Don Quixote and the problem of reality (II)

Continued from part I 

Alfred Schütz is gradually emerging as one of the 20th century's foremost philosophers of social sciences. In his work, the Austrian bridged phenomenological and sociological traditions and formed a social phenomenology. Schütz is thereby applying the methods of Husserl's phenomenological philosophy to Max Weber's interpretive sociology.

Here we continue to explain the concept of reality according to Alfred Schütz and contrast it with the world of Don Quixote. 

 

 

Action

“Conduct which is devised in advance, that is, which is based upon a preconceived project, shall be called action, regardless of whether it is overt or covert.” The umbrella term ‘conduct’ relates to all spontaneous ways of actions, that is internal as well as actions that connect the individual to its external environment. The main difference between actions and phantasies is the fact that actions follow a voluntary order, which follows a function.  

Every individual coins and defines his day-to-day life and hence the common-sense world by deciding for action or non-action. Overt action is every executed action, while the denial to become active is the covert action, the non-action.

It is important to recognise that both ways of action, the executed as well as the defaulted one, have their roots in their “purposive and projective character” and hence originate in the consciousness of the human being.

To make matters clear, Schütz calls working an overt action: “Working (...) is action in the outer world, based upon a project and characterised by the intention to bring about the projected state of affairs by bodily movements.” To make it possible that an individual can influence his environment with working it needs to have wide awakeness. Wide awakeness again is defined as “a plane of consciousness of highest tension originating in an attitude of full attention to life and its requirements.”

In the discussion about overt and covert action we recognise an interesting ethical aspect. Covert action, which is pure thinking, is revocable, while working, i.e. overt action, is irrevocable, as it has changed the environment. “That is why - from the legal and moral point of view - I am responsible for my deeds but not for my thoughts" (in a more mundane way of speaking, cheating is only reprehensible if it is overt, but not when it is covert). 

Yet there are other factors influencing the actions of our fellow human beings.

 

The subjective interpretation of meaning

Schütz derives the basis of subjective interpretation from Max Weber. Weber postulated that all actions obtain their subjective meaning from the doer in the sense that the doer lends meaning to his actions.

“Meaning (...) is not a quality inherent in certain experiences emerging within our stream of consciousness but the result of an interpretation of a past experience looked at from the present Now with a reflective attitude. (...) Only experiences which can be recollected beyond their actuality and which can be questioned about their constitutions are, therefore, subjectively meaningful.”

According to Schütz this helps to typify the common-sense world, which can be understood through mutual intersubjective interpretation. The term understanding thereby comprises three different, but related levels. First, there is understanding as experiencing common-sense knowledge of inter-human affairs; this implies that humans lend meaning to daily life and know that the alter ego is able to do the same. And this exactly is an important condition for intersubjectivity.

What is more Schütz recognizes understanding as an epistemological problem. Here understanding is rooted in Husserl’s living environment, which equals “the completeness of the potential horizon of experience, within which a realising and experiencing ego is directed towards concreteness.”

Third, social sciences lend a special meaning to the concept of understanding in the way that they are using models in which the objects of research, human beings, have their own perceptions of the world. According to Natanson they are “fellow men caught up in social reality.”

Let’s move on and have a look at the way human beings understand situations and what this implies for reality.

 

The definition of situation

Let us now talk about the philosophical problem of reality. Every alter ego is potentially interpreting the same situation in a radically different way. “For the Romans, Carthage was conquered, but for the Carthaginians, Carthage was enslaved.” Or to put it into the words of William James:

“All propositions, whether attributive or existential, are believed to the very fact of being conceived, unless they clash with other propositions; that the whole distinction of real and unreal is grounded on two mental facts - first, that we are liable to think differently of the same; and second that, when we have done so, we can choose which way of thinking to adhere to and which to disregard. The origin and fountainhead of all reality whether from the absolute or practical point of view is thus, subjective, is ourselves.”

