excludes questions of em­pirica! fact, which contrasts with Weber's interes! in founding social science as an empirica! science of con­crete actuality. Thus Weber will insist upon empirically verifying the actuality of any conceptual possibility by empirica! means, since his interes! is not in a priori possibilities, but in actual social realities.

Furthermore, since the social sciences are tobe em­pirica!, no decision about the validity of ideal enti­ties, including values, can be grounded through the so­cial sciences as such. The distinctions between facts and essences and between the constitution of con­cepts and empirica! research leads Husserl as an ei­detic phenomenologist to suspend judgment on mat­ters of fact, while it leads Weber as a social scientist to suspend judgment on matters of ideal validity. For Weber, one's values may, and indeed necessarily do, determine which phenomena one finds interesting and which questions one will consider worth pursuing, but the answers have tobe obtained "objectively," and it is impossible for the social scientist to provide a sufficient empirica! justification as a social scientist for the val-

MAX WEBER 731

ues that influence his or her work. Neither Husserl nor Weber rules out the possibility of the kind of science

envisaged by the other, but each is careful to distin­guish what he is doing from that which is the primary

interest of the other o ne. Second, although consciously constructed concepts

cannot substitute for empirica! research in Weber's eyes, empirica! research cannot do without certain

guiding concepts that govern the interpretati an of the data and in terms of which any kind of actual social institutions, relationships, or actions are understood.

Thus the notion of "ideal types" as guiding notions for empirica! social research plays an important role

for him. The primary difference here is that Weber em­phasizes the practica! ends for which such concepts are constructed, and thus stresses the fact that they can be

revised in light of the findings of historical and other empirica! research. Phenomenology, by contrast, is in­terested in the identification of essential relationships

that can be ascertained through eidetic variati an in pure reflection. Hence one important point of difference be­tween phenomenology and Weber's treatment of ideal types turns on the question of the mutability of the concepts that guide the scientist in his or her work.

Alfred Schutz explicitly borrows from both We­ber and phenomenology in his methodological reflec­tions. With direct reference to the opening passages of Wirtschafi und Gesellschafi, he follows Weber in de­scribing his own project as "verstehende Soziologie"

(a sociology directed at understanding) and declares in the foreword to Der sinnhafie Aujbau der sozialen

Welt (The meaning-structure ofthe social world, 1932) that "in the course of these studies the conviction was

strengthened in me that Max Weber's basic question is indeed the point of departure for any genuine theory of

the social sciences, but that his analyses were not traced back to that deeper level from which one can master the tasks that ari se out of the procedure of the human sci­ences themselves." From Schutz's perspective, Weber has provided the proper goal for a social science, ECO­

NOMICS as well as sociOLOGY, but failed to trace human

motivation back to the foundations of consciousness

that are revea\ed by a CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY

OF THE NATURAL ATTITUDE. Weber fai\ed to achicve this goal as thoroughly as he might ha ve done. Thus pheno­menology provides the underpinnings for the genuine understanding of those phenomena that Weber secs as

thc proper object for social sciences, namely human actions. For Schutz, then, phenomenology and We­ber's methodology are by no means mutually exclu­sive. Rather, phenomenology provides the foundation for the work that Weber had correctly identified as that of the social scientist.

For Karl Jaspers also, the identification of mean­ing is the goal of the non-natural scicnces, including a PSYCHOLOGY oriented toward understanding human

beings. However, this general view had already been articulated by Dilthey and others in addition to Weber. It is also truc that especially in his earlier work, Jaspers' studies are oricnted toward psychological phenomena and consist to a great extent in the description of ideal

types in terms of which the actual practices of those treating the mcntally i1l can bc organized. However,

what most captivated Jaspers about Wcber was thc !iv­ing model of an individual facing his own torments, ideals, shortcomings, and strengths honestly and reso­lutely. Thus for him, any theoretical contributions that Weber made are much less significant than the exam­

ple that Weber provided in his life. In Jaspers' eyes this life was devoted to the ideals of unfliching dcvo­tion to truth in the face of unjustified dogmas and thc willingess always to begin in this search, idcals that for Husserl were also associated with the original project of phenomenology.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Burger, Thomas. Max Weber s Theory of Concept Formation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1976.

Jaspers, Karl. Max Weber. Munich: Piper, 1988; On Max Weber. Trans. Robert Whelan. New York: Paragon House 1989.

-. Allgemeine Psychopathologie. 4th ed. Berlin: Springer­Verlag, 1946.

Kasler, Dirk. Max Weber: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. "La crise de 1 'entendement." In his Les aventures de la dialectique. Paris: Gallimard, 1955, 15-42; "The Crisis of Understanding." In his The Adven­tures of the Dialectic. Trans. Joseph Bien. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973, 9-29.

Schutz, Alfred. Collected Papers !: The Problem of So­cial Reality. Ed. Maurice Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962.

-. Col/ected Papers li: Studies in Social Theory. Ed. Avrid Brodersen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964.

-. The Phenomenology ofthe Social World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1967.

732 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Wagner, Helmut. Alfred Schutz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Weber, Max. Gesammelte Aufsătze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tiibingen: Mohr, 1985; The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1949.

-. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. 6th ed. Tiibingen: Mohr, 1985; Economy and Society. New York: Bedminster Press, 1968.

-. "Roscher und Knies." In his Gesammelte Aujsătze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 1-145; Roscher and Knies: The Log­ica/ Problems of Historical Econom ies, New York: Knies 1975.

-. "R. Stammlers 'Uberwindung' der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung." and "Nachtrag zu dem Aufsatz iiber R. Stammlers 'Uberwindung' der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung." In his Gesammelte Auj.~ătze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 291-359, 360-83; Critique ofStamm­ler. New York: The Free Press, 1977.

-. Die protestanische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Weinheim: Beltz Athenăum, 1993; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner, 1958.

Willame, Robert. Les fondements phenomenologiques de la sociologie comprehensive: Alfred Schutz et Max Weber. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973.

