“Multiple Realities” Revisited: James and Schutz

An earlier draft of this essay was written in 1943 and was later published under the title that Helmut Wagner gave to it: “Realities from Daily Life to Theoretical Contemplation” (see Schutz 1996: 25–50; see also Wagner and Schutz 1983: 52–62). We cannot identify this earlier draft as the original. Schutz had been working on similar themes still before he emigrated to the United States. In 1936–37, he had worked on two manuscripts, both entitled “The Problem of Personality in the Social World,” which touch on some themes that are further developed in “On Multiple Realities” (see Schutz 2013: 199–256). Both Ayaß (2017: 523) and Barber (2017: 50) contend that we can consider these manuscripts inchoate drafts of “On Multiple Realities”. This position can be further supported with a reference to a letter that Schutz had written to Aron Gurwitsch on September 9, 1945, where he remarked, with reference to “On Multiple Realities,” that “I have devoted 7 years to this essay. I don’t know if it is good, but I do know that I can’t improve it” (Grathoff 1989: 76f).

Schutz used to visit Husserl “every year three or four times in Freiburg, Vienna, and Prague for shorter or longer periods” (Schutz 2011: 3) and these visits continued until Husserl’s death.

Thus, in the introduction to this essay, Schutz offers a brief overview of James’s conception of multiple realities and he contends that James had touched here on “one of the most important philosophical questions” (Schutz 1962: 207). Besides, Schutz further maintains that James had intentionally restricted his analysis to the psychological aspect of the problem and finally, he contends that in his fragmentary investigation he will address some of the implications involved in James’s analysis, and especially those that concern the relation between the world of everyday life and the world of scientific contemplation (see Schutz 1962: 207f.).

I can only single out Fred Kersten’s noteworthy analysis in Kersten (2002).

See in this regard Benta’s illuminating discussion in his recent study (Benta 2018).

Consider in this regard Fred Kersten’s telling observation: “I had signed up for one of Schutz’s courses at the Graduate Faculty, and it was his custom to interview students who enrolled. Almost the first question he asked me, perhaps because I was an American student, was whether I had read William James” (Kersten 2002: 33).

Consider how Kersten’s autobiographical reflections continue: “My impression at the time, however, is that it was not so important that I had read James but rather that James was very important to Alfred Schutz” (Kersten 2002: 33).

See especially “Symbol, Reality, and Society” (In Schutz 1962: 340 ff) and “Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality” (In Schutz 1964: 135–158).

Put more phenomenologically, both thinkers are concerned with the constitution of reality, conceived as a specific configuration of sense that characterizes those objects that consciousness identifies as real.

Note that we are talking here of dimensions of sense, not of objects, which certainly can belong to different finite provinces of meaning, when they are apperceived in different ways.

Should we take this to mean that, according to Schutz, the worlds of daily life, of art, or of the sciences lack inner coherence and are marked by inner division? One of the reasons why Schutz’s view on this issue remains ambiguous is that, to borrow Husserlian terms, Schutz sometimes conceptualizes finite provinces of meaning noetically and sometimes noematically. Thus, on some occasions, Schutz claims that the unity of a specific province of meaning is determined by a specific cognitive style, which, following Bergson, Schutz further characterizes as a specific “tension of consciousness” and a specific mode of “attention to life”. On other occasions, he suggests that the unity in question is determined not noetically, but noematically. Thus, as in the passage just quoted, Schutz does not speak of the fantasy world in the singular, but of fantasy worlds in the plural, irrespective of the fact that, from a noetic standpoint, our engagement in different fantasy worlds is characterized by the same tensions of consciousness, i.e., by the same “attention to life”.

As Husserl insightfully remarks while analyzing the difference between predicates of existence (Existenzprädikationen) and predicates of reality (Wirklichkeitsprädikationen), “only he who lives in experiences and reaches from there into the world of phantasms can, provided that the phantasm contrasts with the experienced, have the concepts fiction and reality” (see Schutz 1962: 238). Schutz, whose translation of this passage I have just quoted (for Churchill’s and Amerik’s later translation, see Husserl, Experience and Judgment, p. 298), remarks that nobody else has studied this matter as profoundly as Husserl, noting also that Husserl’s analysis corroborates James’s view of multiple realities (Schutz 1962: 237).