Hence the social scientist is dealing with the subjective interpretations of the environment of the objects of his investigation. The situation is part of the environment of a subjective action. According to W.I. Thomas this is crucial: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”

 

Projects and roles

Projects and roles are brackets to an action. Projects are the mental ideas of actions, while time has a specific meaning in this context as I am assuming my action as completed in my project. I hereby put myself “imaginatively in the future perfect tense.” To be able to achieve this at all, the “what if”-imagination makes use of the aforementioned biographical situation and the stock of knowledge at hand. Between the project and the achieved act however lies some time, which has to pass first, before the project is being transformed into the action. Roles complete actions when the individual looks at himself retrospectively in the role of the acting part.

Hereby the “I” plays several important roles. The I after having completed the action will be different from the projecting and planning I from before the action. With the passing of time the I will become older and the biographical situation as well as the stock of knowledge at hand will change. Hereby the view back to the younger I will change as well. Through reflection on the I the I itself will be fragmented into several parts of itself, and hence the I takes on different roles. This process has special meaning for all theories of social roles.

 

“Because” and “in-order-to” motives

Schütz equals the terms “motivated behavior” with the term “motive”. Actions always originate in a cause, either because of something or in order to achieve something. Out of the context of these two reasons for actions arises the debate of free will and determinism. Hereby keep in mind that in-order-to actions relate to the future, to goals that need to be achieved and which have subjective reasons according to Max Weber and W.I. Thomas, as indicated above. In contrast, because-actions relate to reasons and causes in the past and in the environment of the doer and can be understood objectively.

 

The fragmentation of the I

Time plays an important role when looking at the self. Schütz hereby uses George H. Mead’s differentiation between the I and the Me: the I is always the subject, the Me is always the object. Both together form a dialectic unity as the Self is part of both forms of the I and the Me. In order for the I to look at the Me and to recognise it, it needs to reflectively look back on itself as it is impossible for the I to grasp itself in the present age. “I can only attend to myself as an object for reflection, and this means that it is always an earlier phase of myself which I capture.” Or, in the words of John Dewey, “I have to stop and think” to grasp myself in retrospect.

In order for the I to grasp itself in its completeness it needs to perceive itself as working self in the moment of the advancing action. The difference is clear: “the past self can never be more than a partial aspect of the total one which realises itself in the experience of its ongoing working.”

In addition we have to recognise a second level of fragmentation which perceives the self as part of the social community. Hereby the I never presents itself to society as a complete I but only in different roles and forms as “partial self” and hence can never be understood by the society as a complete I. Natanson hence correctly observes: “All projects and roles are permeated with the underlying imperfection of self-knowledge and knowledge of other selves.” On the basis of this observation it is clear that every individual is merely a role player in daily life, and that the individual is only taking part in daily life with a certain part of himself. That is the reason why “the fragmentation of the self (...is) a metaphysical constant of the human condition.” The fragmentation of the I points directly to the case of multiple realities.

 

Multiple realities: finite provinces of meaning

According to Schütz there exist uncountably many finite provinces of meaning next to each other and constitute multiple realities. Every world, every finite province of meaning, is real as long as it receives attention; the finite province of meaning does not disappear due to the lack of attention but this lack changes the reality. The switch from one finite province of meaning to another cannot be achieved smoothly, but it needs a Kierkegaardian leap to move from one to the other. Hereby it is clear that there need to be just as many of those Kierkegaardian leaps as there are finite provinces of meaning. As examples Schütz mentions sleep, the world of dreams, the world of the theater, the world of children's play as well as the world of scientific observations and different religious experiences. What is more, these finite provinces of meaning are stringent and compatible to each other. That exactly is the reason why it is impossible to smoothly move from one to another; it needs a shock experience as in the aforementioned Kierkegaardian leap to bring about a radical change in our consciousness. Other criteria of these infinite provinces of meaning are a certain time perspective, a unique form of self-awareness, a specific epoché as well as a dominating form of spontaneity as well as sociality.