THOMAS NENON University of Memphis

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN Born in Vienna in 1889, Wittgenstein was the son of a wealthy steel mag­nate. He had four brothers and three sisters, and ali the

children were gifted with intellectual and artistic tal­ent. After studying mechanical engineering in Berlin,

he went to England, where he studied engineering at

the University of Manchester. His interest gradually

shifted toward pure mathematics and the philosophical foundations of mathematics, in part due to his read­ing of Bertrand Russell 's Principles of Mathematics

(1903). In 1912 he moved to Cambridge to study with Russell at Trinity College. Under Russell's supervi­

sion, Wittgenstein made great progress, beginning the

research that would !ater be published as the Tractatus

Logico-Philosophicus ( 1921 ). Wittgenstein 's nervous

and depressed temperament led him to go to Norway

in 1913, to li ve in seclusion in order to do his logica!

researches free from distractions. (In fact, his personal­ity was so striking that many memoirs and biographies

have been written about him, and there is even a film

about his life.) When World War I broke out, he entered the Aus-

trian army as a volunteer. He continued to work on

the Tractatus while in the army, carrying notebooks along with him and writing when he had the chance.

He was taken prisoner ofwar in November 1918, ha v­ing finished the book in August of that year. From the

prison camp Wittgenstein corresponded with Russell, and managed to have the completed Tractatus trans­

ported to him. It was published in 1921. After the war

Wittgenstein taught at an elementary school in Austria

for severa! years, then returned to Cambridge, where he submitted the Tractatus as a dissertation and re­

ceived his doctorate. He began lecturing in philosophy at Cambridge, and succeeded G. E. Moore to the Chair

of Philosophy in 1939. The only works he published

during his lifetime were the Tractatus and a paper enti­tled "Some Remarks on Logica! Form" (1929). During

World War II he served as a volunteer in hospitals,

working in the laboratory and making some significant

contributions to the treatment ofwounded soldiers. He

returned to his lectures at Cambridge in 1944. Aca­demic life did not suit Wittgenstein, and he retired

from Cambridge in 1947 to seek an isolated life and

work on another book, the Philosophical Investiga­

tions, which was published posthumously in 1953. He

died of cancer in 1951. Wittgenstein's philosophy is generally considered

to be divided into two ( or three) different phases, the "early" Wittgenstein represented by the Tractatus

and the Notebooks: 1914-1916, the "middle" Wittgen­

stein ( 1929-33) represented primarily by the Blue

and Brown Books, and the "late" Wittgenstein rep­

resented by the Philosophical1nvestigations, Remarks

on the Foundations ofMathematics, On Certainty, and

Zettel. Two other works, the Philosophical Remarks

and Philosophical Grammar, are placed by some in

the middle period and by others in the !ater period.

(It should be noted that there are many unpublished

manuscripts in the process of being edited and pub­

lished. As these works appear it is inevitable that di­visions of Wittgenstein 's thought into "periods" will

need tobe re-evaluated.)

In his middle and late periods Wittgenstein claims

that the job of philosophy is to describe and not to

explain; thus at one level there is obvious reason to

compare his philosophy with phenomenology. Many

ha ve compared Wittgenstein 's thought with pheno­

menology, and these comparisons ha ve reached a rather

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Iose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN 733

bewildering range of conclusions. Hence anything that

is tobe said about "Wittgenstein and phenomenology"

is likely to be both debatable and debated.

Wittgenstein 's philosophy has been compared to

those of EDMUND HUSSERL, ALFRED SCHUTZ, MARTIN

HEIDEGGER, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, and MAURICE MERLEAU­

PONTY. There are many interesting parallels between

the philosophies ofWittgenstein and Husserl. Both dis­

cussed important foundational issues in the philosophy

of mathematics, as well as broader philosophical ques­

tions. Both claimed to be describing, in some way,

features ofhuman living. Both gave rise to a large and

variegated following, with many philosophers build­

ing upon their work and many arguing for changes and

developing in different directions from the "masters."

Before comparing the philosophy of Wittgenstein

with phenomenology, one must distinguish between

two separate claims: (a) that Wittgenstein was, at some

time or other, actually do ing phenomenology; and (b)

that Wittgenstein 's thought, while not actually pheno­

menology, can be fruitfully compared with, or used in

philosophical dialogue with, phenomenology. By now,

a number of philosophers from both the Continental

and analytic traditions have argued that thesis (b) is

true, and some suggestions concern ing the significance

ofthis claim will be offered below. Whether thesis (a)

is true or not is an issue about which there is very much

disagreement. The published arguments for thesis (a)

exhibit a number of seemingly incompatible claims,

e.g.: ( 1) the views ofthe early, but not the late, Wittgen­

stein are akin to phenomenology, and Wittgenstein has

no "middle period" (Merrill and Jaakko Hintikka); (2)

the middle-period Wittgenstein is "phenomenological"

in the wider sense of the term (HERBERT SPIEGELBERG);

(3) the middle and late Wittgenstein are thoroughly

phenomenological (Nicholas Gier); and (4) Wittgen­

stein 's entire philosophical career is phenomenological

( GERD BRAND ).

On the other hand, it has been argued that Husserl's

method amounts to entering into just the sort of "pri­

vate language" the possibility of which Wittgenstein

denied (SUZANNE CUNNINGHAM), and that for method­

o[ogica) reasons, thesis (a) is not supported by Wittgen­

stein 's writings (HARRY RE EDER). The arguments for and

against thesis (a) stern from differing interpretations of

both Wittgenstein 's philosophical method and the na­

ture ofphenomenological reduction and description.

How can one compare Wittgenstein's thought to

phenomenology in the face of such diverse interpreta­

tion? One way is to "accentuate the positive," that is, to

outline some interesting parallels between the pheno­

menological movement and Wittgenstein 's thought. At

least in Wittgenstein 's middle and late periods, he says

that the job of philosophy is to describe and not to

explain. His descriptions of language-use are often

couched in terms of"language-games," either invented

by Wittgenstein to compare and contrast with ordi­

nary language (and, as such, are at best very indirect

"descriptions"), or descriptions ofvarious parts ofthe

actual use of ordinary language. Some have likened

Wittgenstein 's use of imaginary language-games to

Husserl 's use offree variation in phantasy in the EIDETIC

METHOD, although Wittgenstein's rejection ofphenom­

ena universal to ali language-games makes this claim

somewhat problematic. Wittgenstein views LANGUAGE

as made up of a "family" of language-games; the re­

lations between the various language-games are left

rather vague in Wittgenstein, except for the overarch­

ing fact that each language-game is part of the overall

natural language, which is too rich to be "reduced"

or "explained" by any sort of formal logica! represen­

tation. Although his early Tractatus seems to many to

suggest just such a formal representation, his !ater work

- avowedly written to overturn his earlier thought­

rejects such a project.