We are in need of some terminological clarifications. While in The Principles of Psychology, James speaks of “the whole distinction of real and unreal” (James 1950b: 290), Schutz instead opposes reality to non-reality. This terminological shift can be explained with reference to Husserl’s distinction between Existenzprädikationen and Wirklichkeitsprädikationen, which plays a crucial role in Schutz’s analysis (see Schutz 1962: 237f.). One should not overlook that Schutz translates Husserl’s term of Wirklichkeit as reality, and with reference to the distinction between Existenzprädikationen and Wirklichkeitsprädikationen, Schutz writes: “the opposites of the former are the predications of non-existence, of the latter the predications of non-reality, of fiction” (Schutz 1962: 237f.). It thereby becomes understandable why in “On Multiple Realities,” Schutz does not use the term “irreality” (Irrealität), which in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology refers to an unrelated phenomenon—to the self-identical intentional unity that can be intended in a variety of intentional acts and which cuts across the distinction between reality and ideality. Let me further note that while non-existence is to be understood as the negation of existence, non-reality is not the negation, but the neutrality-modification of reality, that is, the suspension of belief in the existence of the phenomenon. In the present context, in compliance with Schutz’s choice of terms in “On Multiple Realities,” I have also chosen to speak exclusively of the opposition between reality and non-reality. However, one has to admit that the concept of non-reality invites misunderstandings in that the prefix “non” naturally suggests negation, and not neutrality-modification. Quite likely due to such a natural impulse of language, in his later writings Schutz now-and-again replaces the concept of non-reality with that of irreality, although he employs the latter concept in an entirely different sense than it was given in Husserl’s phenomenology. Thus, in Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, Schutz writes: “We may, of course, freely bestow the accent of reality on any of these various realities and, having done so, make the other realms appear ‘irreal’ and only derived from that receiving this accent” (Schutz 2011: 96).

As soon as consciousness is in the position to compare two claims to reality—a claim that is based on phantasy appearance and a claim that relies on sensory appearance—it finds itself compelled to affirm the merely imaginary nature of the former and the actual status of the latter. James mentions six criteria that play a role in such conflictual situations: (1) coerciveness over attention, (2) liveliness, or sensible pungency, (3) stimulating effect upon the will, (4) emotional interest, (5) congruity with certain favorite forms of contemplation, (6) independence of other causes.

A view such as this one suggests that in The Principles of Psychology, James’s philosophical orientation is heavily shaped by his commitment to the fundamental principles of British empiricism. This is not, however, James’s final position. In a number of his later essays that were originally published in 1904–05 and subsequently republished in his posthumous Essays on Radical Empiricism, James present us with a conception of pure experience, understood as “the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories” (James 1976: 46). For James, pure experience is neither mental, nor physical, but refers to the fundamental stuff from which everything mental and physical originate, depending on the relations into which pure experiences enter. Pure experience is thoroughly relational and always in the making. In the present context, James’s concept of pure experience cannot be addressed in further detail. Suffice it to stress that it takes us far beyond James’s earlier conception of paramount reality that we come across in The Principles of Psychology.

In the words of Elizabeth Kassab, “the pragmatically oriented interests of wirken determine the relevancy principle of what Schutz considers to be the fundamental stratum of reality, the ‘paramount reality’” (Kassab 1991: 195).

“…when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller” (Proust 1956: 6).

With this qualification, the difference between Schutz’s and James’s proposals becomes very clear. Schutz himself has elaborated upon this matter in his correspondence with Aron Gurwitsch, where he differentiated his approach from the common strategy to identify the sense of reality with sensibility: “I can’t see that the reality of the world of everyday life can be grounded in its character as perceptual world. Why then isn’t the world of hallucination a real one, the proceedings on the film screen not real? I believe that the reality of the world of everyday life is based on its structure as the world of work (Wirkwelt)” (Grathoff 1989: 154).

Schutz makes it clear that the world of daily life refers to the world as it is given from the natural attitude: “‘world of daily life’ shall mean the intersubjective world which existed long before our birth, experienced and interpreted by Others, our predecessors, as an organized world. Now it is given to our experience and interpretation. All interpretation of this world is based upon a stock of previous experiences of it, our experiences and those handed down to us by our parents and teachers, which in the form of ‘knowledge at hand’ function as a scheme of reference” (Schutz 1962: 208). Here we touch on Schutz’s central insight and most important contribution. As Maurice Natanson puts it in the Editor’s Introduction to Schutz’s Collected Papers I, “the understanding of the paramount reality of common-sense life is the clue to the understanding of the work of Alfred Schutz” (Schutz 1962: xxv).

James does not have much to say about this basic level in the constitution of reality. Still, he addresses it with references to Brentano’s famous distinction between presentations and judgments (James 1950b: 286f.). James affirms that “the mere thought of the object may exist as something quite distinct from the belief in its reality” (James 1950b: 286), and he further adds that what Brentano calls judgment is what James himself chooses to call belief (James 1950b: 287). In his interpretation of James’s and Schutz’s account of multiple realities, Fred Kersten capitalized on this distinction, arguing that it is of central importance for James, while Schutz abandons it in his own analysis (see Kersten 2002). It is unclear, however, just how important this Brentanian distinction is for James, who immediately adds that a new-born mind that imagines a lighted candle will not treat it as a mere appearance, but will immediately believe in its existence: “what possible sense (for that mind) would a suspicion have that the candle was not real?” (James 1950b: 287). Just a few pages further, James appears to give up on the distinction between mere conception and belief entirely, when he writes, emphasizing each word: “all propositions, whether attributive or existential, are believed through the very fact of being conceived, unless they clash with other propositions believed at the same time, by affirming that their terms are the same with the terms of these other propositions” (James 1950b: 290).