The main question here is how individuals can partake in different finite provinces of meaning and still live in a common social and communicative world at the same time. The social daily life takes place not in the different finite provinces of meaning but in the archetype of all other realities, the paramount reality.

 

The paramount reality

“The world of working or, in an alternative language, the world of common sense and daily life, is taken as the paramount reality.” The paramount reality is the world of intersubjectivity, of communication and the world of individuals influencing their environment. Every individual is born into this world and accepts it with Husserl’s general thesis of the natural attitude, i.e. with the absolute belief in this world, without questioning it. The paramount reality is the home base of all other realities as it connects human beings as well as the different finite provinces of meaning of different human beings with each other. Schütz summarises the main characteristics of the paramount reality:

“1) a specific tension of consciousness, namely wide-awakeness, originating in full attention to life;

2) a specific epoché, namely suspension of doubt;

3) a prevalent form of spontaneity, namely working (a meaningful spontaneity based upon a project and characterised by the intention of bringing about the projected state of affairs by bodily movements gearing into the outer world);

4) a specific form of experiencing one’s self (the working self as the total self);

5) a specific form of sociality (the common intersubjective world of communication and social action);

6) a specific time-perspective (the standard time originating in an intersection between duree and cosmic time as the universal temporal structure of the intersubjective world).”

“Insofar as the interests and life circumstances of human beings differ from each other there will be different “truths” existing next to each other.” The paramount reality enables human beings to live with each other and to communicate with each other. The paramount reality is the central hub for human life and connects the different levels of reality.

 

The epoché of the natural attitude

Schütz borrows the term epoché from Edmund Husserl. With the attitude of the epoché, the suspension, the individual manages, by way of phenomenological reduction, to switch off the doubt of the world and how it presents itself to him. Alfred Schütz transferred this methodology to his philosophy and defines his epoché of natural attitude like this:

“He (the individual) does not suspend belief in the outer world and its objects, but on the contrary, he suspends doubt in its existence. What he puts in brackets is the doubt that the world and its objects might be otherwise than it appears to him. We propose to call this epoché the epoché of the natural attitude.”

The paramount reality uses this attitude as basis and assumes an earlier hiatus of doubt. What is more, the paramount reality rests on the veridic premise of the natural attitude. All human actions within the paramount reality however rest on a crucial criterion: the fundamental anxiety of death.

 

The fundamental anxiety

“The whole system of relevances which governs us within the natural attitude is founded upon the basic experience of each of us: I know that I shall die and I fear to die.” “The fear of death here is the fear of my death.” This is the fundamental fear which is the basis of all human action. The fact that each one of us will have to die influences our thoughts and our actions as well as our feelings in a relevant manner. The inescapability of death is an immovable date for the social-science understanding of the social reality. “The paramount reality of daily life is founded on the secret grasp each man has of his own mortality.”

Let us now contrast the findings from above, the system of the paramount reality, with an allegedly different system of truth, the world of chivalry.

 

Don Quixote and the problem of reality

The world in Don Quixote’s eyes has a fundamental flaw - or, to put it in positive words: Cervantes swapped the common-sense world of us, “normal human beings”, with the world of chivalry. Against this background, and the stock of knowledge at hand of the reader of this article, we have to wonder “how is it possible that the private world of Don Quixote is not a solipsistic one, that there are other minds within this reality, not merely as objects of Don Quixote’s experience, but sharing with him, at least to a certain extent, the belief in its actual or potential reality (...)? How does Don Quixote, how do we Sancho Panzas succeed in maintaining the belief in the reality of the closed sub-universe once chosen as the home base in spite of the various irruptions of experiences with transcend it?”