The middle and late Wittgenstein goes to great

lengths to avoid theorizing, and yet there are some quite

general points that characterize his thought. Through­

out ali the stages ofhis philosophical thought Wittgen­

stein is preoccupied by the ro le and limits of language

in human life. The early Wittgenstein develops an elab­

orate logica! model to explain the fit between Ianguage

and reality. His Tractatus was thought by Russell, by

members of the Vienna Circle, and by many others, to

be closely related to logica! positivism and Russell's

logica! atomism. However, there is evidence, published

in the form ofsome ofWittgenstein's correspondence,

that Wittgenstein regarded this to be a grave misinter­

pretation of the Tractatus. One important part of that

work is the view that some things cannot be said in lan­

guage (philosophical or otherwise), although they can

be "shown." This aspect of his early thought seems

to have remained a part of his view throughout his

philosophicallife.

734 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

According to the Tractatus, language "pictures" the world by dividing it into logically distinct simple parts. This is one part ofhis early philosophical thought that he !ater rejects, suggesting instead that the link be­tween language and the world is much more com­plex and intertwined. One may insightfully compare the Tractatus with Husserl 's Logische Untersuchun­gen ( 1900--190 1 ), sin ce both deal with the nature of language and the founding of true propositions about language and the world. However, one must be care­fully mindful of the methodological contexts of these discussions and to distinguish between claims (a) and (b) above. For example, whereas Wittgenstein claims that " ... every sentence 'is in order as it is,'" Husserl notes that proper phenomenological descriptions must begin with meanings taken from ordinary language (and from the philosophical tradition), but then modifY them to reflect new insights resulting from phenomen­ological descriptions.

Wittgenstein 's thought - in ali periods - can be said to reject many traditional elements ofphilosophy. He thinks that the purpose of philosophy is to settle theoretical disputes not by solving problems, but by "dissolving" them - usually by suggesting ways in which wrong-headed views about language and how it functions sow the seeds for a misunderstanding, or as he says, "philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday." (Compare with this his statement in the preface to the Tractatus that this book, which attempts "to set a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts," and which achieves "the final solution of the problems," nonetheless "shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved.") Attempts at philosophical ex­planation arise because philosophers are bewitched by language. This contrasts widely with Husserl's more traditional interpretation of the ro le and scope of phi­losophy and its problems. Above ali, Wittgenstein's rejection of philosophical explanation seems at odds with Husserl 's declared interest in the Logische Unter­

suchungen to establish- in a methodologically defen­sible manner- LOGIC as a theory ofscience, as well as with the usual interpretations ofthe "phenomenologi­cal movement" as a coherent and ongoing, concrete body of philosophical knowledge and practice. (Thus it would seem that those that wish to argue for thesis (a), above, are interpreting the results ofWittgenstein 's

investigations in a way quite different from Wittgen­stein 's own self-interpretation.)

Connected to Wittgenstein 's rejection ofphilosoph­ical explanation is his rejection of the concept of "essence." Traditional accounts ofthe "essential" fea­tures oflanguage are rejected, tobe replaced by care fu! attention to how language is used, and to the ubiqui­tous but self-concealing nature of"grammar" -a term that acquired a unique sense in Wittgenstein 's work, again one that has been widely interpreted. In fact, Wittgenstein claims that it is grammar that provides the closest thing to essential or universal elements of language-games. He claims that there are no essential features of language-games, features that are present in ali instances of language-use; rather, the features oflanguage blend together in interlocking strands that he compares to fibers in a rope and to "family resem­blances." This view would appear to rule out elements central to the methods employed in Husserl 's, Hei­degger's, and many other phenomenologists' work, in­cluding such universal features of human experience as protention and retention, historicity, horizonality, the lived BODY, the gaze ofthe alter ego, and other central elements ofthe LIFEWORLD, although here too, some in­terpreters find more similarities between Wittgenstein and phenomenology than this would seem to suggest, in part due to Wittgenstein 's insistence that explanations must come to an end, leaving us not with full explana­tions, but with careful attention to actual praxis.

Wittgenstein 's descriptions oflanguage-use contain much that should be of interest to phenomenologists, regardless of whether or not they think that Wittgen­stein is actually do ing phenomenology. How much use phenomenologists can make ofWittgenstein's descrip­tions depends both upon how they view his philosoph­ical method and upon how they see this method in relation with phenomenological method (and there is a wide span of opinions as to just what the phenomen­ological method is and entails). Some, like Reeder and the Hintikkas, argue that Wittgenstein 's methodology is not one of full description, but one of reduction­istic description, reducing philosophical problems to purely linguistic issues in a way foreign to phenomen­ology. Others, like Gier and Brand, find in Wittgen­stein's works brilliant phenomenological descriptions of the LIFEWORLD. This difference of opinion tends to divide over the question of whether or not there is

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN 735

in Wittgenstein something like EPOCHE ANO REDUCTION.

Gier, PAUL RICCEUR, and to some extent Brand find some

analogue of the epoche in Wittgenstein, while others,

like Spiegelberg and Reeder, are much more conser­

vative in their assessment ofthis issue, finding no true epoche in Wittgenstein 's works. In large part, these

disagreements stern from differing judgments about

key concepts of Wittgenstein 's philosophy, especially

those of"grammar," "forms oflife," and the nature and

method of his descriptions. After all, not all descrip­

tions are phenomenological, and the key methodolog­

ical difference between phenomenological and non­

phenomenological descriptions stems from the status

ofthose descriptions as determined by a methodolog­

ical framework that is based in some form of epoche,

whether in Husserl 's sense or in the various other forms

it takes in other phenomenologists. To be sure, the

epoche has been revised and reinterpreted by both phe­

nomenologists of the "narrow" sort and phenomenol­

ogists in the "wider sense" established by Spiegelberg

in his important and thorough The Phenomenological

Movement (3rd ed., 1982). Phenomenologists can use Wittgenstein's descrip­

tions of language-games and their interrelations as

guides in sorting out the complex intersubjective hori­

zons of that form of life called language. His subtle

descriptions of following rules, of how we learn lan­guage games, of the complexities of ostensive defini­

tions, and ofthe ever flexible relations ofthe meanings

ofwords in their diverse uses provide a wealth of detail

that can be clarified phenomenologically, if one notes

the methodological differences between Wittgenstein 's descriptions and those ofthe unqualifiedly recognized