In the present context, belief is to be understood phenomenologically, as the original modality of intentional acts that posit the existence of the intentional objects to which they are directed. At the basic level of experience, which Husserl has identified as prepredicative experience (see Husserl 1973: especially §6–§8, but also §15–§21), intentional objects are simply present to us, pregiven in simple certainty. We presume them to exist in the sense that we do not yet have any reasons to doubt or deny their existence. This general presumption is the accomplishment of belief. By positing the existence of the intentional object, belief also co-posits the existence of a particular sub-universe, or a particular finite province of meaning, conceived as an overall horizon of sense to which the object in question belongs. Belief is an original modality of an intentional act that has a thetic character, whose noematic correlate is existence, which is intended in simple certainty.

Admittedly, on some occasions James remarks that his reflections concern both practical and metaphysical reality. Yet a closer look reveals that the metaphysical reality of which he speaks is in truth a particular kind of practical reality, which one could further describe as a sense of practical reality, which the subject of experience refuses to recognize as merely practical reality (in short, a practical reality, yet without the recognition of what it truly is).

“W. James was alone, as far as I know, in becoming aware of the phenomena of horizon — under the title of ‘fringes’—but how could he inquire into it without the phenomenologically acquired understanding of intentional objectivity and of implications? (Husserl 1970: 264).

For this very reason, should one concede that his critique of James’s alleged psychologism is legitimate, one would further need to admit that it also applies to Schutz’s own standpoint.

For an alternative account, see Fred Kersten (2002). According to Kersten, Schutz’s conception of the epoche is to be conceived as an alternative to James’s psychology of belief. I do not find the sharp opposition between Schutz and James, as proposed by Kersten, compelling. Most importantly, the epoche of which Schutz speaks is not an alternative to James’s belief, but a condition that underlies its possibility. Although it is not my goal in the present context to offer a detailed analysis of Kersten’s valuable contribution, I should nonetheless mention the following two points: (1) Kersten’s view that James conceives of the act of belief as a supervenient act that is grounded upon a mere presentation is a questionable thesis, which is contradicted by many passages from James’s Principles; 2) Kersten’s strong emphasis on the importance of the fact that Schutz conceives of the reality of everyday life as a paramount reality loses the significance that Kersten assigns it if we keep in mind that this turn of phrase is itself taken from James’s writings.

This issue comes up in Aron Gurwitsch’s “Schutz’s Theory of ‘Finite Provinces of Meaning” that forms a part of his Ontological Problems (see Gurwitsch 2010: 369-409). Emphasizing that what Schutz calls the cognitive style specific to each finite province of meaning is nothing other than “the style of experiences of the self conceived of as a mundane existent,” Gurwitsch writes: “Hence Schutz’s investigations fall within the purview of a phenomenological psychology in the natural attitude” (Gurwitsch 2010: 390). This view is further corroborated by Michael Barber (2017: 6).

We come across such a suggestion in Schutz’s own text: “…the more the mind turns away from life, the larger the slabs of the everyday world of working which are put in doubt; the epoche of the natural attitude which suspends doubt in its existence is replaced by other epoches which suspend belief in more and more layers of the reality of daily life, putting them in brackets” (Schutz 1962: 233). It thus seems that, according to Schutz himself, each finite province of meaning is constituted through a specific epoche. This is, however, only a hint and in Schutz’s own text, this intriguing insight largely remains unexplored.

A similar proposal can be found in Peter Berger’s analysis: “The entrance into any reality alternative to that of everyday life requires a breach of the ‘epoche of the natural attitude’ upon which the latter is founded. The new, alternative reality, however, requires its own ‘epoche’—once more, one can only exist within this reality by suspending doubt about it. Such a secondary ‘epoche,’ as we might call it, is part and parcel of the ‘cognitive style’ of every ‘finite province of meaning’” (Berger 1970: 224).

For Schutz’s own analysis of how consciousness transitions from the world of everyday reality to other provinces of meaning, such as the world of science and the world of poetry, see Schutz (1962: 234–237).

Marx (1970: 62) has identified this issue as the central topic in Schutz’s analysis: “the main topic of Schutz’s paper was the question of how such a modification is brought about by the unified life of consciousness and how, specifically, the transition from one particular sub-universe to another is effected by withdrawing or bestowing (respectively) ‘the accent of reality’”.