To understand Don Quixote we first need to have a look at the world of chivalry, which is the home base of Don Quixote for all his thinking and acting. “Quixote’s longing for the good old times of chivalry are his denial of reality.” And the world of chivalry follows its own laws and economic factors and hence living in the world of chivalry means living according to altered principles of thinking, imagination of time and space as well as of causality. Enchantment hereby plays a very specific role: in Don Quixote’s reality windmills are enchanted giants who need to be fought against. “Enchanters (...) can transform all things and change their natural shapes. But, strictly speaking, what they change is the scheme of interpretation prevailing in one sub-universe into the scheme of interpretation valid in another.” Hence the enchanters play an important role, to the extent that Don Quixote is not despairing in the world of solipsism:

“It is the function of the enchanters’ activities to guarantee the coexistence and compatibility of several sub-universes of meaning referring to the same matters of fact and to assure the maintenance of the accent of reality bestowed upon any of such sub-universes. Nothing remains unexplained, paradoxical or contradictory, as soon as the enchanter’s activities are recognised as a constitutive element of the world.”

That is the reason why, in Don Quixote’s world, everything happens in a rational and reasonable manner, headed by the motivation of the enchanters. Alfred Schütz correctly points out that all elements of the Greek mythology of Homer are to be found in Don Quixote: the involvement of higher beings guides human individuals and their actions as well as the perception of realities. “The enchanters themselves have their own motives for acting as they do and these motives are understandable to us human beings.”

As pointed out earlier on, the social connection of individuals with their environment rests on the assumption that the alter ego, though individually different, perceives and interprets objects in the same way as I do. In Don Quixote’s second expedition this very fact is put in doubt, and hence the concerned individuals find themselves in their respective “solipsistic prisons.” Hence in these instances there exist only two possibilities: “either experiences of the objective world turn out to be mere illusions (and in Don Quixote’s terminology this means that the enchanter has transformed the world); or I myself have changed my identity (and this means I am enchanted myself).” To escape from this dilemma, Don Quixote exacerbates the problem by stating: “To make an end of the matter, I imagine all I say to be true, neither more or less.”

In this statement rests the beginning of the end of Don Quixote. Don Quixote’s blending of his chivalric reality with phantasies and their recognition make him understand “that he has transgressed the self-established frontiers of reality of his private province and that he has indulged within its limits in dreams, intermingling thus two realms of reality and sinning against the spirit of truth (...).” “The moment Don Quixote realises this reality and accepts it, he has to die.” Don Quixote suffers from his personal tragedy, a cognition very much alike the one Segismundo is experiencing in Calderon’s “Life is a dream”:

“The true tragedy for Don Quixote is his discovery that even his private sub-universe, the realm of chivalry, might be just a dream and that its pleasures pass like shadows. […] He finds himself at the end a home comer to a world to which he does not belong, enclosed in everyday reality as in a prison, and tortured by the most cruel jailer: the common-sense reason which is conscious of its own limits.”

Don Quixote recognised this fact only upon arrival of his death. Hence, Don Quixote “lived as a fool and yet died wise.”

 

What this essay is all about 

We have seen in the last paragraphs that there are multiple layers of reality existing next to each other (this is the central thesis of Alfred Schütz). The paramount reality functions as home base for all inter-human communication and hence is the hub for the multiple realities on the one hand and for the connection between humans on the other hand. To make this understandable, Schütz selected the paramount reality as base for his observations. Schütz’s realisations are crucial and important for the social sciences. To make them descriptive Schütz contrasted his findings with the world of Don Quixote. The Spanish fiction hero does not use the paramount reality as home base but the world of chivalry. The mixing up of the different levels of reality lead to the downfall of Don Quixote, once he became aware of his mistake.

In other circumstances, however, the mixing up of realities can lead to a completely different outcome, as Segismundo came to recognise:

 

?What is life? A frenzy.

Life’s an illusion.

Life’s a shadow, a fiction,

And the greatest good is worth nothing at all,

For the whole of life is just a dream

And dreams … dreams are only dreams.”

____________________ 

A complete list of references as well as sources of quotes can be obtained from the author.