phenomenologists. For instance, Wittgenstein's holis­

tic account of the interrelated yet distinct language­

games in some ways parallels Husserl's and Heideg­

ger's view of the primacy of the lived phenomen­

ological unity of many-horizoned experience, prior to

any analysis, description, or explanation. Certainly his

stress upon the public and social elements oflanguage­

games can help phenomenologists to identify and ex­

plore various significant features ofthe intersubjective

constitution of discourse. In this respect, such contem­

porary continental thinkers as Karl-Otto Apel, Jtirgen

Habermas, and Paul Ricceur ha ve carried out just such

researches, and have explored the common ground

between Wittgenstein and HERMENEUTICAL PHENOMEN-

OLOGY, in ways beneficia! to the further development

of phenomenology and to the ongoing influence of

Wittgenstein 's thought. All in all, despite the differing interpretations ofthe

relationship between Wittgenstein 's philosophy and

phenomenology, there is room for much more to be

said on the issue. Certainly one can find rich and accu­

rate descriptions of many linguistic "phenomena" (in

the wide sense of the term) in Wittgenstein 's works.

Scholars have already developed fruitful comparisons

between Wittgenstein's thought and that of various

phenomenologists, and there is good reason to believe that a great deal of further such work will be enlight­

ening. The focus upon public criteria of MEANING and

the intersubjective nature of Wittgenstein 's language­games offers a counterbalance to Husserl 's so-called

idealistic tendencies, stemming from his focus upon

the constituting transcendental EGO. The participants

in Wittgenstein's language-games are indeed dwellers

in the lifeworld, in ways that will continue tobe worked

out at greater depth.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Bindeman, Steven L. Heidegger and Wittgenstein: The Poet­ies ofSilence. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1981.

Brand, Gerd. Die grundlegenden Texte von Ludwig Wittgen­stein. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1975; The Essential Wittgenstein. Trans. Robert Innis. New York: Basic Books, 1979.

Cunningham, Suzanne. Language and the Phenomenologi­cal Reductions of Edmund Husserl. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.

Durfee, Harold A., ed. Analytic Philosophy and Phenomen­ology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.

Erickson, Stephen A. Language and Being: An Analytic Phenomenology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970.

Gier, Nicholas. "Never say 'Never': A Response to Reeder's 'Wittgenstein Never Was a Phenomenologist."' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 20 ( 1991 ), 80-83.

-. Wittgenstein and Phenomenology: A Comparative Study of the Later Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1981.

Hintikka, Merrill, and Jaakko Hintikka. Investiga/ing Wittgenstein. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Reeder, Harry P. Language and Experience: Descriptions of Living Language in Husserl and Wittgenstein. Lan­ham, MD: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomen­ology/University Press of America, 1984.

-. "Wittgenstein Never Was a Phenomenologist." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 20 ( 1989), 49-68.

736 ENCYCLOPED!A OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Spiegelberg, Herbert. "The Puzzle of Wittgenstein's Phiinomenologie ( 1929-?)." In his The Context of the Phenomenological Movement. The Hague: Martinus Nij­hoff, 1981, 202-18.

-. "Wittgenstein Calls His Philosophy "Phenomenology": One More Supplement to 'The Puzzle of Wittgenstein's Phănomenologie."' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 13 (1982), 296-99.

HARRY P. REEDER University of Texas at Arlington

WORLD Of ali the basic ideas that pheno-

menology developed, perhaps none is better known or

more widely appropriated across a number of disci­

plines than the concept of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt).

What is not generally recognized, however, is that the

notion ofthe lifeworld is itself derived from the prob­

lematics of a prior notion, that of the world. In fact,

EDMUND HUSSERL had developed the notion ofworld in

a transcendental register before he enriched it with his

notion of the lifeworld. And MARTIN IIEIDEGGER's Sein

und Zeit (1927) as well as his other writings contain

extensive analyses ofthe concept ofthe world but resist

introducing the term "lifeworld," lest it be construed

as a regional rather than a transcendental concept. One

could even go on to argue that for ali the variations

in the approach to the question of subjectivity among

phenomenological thinkers as diverse as Husserl, Hei­

degger, GABRIEL MARCEL, MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, and

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (and also Jilrgen Habermas) there is a

surprising consistency in their characterizations of the

notion ofthe world. The differences we do find, which

we will look atin the analysis that follows, are possible

because so much is shared. Perhaps it is this concept

that provides them with their deepest connection to

each other.

Any philosophical analysis ofthe world is intemally

connected to the position from which one approaches

it. Phenomenology takes its starting point in our ev­

eryday experience of things. An object of experience

is always present through multiple modes of givenness,

each of which forms a profite of the object. The inter­

play of object and profile transpires according to the

sense (Sinn) of the whole both determin ing and deter­

mined by the sense of the profiles. Without senses the

object would lack its experiential qualities. But senses

exist not in the object or its profiles but in the relation­

ship between them and the one to whom they appear.

Profiles are also perspectives, which means that an ob­

ject is always present as situated in space and time.

Initially we can say that the spatial place of the object

and its temporal presence do not exist in the object or

its profiles but in the relationship between them and

the one to whom they appear.

The interna! connection between profiles and ob­

jects is a clue to the conscious events in or through

which they are experienced. Since these are events that

are always directed to the object through its modes of

givenness, they are acts that ha ve an ee-static structure;

since sense is constitutive of that transcendence, they

have INTENTIONALITY. And this means that they are not

directed to themselves as events or achievements, but

to the objects with which they are concemed.

The experience of profiles (Abschattungen, some­

times also called adumbrations) and objects in a given

situation transpires in such a way that the coming pro­

file is already anticipated and prefigured by the profile

in focus. Profiles, by virtue of their sense, point to or

indicate yet other profiles in such a way that we find

things situated in a field of possible appearances, i.e.,

in a determinate horizon. The horizon is not itself an

appearance but is always "pregiven," i.e., it mediates

the relationship between what is given and the anticipa­

tions that it solicits. The horizon is a complex of senses,

themselves connected by what we can caii differential

implications, that structure the indications in play with

any given profile. Jndication is the horizon at play in the

relationship between profiles and then between profile

and object. Dif.ferential implication is the horizon at

play within itself. Bringing these two strands together,

we can describe the horizon as a nexus of indications

( Verweisungszusammenhang ).

Horizons are tied to yet other horizons also by differ­

ential implication. The nexus of these interconnected

horizons is what constitutes the world. In Husserl 's

terminology, it is the horizon of ali horizons.