As Martin Endreß insightfully remarks, the transition can take a variety of more or less gradual forms: “Denn der ‘Austritt’ aus der alltäglichen Wirklichkeit kann geplant und jederzeit abbrechbar sein (wie bei einem Theaterbesuch, beim Vollzug religiöser Rituale, dem Eintritt ins Spiel, dem Betreiben von Wissenschaft oder dem Engagement in virtuellen Realitäten). Er kann aber auch methodisch angeleitet sein (wie in Meditationen oder bei körperlichen Entspannungstechniken). Ebenso kann sich dieser unerwartet plötzlich ereignen (wie im Falle von Naturkatastrophen, Lebenskrisen, Angstzuständen, dem Tod Nahestehender oder Unfällen). Schließlich kann es sich um ein alltäglich vorbereitetes Sich-Einlassen-auf handeln (wie im Falle des Schlafens, beim Tagtraum, dem Drogenrausch oder im Karneval) oder dieser Austritt kann sich willentlich in einem Steigerungsprozess vollziehen (wie im Fall der Ekstase)” (Endreß 2006: 85).

If one subscribes to Schutz’s account of dreaming consciousness, then one has to assert that even dreams do not constitute an exception to this general rule (see Schutz and Luckmann 1973: 32–34).

Consider any social conflict that characterizes our present-day social reality. By definition, any conflictual situation between different social groups entails a split between at least two divergent conceptions of the reality of the situation. Each perspective absorbs the meaning of those, and only those, events, which fit within the fringe of the proposed conception. Other events are either reinterpreted or ignored altogether. In no possible sense can the conflicting conceptions form a coherent totality, and therefore, neither the participating citizen nor the non-participating observer is able to accept simultaneously both conceptions as truthful representations of actuality. By bestowing the status of reality-representation on one of the conflicting conceptions, one deprives the other conception of equal status. Alternatively, if one attempts to take on a more balanced perspective, one runs the risk of depriving both conceptions of their validity.

One might object that the view which argues for paramount reality’s internal incoherence and multiplicity suffers from a serious hermeneutical shortcoming. Just as in a hermeneutical setting we distinguish between the text and its interpretation, shouldn’t we also draw an analogous distinction between paramount reality and its diverse conceptions? But when such a distinction is drawn, shouldn’t we also contend that the multiplicity of which we have spoken above does not say anything about the internal incoherence of paramount reality per se, but refers to the multiplicity of different conceptions, or different interpretations of this reality? Yet let us not forget that practical reality of which we speak should be conceived of in terms of “what it means to us”. This means that we cannot rely on some kind of metaphysical or physicalistic conception of reality, as though it were immune from all those dimensions of sense that we bestow upon it. Recall in this regard James’s above-mentioned claim that practical reality has its fons et origo in subjectivity. With reference to James, Schutz repeats this claim, too: “The origin and fountainhead of all reality, whether from the absolute or the practical point of view is thus, subjective, is ourselves” (Schutz 1964: 135). For both James and Schutz, paramount reality is ultimately what we believe it to be. Conceptually, it cannot be anything other than that. This does not mean, however, that our sense of reality is arbitrary or that we can make reality into anything we want it to be.

What sense are we to make of Schutz’s claim that by selecting a particular finite province of meaning, “we are making it so to speak our ‘home base,’ ‘our system of reference,’ our paramount reality?” (Schutz 2011: 98). Are we to understand this claim as an internal critique (or maybe a rejection?) of the view Schutz had presented in “On Multiple Realities,” according to which only the world of everyday life, and not any other finite province of meaning, deserves to be qualified as “ultimate, or paramount reality” (Schutz 1962: 230)? The manuscript under consideration does not provide us with sufficient evidence to corroborate such a view. Quite on the contrary, as Schutz remarks in this manuscript, our activities within different finite provinces of meaning “may break asunder at any moment: I have to consult a dictionary, I must remove a scrap from my pen, and so on” (Schutz 2011: 98). While our engagement in the world of everyday life is marked by passivity and receptivity, our participation in all other finite provinces of meaning is sustained solely by means of our own voluntary or involuntary spontaneity. Therefore, it is always just a question of time until our participation in these provinces of meaning is broken asunder and until we are thrown back to the world of everyday reality, which, due to our embodied and communicative nature, remains our ultimate reality in the genuine sense of the term, as clarified in this essay. By contrast, all other finite provinces of meaning can be identified as paramount realities only in the transient and relative senses of the term: when, and only when, they function as our “home base,” all other realities “receive merely the accent of derived reality” (Schutz 2011: 98). We can thus say that what we face here is not a radical shift in Schutz’s phenomenology, but an equivocation: like virtually all other fundamental concepts in phenomenology, so also this one can be spoken of in more than one way: we can speak of paramount reality either in its original, or genuine sense (as Schutz does in “On Multiple Realities”), or in its derived, or relative, sense (as Schutz does in the passage here quoted).