Perhaps the best way to understand Husserl's de­

veloped notion of the lifeworld is to isolate his char­

acterization of it as horizon and then examine how it

figures in his assessment of modern NATURAL SCIENCE,

i.e., the science ofmedium-sized objects begun in the

17th century and extending up to recent developments

in quantum and astrophysical theory. (Others of his

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. "hzner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

WORLD

studies relate the HUMAN SCIENCES and also LOGIC and

MATHEMATICS to the lifeworld.) He undertakes both a

critica! account, in which science precipitates a crisis for Western thought by valorizing the "objectivistic"

image ofthe world, setting it in opposition to the life­

world and then devaluing the latter as world of mere

belief, and a genetic account, in which science regains

its moorings as we come to understand the scope of its

legitimacy by seeing how it does arise from the life­

world and how it can be connected to essential, human

interests.

In his effort to overthrow the positivistic, objec­tivistic or NATURALISTIC self-understanding of modern

science, in the hope of then repositioning it on its

proper philosophical ground and bringing it under the

direction of rationally justifiable human ends, Husserl

directly challenges the identification of the world it projects- roughly, the mathematized world of New­

tonian physics consisting only of quantitative determi­

nations- with the only true world-in-itself. The world

in which we li ve and with which we are most familiar,

day in and day out, is not the one projected by scien­tific thought. Rather the things we "first" see belong to

the world ofwhat Husserl calls Anschauung, intuition,

a term he uses to describe our direct perceptual and

experiential acquaintance with the everyday things of

our environment "before" they, wrapped in interpreta­tion, stand forth as data. Here we tind the lush green of

a field in an early morning haze, not light waves 512

nanometers in length, refracted by vaporized H20 as the axis ofthe earth turns.

The intuitive world should be defined not as a core ofpre-cultural, primitive perceptions, but as the world

in which things appear in terms of their experiential qualities, values, and uses, and are integrated into our

larger concerns on the basis of their integrity. This is

the world that stands over against the quantified world

of modem science. But Husserl, in addition, argues that

the lifeworld is also the world from which the world

projected in the natural sciences arises. He does this

by showing that the world under a scientific descrip­

tion is a construction that takes its starting point from

and arises through methodologically guided transfor­

mations of the lifeworld. As he first put it in lectures in 1919 (Manuscript signature F I 35), the objects of

the immediately intuited world already have a sense­

content that functions as a substrate for scientific work.

737

The intuition of an object or event involves the in­

terlocking of PERCEPTION and apperception, of presen­

tation and appresentation. As an intentiona! experience

ofthe whole object, it is drawn beyond what analysis

would describe as the directly given, for each profile

is situated in a series of anticipated, possible profiles,

predelineated by the horizon in play, and each intuition

transcends the profile in its apprehension ofthe whole.

The interplay between actual profile and anticipated

profiles is not a random but a structured series, as they

tend to converge on an optimum that ongoing experi­

ence exhibits as it approaches. Through the "and so on"

of profiles and an attending subordination ofprofiles to

the wholes they indicate, senses become stable types

and objects take up their familiar presence for us. The

natural attitude relies on this constitution of a familiar

world, yet without being able to thematize it as such.

Born of wonder, philosophy and science, not yet

distinguished in ancient Greece, were efforts at dis­

covering and articulating the logos of this unthema­

tized world. They broke with, but not through, the nat­

ural attitude in the sense that they transcend the endless

iteration produced by the horizon in order to grasp seg­

ments of it as wholes. This required a reflection that

temporarily suspends the interests that sustain the func­

tioning of differential implications, deliberately varies

the appearances of a gi ven field in such a way that their optima are allowed to exhibit a limiting ideal or point

of unity; and finally, articulates the rules that govern

the series ofphenomena that now show themselves as

instances of or approximations to the eidos. The value

ofthis method is that it produces a theoretical or crit­ica! mastery of the objectifiable features or properties

of a given region, which yields a practica! or technical mastery allowing us to build and rebuild our environ­

ments.

Various disciplines arose as they concentrated on

different regions ofthe world and submitted them to a

process of classification and explanation. While break­

ing with it, they were originally rooted in the lifeworld,

in the sense that they depended upon a wider, pre­

given yet unthematized horizon distributing the differ­

ent regions; in the sense that the processes of ideation

and idealization were continuous with the project of

rendering the type-bound perceptual optima we ex­

perience exact; in the sense that the "sciences" were

largely practica! arts whose explanatory schemes were

738 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

designed to produce changes in the world; and in the sense that their theoretical component, at Ieast up to Aristotle, belonged to the same uni verse of discourse as ordinary Ianguage.

The introduction of modem natural science brought about a fundamental paradigm shift. By transforming idealization into mathematization, by identifying the world as a totality covering aii that exists and then characterizing it in terms of a mathematized notion of infinity, the world and the things in it become inter­preted as mathematizable manifolds, i.e., reduced to the intersection of sets of features that can be mea­sured, plotted, and submitted to statistica! description and verification. The method is designed to eliminate the perceptual background and establish the theoreti­cal field of quantifiable predicates and causally Iinked relations as the sole context in which things, facts, or events can show themselves. While this yields even greater theoretical understanding and technical mas­tery over the things ofnature, it results in science !os ing any recognizable bond to the Iifeworld.

Building on the double forgetting constitutive of the natural attitude, modern science is twice free yet twice blind: free from the relativity of subjectivity and free from the relativity ofthe Iifeworld; blind to those epistemic practices by means of which it is produced and blind to the transformations of background that allows phenomena to stand forth as data.

But the deperspectivization ofthe world by modem science is never complete, because its content comes forth from a field that, while universal, is constituted by theoretically sustained practices it must acknowl­edge as such when there is a breakdown or paradox generated in a given field of study (e.g., particle vs. wave theory), and because its method relies on activ­ities that involve ordinary intuitions and experimental operations that require nonformalizable acts of inter­pretation (e.g., reading marks on instruments). Since even the science that has rid the world of subjectivity can only be understood as the "correlate" of subjectiv­ity, the phenomenological critique of science already points the way to an understanding of how its legit­imacy can be established: the project of developing the theoretical and practica! knowledge that allows for a mastery of nature must be blended into a broader range of human interests and the Iarger project of hu­man emancipation.

Husserl undertook studies ofthe relationship ofthe Iifeworld not only to the natural sciences, but also to logic and cultural formations. These studies carne in the early 1 920s, just as he was developing his notion of GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY. The treatment of logic, in both his Formale und transzendentale Logik (1929) and Eifahrung und Urteil ( 1939), attempts to trace its semantics back to a pregiven perceptual world and an interest in TRUTH that transforms ordinary into propo­sitional discourse. Logica! REASON, he was convinced, never Ioses its roots in practica! reason. The treatment of cultural formations as constructions that both pre­suppose and yet arise out of the Iifeworld reflects his debt to WILHELM DILTHEY. While there are studies in this area that go back as far as 19 1 O, the first indica­tion of this in his published writings are three articles that appeared in 1923 and 1924 in the Japariese peri­odica!, Kaizo, reprinted in in 1989 in his Aufsătze und Vortrăge [ 1922-193 7] along with two other essays that never appeared. His basic approach is to see the devel­opment of humanity toward its rationally defined true end as a progressive historcal transformation ofvarious cultural forms within the Iifeworld.

There are clear tensions in Husserl 's characteri­zation of the Iifeworld, which Die Krisis der eu­ropăischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phănomenologie (1936) struggles to resolve. They arise because while he was the first to characterize the world as horizon, he tends to superimpose upon it features that arise ifwe think of it as totality. The wor1d is treated both as the experiential world of intuition that underlies and grounds the world of practica! and the­oretical goals, and as a concrete whole that- due to the "flowing in" and "sedimentation" of practica! and cultural achievements-encompasses the multiplicity of particular worlds.

The two notions of Iifeworld, world as experien­tial whole and world as concrete universal, are easier to place together if we think of the world as horizon, break with Husserl's tendency to reduce LANGUAGE to its expressive function, and require him to supplement the notion of background with that of context. Par­ticular worlds are forged through intersubjective, so­cial achievements and thus necessarily rely on differ­ent types of discursive interaction for the construction of their domains, for the dynamics of communication within them, and for the regulation of their activities.

WORLD

Language comes into play and, along with it, concep­

tual networks without which we would not ha ve partic­

ular spheres. These networks are contexts. In contrast

to backgrounds, which are complexes of senses de­

ployed across the relationship of our BODY to things, contexts can be described as socially constructed and

inscribed matrices of meaning (Bedeutung). The rela­

tionship between elements in a matrix is o ne of differ­

ential entailment. The relationship between facts and

affair-complexes constituted in contexts can be char­

acterized as referential entailment.

We gain purchase on the notion of the lifeworld only if we characterize the horizon in terms of the

interplay of context and background. In that ali re­

gions are situated within differential blends of context

and background, which they also (re )structure through

sedimentation, the horizon is a concrete universal.

In that ali contexts presuppose and thus rest upon a

(back)ground of embodied perceptual experience (in­

tuition) and practica! involvements (know-how), the

description of the horizon as experiential matrix can

be turned into a point about the interna! organization

ofthe horizon itself. In Sein und Zeit (1927) MARTIN HEIDEGGER observes

that our basic sense ofthings comes from our practica! involvement with them as implements or equipment

(Zeug), not as items of detached perceptual cognition. In his terms, the objects that we are related to "proxi­

mally and for the most part" should not be character­ized as present-at-hand (vorhanden), not as the sheer

things we look at and cognitively register (Sicht), but

as ready-to-hand (zuhanden), as objects that, in our

looking around, we view as appropriate for certain

practica! tasks ( Umsicht). This means that equipment,

as what we use to reach a certain end, is defined by its

functional involvement (Bewandtnis) in a task or situ­

ation in which we are also caught up. And this entails

that the basic sense that we have of ourselves is not

as a cognizing subject who is related to things, but as

an engaged agent who is involved with them and who

finds what he or she is in what he or she does. Because

the dyads of inner and outer, passive and active, and

subject and object are inadequate to cover the recip­

roca! determination and circulation we find between

actions, systems of involvement, and objects, Heideg­

ger replaced Husserl 's notion of subjectivity with the

concept ofDASEIN (human existence).

739

When something is an object in use, its being as

equipment is not thematic. It is lost in the goal or the

task at hand, i.e., it indicates or points not to itself but the nail to be struck, the board to be sawed, the shed to

be built. But if the hammer or saw breaks, if it is not sui table for the task at hand, or if it is just plain miss­

ing, we are immediately redirected back upon the item

in terms of its instrumentality and its relation to yet

other equipment. When indication is disturbed, indica­

tion becomes explicit. What the object is is understood

in terms of just its differential relationship to yet other

items in the shop. Thereby, the workshop with its total­

ity of equipment comes into view. And with this whole,

the world announces itself.

This preliminary "ontic" presencing of the world

as environing world ( Umwelt) becomes the guiding

thread to Heidegger's FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGICAL char­

acterization of the worldliness ( Weltlichkeit) of the

world, i.e., the world as it belongs to the transcen­

dental structure ofDasein. Each tool points to a whole

of equipment in which what is ready-tohand shows

itself as such. That whole, however, is a system of in­

volvements that can exist only by virtue of an interna!

relation to what allows for such involvement. Involve­

ments are established for the sake of Dasein and its

projects. But this happens in such a way that Dasein is necessarily referred to the nexus of involvements as

that in which it comes to realize and understand itself.

Heidegger's study of instrumental objects allows him

to uncover a structure that applies to ali regions and

thus belongs to Dasein itself: the world, to which ali

human action is referred and in which it is situated.

He characterized it ontologically as the nexus of indi­

cations that is constitutive of the involvement of self, objects, and others in various situations.

Husserl had clearly developed basic elements of

his theory of the lifeworld in course lectures and manuscripts before the publication of Sein und Zeit,

and there are indications that Heidegger was famil­

iar with some of them. Still, Heidegger's approach

through a study of instrumental backgrounds is orig­

inal and sparkles with a precision missing even from

Husserl 's )ater accounts in the Krisis. We might set his

account of the world over against Husserl 's in roughly

three ways.

(1) Though Husserl carne to broaden his notion of

intuition, that mode in which the world is disclosed,

740 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

it still yields only a derivative notion of objects and, as a consequence, of world, not the one that is in fact operative in the originally practica! natural attitude. Because looking-at or looking-onto (An-schauen) al­ready effects a separation between the look and the use of things, Husserl gives at best a phenomenologi­cal account of the background constitutive of what is present-at-hand. At worst, he makes the mistake of attempting to derive the ready-to-hand (the world of practica! objects) from the present-athand (the world of intuited objects ).

(2) The tension that we find in Husserl's charac­terization of the world as uni verse of intuition and as concrete universal is clearly resolved by Heidegger's rejection ofthe first and his modification ofthe second. While he does think of world as covering all regions of existence in the sense that as concrete, it is "modifi­able" into the structural wholes ofwhatever particular worlds we ha ve at the time and in the sense that its a pri­ori structure is operative in each ofthem, he institutes a mode of analysis that does not require tuming the world into an object, and thus preserves its integrity as a struc­ture of meaning. Husserl argued against KANT that the world is an object. Heidegger sides with Kant. The problem is that in his effort to articulate the "subjec­tive achievements" in and through which the world as world is constituted, Husserl 's first Cartesian program necessarily construes it as a world "for" consciousness and thus as "outside" its being. Because Heidegger understands achievements as based in our practica! in­teraction with things, which is itself caught up in a nexus of involvement, he develops a HERMENEUTICS of world that moves to it as a whole from within. As a re­suit, he can do justice to Dasein's facticity (Faktizităt), the sense in which Dasein is in the world and not just related to the world. Perhaps this is the reason why Part One of Sein und Zeit does not directly employ Husserl 's notion of horizon in its characterization of the world. Heidegger worries that even with the broader notion of lifeworld that covers ali regions of existence, not just the intuitive, Husserl 's account is sti li mixed and still bound to a "pre-ontological existentiell meaning."

(3) While both Husserl and Heidegger use the notion of indication as the key to the notion of world, there are important and subtle differences. For Husserl, indi­cation (Anzeige) operates by a movement of one item pointing (hinweisen) to yet another in such a way that

an item that is lifted out or prominent establishes an­ticipations of what is similar. Identity is primary; dif­ference is derived. The unlike, as he says, comes to prominence on the hasis of the common. As a result, horizons are build up by unifying syntheses and should be described as webs with nodes having a sense-content that establishes relations of opposition and difference to yet other nodes, i.e., as nexuses of identificational schemata. For Heidegger, indication (Verweisung) is a constant movement of deferring such that the sim­ilarity between objects and then their identity results from their place in a web of functional oppositions and contrasts. Accordingly, the horizons are nexuses of differential schemata.

But Heidegger also struggled with the limits of his own analysis. From the perspective of his !ater work the developed ontologica! notion ofworld (and Dasein itself) in Sein und Zeit was but a preliminary study that opens the way to the question ofBeing. In "Bauen Wohnen Denken" (1951) it seems that the in-structure ofDasein, which was first understood in terms (Befind­lichkeit and Verstehen) that paralleled the traditional concepts of sensibility and understanding, is reinter­preted in terms of the notion of dwelling (Wohnen). Dwelling allows objects and others the type of involve­ment they have as it serves as the hasis for building (Bauen), that primary activity ofthose who dwell and, we can add, the activity that framed the whole account of the ready-to-hand in Sein und Zeit. However, in­volvement is defined here not by the notion of world, but by that ofthe "fourfold" (das Geviert): by dwelling being on the earth, under the heavens, called forth by the divinity, in relation to mortals. If dwelling is the hasis of building, that project of founding and joining lived spaces, and building is essential to the worldli­ness ofthe world in which we dwell, as Sein und Zeit might lead us to believe, then we can see the late Hei­degger reaching for a notion, the fourfold, on which the world is based and from which it is derived.

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY had access to the Husserl manuscripts of Ideen zu einer reinen Phănomenologie

und phănomenologischen Philosophie II [ 1912-15] and much of the Krisis as he was writing his ground­breaking Phimomenologie de la perception ( 1945). He realized that over against the published account in Ideen I ( 1913) of intentionality as a mental structure belonging to "absolute" consciousness, there was a sec-

WORLD

ond account in play that re! ied on the notion of lived BODY (Leib) to explain the dependence of perceptual acts on ACTION, the spatiality of perceptual fields, and those "passive syntheses" that accord things their per­ceptual senses. At the same time, the categoria! account of the notion of Dasein in Heidegger seemed to Iose

the particular concreteness that is true of our existence and that was required by his own notion of facticity. Merleau-Ponty's solution was not only to character­ize the subject in terms being-in/to-the world (etre­aumonde), but also to introduce the lived body and

corporeal existence - an idea Heidegger would ha ve considered pre-ontological- as the primary mode of

that being. Giving prominence to the lived body al­lowed Merleau-Ponty to root perceptual experience in something deeper than mental acts (Ideen /) or struc­

tural features of conscious fields (Sein und Zeit); to sta­bilize the difference between non-epistemic and cultur­ally and linguistically mediated epistemic perception; and finally, to develop a notion of perceptual horizon

in which senses are located in the interna! connection between perception and the actions ofthe body.

Husserl 's strong notion of EVIDENCE required re­

course to presentations and intuitions as means through which the structure of different fields of phenomena could be established. His Cartesianische Meditationen [ 1931] drew out the consequence of this approach for an understanding of our relations with others and left US with a theory of INTERSUBJECTIVITY that required a starting point in the intuitive experience ofthe isolated subject and a notion of empathy to explain how we cross the abyss between my consciousness and that of the other. While clearly there are other approaches to the question of intersubjectivity and the social world at play from 191 O through the Krisis- and while one could argue that the Meditationen text was not intended as an account ofthe constitution of our primary cohab­

itation with others, but a transcendental reconstruction designed to secure in evidence the presence of others­it was and stil! is taken as Husserl's definitive account

of social existence. The inadequacies of this account

were made ali the more evident by the ease with which Sein und Zeit moved from Dasein to Mitsein and, in fact, accounted for its priority: our involvement with equipment is such that it is ready-to-hand for others

also, not as others who stand over against me, but as others from whom 1 do not distinguish myself. The

741

world ofDasein is essentially the world in which 1 am with others (Mitwelt).

Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenological ap­proaches to the question of the world opened the way for the work of ALFRED scHUTZ and many others who attempted to connect a phenomenology of the social world with the notion of the world as used in so­CIOLOGY and the cultura] or HUMAN SCIENCES. While

Der sinnhafle Aujbau der sozialen Welt (The meaning­structure of the social world, 1932) stil! moves out from the experiential world of the solitary ego to an account ofmy understanding of others, Schutz quickly distinguishes between taking the other as an object and taking the other as a "Thou." When the I-Thou re­

lation becomes reciproca! we have a we-relationship. The face-to-face situation, he argues, is basic to ali other types of other-orientation, but is in itself empty. Ali it does is secure the (recognition of) the presence

of the other as Thou. In order for the we-relationship to acquire specificity and content, the social world in which the we-relationship is grounded and from which it unfolds must become part of the analysis. The so­cial world, spatially and temporally extended from the world of direct social experience to the distant worlds

of our predecessors and successors, he characterizes as a nexus of significance (Sinnzusammenhang). In Strukturen der Lebenswelt (Structures ofthe lifeworld, 1973, 1983), his work in progress when he died in

1959, Schutz continues to argue for the thoroughly so­cial character of the everyday lifeworld but expands his initial notion of nexus of significance through a stronger theory of action.

Drawing upon hints in Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty and yet responding to the surprising lack of any developed theory of technology in the thinkers considered thus far, DON IHDE's major work, Technology and the Lifeworld ( 1990), looks to pheno­menological and hermeneutica! dimensions oftechno­

logically mediated experience as the key to what we mean by lifeworld. The excessively "cognitive" ap­

proach to the transformation ofthe lifeworld, stressing

the impact of scientific theory or cultural interpreta­tions on how we see things, is replaced with a rich

account of the way the instruments we build and the devices we use concretely transform not just the things in our environment, but the style of our embodied rela­

tionship to them. Because technologies "enframe," the

742 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

lifeworld assumes a variety of "shapes" that can best

be studied through an account of the transformative

effects of the devices and systems of instruments that

we develop. Ifwe can situate Ihde's account in terms ofSchutz's

neglect ofthe material transformations ofthe lifeworld

produced by technology, we can find Jtirgen Haber­mas's theory of the lifeworld attempting simultane­

ously to expand upon the culturally abridged concept of

the world in Schutz by distinguishing cultural, social,

and personality structures and mechanisms of repro­

duction, and to dislodge the primacy ofthe sociologica!

notion of system in Talcott Parsons ( 1902-1979) and

Niklas Luhmann by seeing it as a theoretical concept

whose application depends upon an account of forms of action and integration as viewed from the perspec­

tive of participants in a lifeworld. Habermas expands and corrects Husserl 's "correlational a priori": one way

to view his monumental Theorie des kommunikativen

Handelns (Theory of communicative action, 1981) is

to see the notion of intersubjective communicative dis­

course (Voi. 1) as a noetics of communicative action

(his corrected and developed vers ion of Husserl 's un­

derlying structure of intentionality), and to view his

multifaceted notion of lifeworld (Voi. 2) as its NOEMAT­

tcs. Because he relies even more heavily than in ear­

lier theory upon relations across structural components

of the lifeworld, and because he stresses the histor­ical transformation of the lifeworld from earlier to

modem societies, Habermas takes horizon as a notion

that allows coordination between the different types

of communication and action. Concretely this requires

a shared situation, which is itself a "cut" out of the lifeworld. Actiona! situations rely upon the world as a

stock ofwhat is pre-understood and taken for granted.

In characterizing this horizon Habermas reaches for

the now familiar notion of Verweisungszusammenhang

(nexus of indications). But since he understands this

stock as a linguistically organized reserve of knowl­

edge, as it must be for concrete social interaction, we

should characterize his notion ofhorizon as a nexus of

referential entailments. Habermas 's gloss on the dif­

ference between Husserl and Heidegger is to view the

lifeworld as it functions in human action as a nexus of

interpretative schemata, linguistically structured and

culturally mediated, but one that develops through the

consolidation of difference into settled background be­

liefs, and thus consists primarily of identţficational

schemata that shape the qualities of social complexes

and situations.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Carr, David. Phenomenology and the Problem of History. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1974.

Gurwitsch, Aron. Phenomenology and the Theory ofScience. Ed. Lester Embree. Evanston, IL: Northwestem Univer­sity Press, 1974.

Habermas, Jiirgen. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Voi. 1, Handlungsrationalitdt und gesellschafiliche Ratio­nalisierung, Voi. 2, Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Ver­nunft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981; The Theory of Communicative Action, Vo/1, Reason and the Rationaliza­tion ofSociety, Voi. 2, Li.feworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984-87.

Heidegger, Martin. "Bauen Wohnen Denken" [ 1951]. In his Vortrdge und Az,ţf.~dtze, Pfullingen: Neske, 1954, 145--62; "Building Dwelling Thinking." In his Poetry, Language, Thought. Ed. and trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971, 145--61.

Ihde, Don. Technology and the Li.feworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Janssen, Paul. Geschichte und Lebenswelt. The Hague: Mar­linus Nijhoff, 1970.

Landgrebe, Ludwig. "Welt als phănomenologisches Prob­lem." In his Der Weg der Phdnomenologie. Giitersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1963, 41--{;2; "The World as a Phenomen­ological Problem." Trans. Dorion Caims and Donn Wel­ton. In his The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl: Six Essays. Ed. Donn Welton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981, 122-48.

~. "Seinsregionen und regionale Ontologien in Husserls Phănomenologie." In his Der Weg der Phdnomenologie. Giitersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1963, 143--{;2; "Regions ofBeing and Regional Ontologies in Husserl's Phenomenology." Trans. Richard Cote. In his The Phenomenology of Ed­mund Husserl, 149-75.

~. "Das Problem der transzendentalen Wissenschaft vom lebensweltlichen Apriori." In his Phdnomenologie und Geschichte. Giitersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1967, 148-66; "The Problem of the Transcendental Science of the A Priori of the Lifeworld." Trans. Donn Welton. In his The Pheno­menology of Edmund Husserl, 176-200.

Schutz, Alfred. Der sinnhafte Aujbau der sozialen Welt. Vienna: Springer, 1932; The Phenomenology of the So­cial Wortd. Trans. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1967.

~, and Thomas Luckmann. Die Strukturen der Lebenswelt, Vot. 1. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1975; The Structures ofthe Li.fe-Wortd, Vot. 1. Trans. Richard Zaner and Tristram En­gelhardt Jr. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1973; Die Strukturen der Lebenswett, Voi. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Surhkamp, 1983; The Structures of the Li.fe-Wortd,

WORLD

Voi. 2. Trans. Richard Zaner and David Parent. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1989.

DONN WELTON State University of New York, Stony Brook

743

WORLDS, POSSIBLE See POSSIBLE WORLDS.